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Computer, Vol. 29, No. 6, June 1996

June is the month in which some of the earliest and most significant events in computing occurred. In June 1833, Ada Augusta Byron (later Ada King, Countess of Lovelace) met Charles Babbage. Eleven years earlier, Babbage had introduced the idea of the Difference Engine, which he still had not completely implemented, but she was more interested in his mathematical genius than in his machines. When they met, he had not yet disclosed his plans for the Analytical Engine, the true antecedent of the modern computer.

This association between the "forgotten father of the computer" and the woman some recognize as the first programmer resulted in her becoming his expository writer.

June also marks both the beginning and the culmination of the ENIAC project. On June 5, 1943, the Moore School at the University of Pennsylvania and the Aberdeen Proving Ground signed a contract to begin developing the world's first general-purpose, electronic, programmable computer. Four years later, and more than a year after ENIAC's unveiling in February 1946, John Mauchly and Presper Eckert filed the patent application for the computer. They didn't know that Konrad Zuse had applied for a German patent for his computer in 1936. Ironically, although John Vincent Atanasoff of the Iowa State College (later University) had failed to file for a patent on his ABC machine, it was nevertheless the discussions between Mauchly and Atanasoff that eventually led the District Court in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to invalidate the ENIAC patent. Eckert and Mauchly fought for years to vindicate their claim. Both Eckert and Atanasoff died in June 1995. (See Computer, July 1995, p. 77, and August 1995, p. 103.)

June has been a month for dedications. In 1948, the Manchester Baby computer became operational, and the era of stored-program machines began. Two years later, the National Bureau of Standards dedicated the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer, the first of a pair of specially designed machines. In 1951, Univac I was dedicated at the Bureau of the Census, ending the difficult commercial-machine development period that had begun in 1946 when Eckert and Mauchly established the Electronic Control Corp. The age of "one-off" machines was almost over.

It was also in June that John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William B. Shockley of Bell Telephone Laboratories filed their patent application for the transistor. Though not as reliable, the transistor quickly superseded the vacuum tube and soon propelled the computer into its second generation.

June birthdays

Gordon Moore Born 3 January 1929, San Francisco CA; With Robert Noyce, developer of the semiconductor chip; co-founder and chairman, Intel Corporation. Moore was one of the charter recipients of the IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award in 1980.

Robert W. Floyd, born June 8, 1936, contributed substantially to our understanding of the meaning of programs, predating the seminal work of Antony Hoare. Floyd received the 1978 ACM Turing Award and in 1991 the IEEE Computer Society's Pioneer Award for his work on early compilers.

Friedrich (Fritz) L. Bauer, born June 10, 1924, was an early German computer scientist responsible for the Stanislaus and for the stack method of expression evaluation, known in Germany as the "Keller" (Cellar) method. Bauer received the IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award in 1988.

Nicholas Metropolis, born June 11, 1915, developed and implemented the Maniac system at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.

Gerrit A. Blaauw born July 17, 1924 at The Hague, Netherlands; Computer pioneer who started work with Howard Aiken on the Harvard Mark III and Mark IV systems, and contributed to the IBM Stretch and System/360.

Blaise Pascal, born June 19, 1623, was a French mathematician and philosopher who invented an adding machine with automatic carry between digits and the "Pascal Triangle" of coefficients of the binomial series. He also invented the wheelbarrow, the omnibus, and the roulette wheel.

Konrad Zuse, born June 22, 1910, invented the pre-World War II electromechanical binary computer designated Z1, which was destroyed by wartime bombing. He developed two more machines before the war's end but couldn't convince the Nazi government to support his work. He fled with the remains of Z3 to Zurich, where he developed the Z4, successfully used at ETH (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule). He also developed a basic programming system known as "Plankalkül," with which he designed the first chess-playing program. (See his obituary in IEEE Annals, Summer 1996, pp. 3-5.)

James H. Pomerene, born June 22, 1920, was the design engineer for the IBM Harvest system and, with John von Neumann, the IAS computer.

Alan Mathison Turing, born June 23, 1912, conceptualized the Universal Machine, early computational machines, and computer logic.

Robert Rivers Everett, born June 26, 1921, designed the Whirlwind under Jay Forrester and later became president of the Mitre Corporation. Everett received an IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award in 1987.

Frederic Calland Williams, born June 26, 1911, developed the CRT electrostatic memories that bore his name and were devised for the Manchester computers.

Maurice Vincent Wilkes, born June 26, 1913, was director of the Cambridge Computer Laboratory throughout the development of stored-program computers, starting with EDSAC. He invented labels, macros, and microprogramming and, with David Wheeler and Stanley Gill, invented a programming system based on subroutines. Wilkes received an IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award in 1980.

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