Theory and Techniques for Design of Electronic Digital Computers

YEAR: 1947
ITEM: Book
COMPANY: University of Pennsylvania
COUNTRY: USA
IN OUR COLLECTION: Yes

Theory and Techniques is more commonly known as the "Moore School Lectures", named after the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at UPenn in Philadelphia. The Moore School building from 1946 still stands and, in fact, houses four cabinets from the original ENIAC computer that was designed and built there. If you are in Philly, you should go visit. (all right, fine...you can go see the Rocky steps first.)

It was during the summer of 1946, from July 8th through August 31st, that the University of Pennsylvania?s Moore School of Electrical Engineering hosted 28 invited "students" to the world?s first course on digital computers. Over six weeks, leading engineers and scientists presented detailed lectures on logic circuits, memory devices, and the architecture of the ENIAC and EDVAC. Notes from the course were later published in a limited mimeographed edition of just over 100 sets in November 1947, distributed only to the 28 "students", select universities, government agencies, and companies working with the government.

The "students" were probably happy to be indoors, and not just because they would become the leaders of a new era, but also because August of that year was cool (avg. 70 degrees), generally rainy with thunderstorms, and saw almost daily reports of both fog and smoke in the city. The heavy air pollution (no clean cars in '46) was mostly due to the city's industry ramping up after WWII.

Our collection includes a rare copy of Volume II (of the three volume set) which covers Lectures 11?21. These lectures included critical discussions of circuit design, arithmetic units, and storage systems. The notes provided the foundation for computer laboratories worldwide and influenced pioneers such as England's Maurice Wilkes in designing the EDSAC. Few copies survive today, making this volume a landmark artifact in the spread of digital computing knowledge.

It took over a year to get the three volumes copied and ready for distribution...seems like a long time for what is essentially mimeographed paper. And UPenn realized it...Their preface states, "Owing to other work, this rewriting has taken a very long time." The lecturers were given a chance to edit their lectures (the field was changing quickly then too!) but some just did not have time and UPenn asked

Several invited "students" did not attend. One was Hower Aiken of Harvard who saw the ENIAC machine at UPenn as inferior to his Mark I electro-mechanical computer. He did not trust tubes!

What is often overlooked is the conference was held "...under the auspices of the Office of Naval Research, U.S. Navy, and Ordnance Department, U.S. Army. Both the Navy and Army (especially the air force branch) were interested in computers. The Navy issued three major computer contracts in 1946...Project Cyclone, Project Typhoon, and Project Whirlwind.

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