Computer World. Матросова Т.А. - 8 стр.

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7
the time needed to produce trajectories from 15 minutes to 30 seconds, would employ
18,000 vacuum tubes–and all of them would have to operate simultaneously.
This machine, called ENIAC–for Electronic Numerical Integrator and
Calculator–was worked on 24 hours a day for 30 months and was finally turned on in
February 1946, too late to aid in the war effort. A massive machine that filled an
entire room, it was able to multiply a pair of numbers in about 3 milliseconds, which
made it 300 times faster than any other machine.
There were a number of drawbacks to ENIAC – including serious cooling
problems because of the heat generated by all the tubes and, more importantly,
ridiculously small storage capacity. Worst of all, the system was quite inflexible.
Each time a program was changed, the machine had to be rewired. This last obstacle
was overcome by the Hungarian-born mathematical genius Dr. John von Neumann.
The holder of degrees in chemistry and physics, a great storyteller, and a man
with total recall, von Neumann was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton, New Jersey. One day in 1945, while waiting for a train in Aberdeen,
Maryland, a member of the ENI AC development team, Herman Goldstine, ran into
von Neumann, who was then involved in the top-secret work of designing atomic
weapons. Since both persons had security clearances, they were able to discuss each
other's work, and von Neumann began to realize that the difficulties he was having in
the time-consuming checking of his advanced equations could be solved by the high
speeds of ENIAC. As a result of that chance meeting, von Neumann joined the
ENIAC team as a special consultant.
When the Army requested a more powerful computer than ENIAC, von
Neumann responded by proposing the EDVAC (for Electronic Discrete Variable
Automatic Computer), which would utilize the stored program concept. That is,
instead of people having to rewire the machine to go to a different program, the
machine would, in less than a second, «read» instructions from computer storage for
switching to a new program. Von Neumann also proposed that the computer used the
binary numbering system (the ENIAC worked on the decimal system), to take
advantage of the two-state conditions of electronics («on» and «off» to correspond to
1 and 0).
Mauchly and Eckert and others at the Moore School of Engineering set out to
build the EDVAC, but the first computer using the stored program concept was
actually the EDSAC, built in 1949 at Cambridge University in England. One reason
that EDVAC was delayed was that Eckert and Mauchly founded their own company
in 1946 to build what would ultimately be called the UNIVAC computer.
SUGGES TED AC TI VI TI ES
1. Point out the paragraph describing the Mark I and characterize this computer
2. Find the paragraph about ENIAC and speak about it drawbacks.
3. Look through the text and say who designed the computer and who is
considered to be the true inventor of the electronic computer.
4. Retell the text briefly according to the plan.

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