Biography of Howard Hathaway Aiken

When computers were not small

9 March 1900 14 March 1976 Born: March 9, 1900 in USA Died: March 14, 1976 in St Louis, Missouri, USA Howard Haiken was born in Hoboken, New Jersey (USA). He studied at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, obtaining a doctorate from Harvard in 1939. When he was a graduate student and instructor at the Department of physics at Harvard University Aiken began making plans to build a large computer. These plans had been made for a purpose very accurate, because the search for Aiken had led him to a system of differential equations that has no exact solutions and can only be solved using numerical techniques. However the amount of hand calculations would certainly be prohibitive, so the idea of Aiken was using an adaptation of the punched-card machines that had been developed by Hollerith. Aiken wrote a report about how he imagined the machine and particularly on how a machine designed to be used in scientific research would differ from one machine to punch cards. Scored four main points "where calculating machines use only positive numbers scientific machines must be able to use the negatives, too; those scientific machines must be able to use functions as logarithms, Sines, cosines and a multitude of other functions; the computer would be more useful for scientists if, once set in motion, to solve this problem for many numerical values without intervention before the computation is finished; and the car should count lines instead of columns, which is more in keeping with the mathematical sequence of events". The report was enough to bring the senior staff at Harvard to contact IBM and it was decided that Aiken would build his computer IBM laboratories in Endicott, aided by engineers of IBM. Working with three engineers, Aiken developed the computer ASCC (Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator) that could carry out five operations, addition, subtraction, Division moltipicazione, and reference to previous results. Aiken was deeply influenced in his ideas from the writings of Babbage and saw the project to build the computer ASCC that Babbage had prepared but had failed to complete. The ASCC had much more in common with the analytical engine Babbage's than you can imagine. Although it was powered with electricity the major components were electromechanical in form of magnetic switches. He weighed 35 tons, had 500 miles of cables and could count up to 23 significant digits. There were 72 recorders and units to perform multiplication and Division. To give an idea of the performance of the machine a single addition took about 6 seconds while a Division 12 seconds. ASCC was controlled by a sequence of instructions on perforated paper tapes. Perforated cards were used to put the data, and the output of the machine was also on perforated cards or using a printer supply. Completed construction of the ASCC in 1943 it was decided to move the computer at Harvard University where he began to be used by May 1944. Grace Hopper worked with Aiken from 1944 on computer ASCC which was renamed Harvard Mark I and donated to the University by IBM. The computer was in the Office of Ordinance, computing projects to which Hopper was assigned, used by the us Navy for ballistic calculations. Aiken completed the Harvard Mark II, a fully electronic computer, in 1947. He continued to work at Harvard on this series of machines, working on Mark III and finally on the Mark IV until 1952. He worked not only on computers but also on the issues of electronic publications and wrote the theory of the switches. In 1964 Aiken received the Harry M Goode Memorial Award, a medal along with $ 2000, and honored by the Computer Society: "for his original contribution to the development of automatic computer, leading to the first large-scale automatic general purpose digital computer". This was one of many honors that Aiken received for his work as a pioneer in the development of the computer. These honors came from many countries, including the United States, France, Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Howard Hathaway Aiken died in Springfield on the day March 14, 1976, at the age of 76 years