[Ads-l] digital computer

Joel Berson berson at ATT.NET
Mon Feb 8 17:57:58 UTC 2016


I wrote an app for Mark I.  Of course they weren't called apps then.

The use of both "calculator" and "computer" does not surprise me.  Mark I could produce only numerical results.  As was true of ENIAC, the  "Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer."  As Wikipedia says about it and Mark I, "ENIAC was, like the Z3 and Harvard Mark I, able to run an arbitrary sequence of mathematical operations."

Joel


      From: James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM>
 To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
 Sent: Sunday, February 7, 2016 10:46 PM
 Subject: [ADS-L] digital computer
   
Having attempted "analog(ue) computer" I should try "digital computer".

Google Books plays its usual games but does come up with a 1950 usage, in a surprising but not unlikely source.

https://books.google.com/books?id=2A0AAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA155&dq=digital+computer&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj4_pHXnefKAhVJbB4KHSL-Bd84FBDoAQhbMAk#v=onepage&q=digital%20computer&f=false

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists  
article "AEC Seventh Semiannual Report: A Condensation, Prepared by Anthony Turkevich"
page 155 column 3:

"One development carried on during the war at the Army's Aberdeen Proving ground was the construction of an electronic digital computer, the so-called Eniac."  The author apparently did not realize that "ENIAC" was an acronym and therefore should have been all caps.

A related term appears in the same column of the same article:

"...Harvard University's Automatic Sequence Controlled Digital Calculator, more familiarly known as the Mark I Computer."  Interesting that the same system should be called both a "calculator" and a "computer".  Modern terminology would be that the Mark I was a computer, not a calculator.

Undoubtedly there are earlier usages, perhaps even antedating both the ENIAC and the Mark I, but Google Books did not supply them.

- Jim Landau (who thinks the Super Bowl had a really lousy selection of commercials 




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