HOWARD AIKEN
Presentation by Adam Wright
Howard Hathaway Aiken
• Born March 8, 1990 in Hoboken, New Jersey• Grew up in Indianapolis , Indiana • Received a Bachelor’s degree after attending
the University of Wisconsin.• 1939-Ph.D from Harvard• Thinks of a machine to do tedious
calculations while working on a doctoral thesis in physics.
• Aiken got IBM to fund his project
Aiken’s Big Project
• His idea was to create an electromachanic machine
• Aiken was to be head of the IBM team• IBM parts were to be used• The project took seven years• Grace Murray Cooper was assigned to work
with Aiken on the project
Project Results
• The official name would be the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator
• Most would call it the Mark 1• Designed to create tables• Proved machines of the type could be of
practical use
Mark 1 Statistics
8 feet high 51 feet long 2 feet wide Five tons 760,000 parts
2,200 counter wheels3,300 relay components530 miles of wire
The Mark 1 was used to aid in development of the atomic bomb
Mark 1 in History
The Mark 2
The Navy asked Aiken to develop what would become the Mark 2 ,for the Naval Proving Ground
The Mark 2 would employ an electrical memory, finished in 1947
Concept of “constants”-fixed values referenced by the program while the machine was still running
The Mark 3Ran on a stored programIncorporated address registers
and indirect addressingGreater storage capacityUnreliable, components were
subject to heat changes when turned on and off
The Mark 4
Basically the same as the Mark 3 Magnetic core memory-storing 200
registers Made the computer faster
Aiken’s quotes
“ Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.”
If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed, and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by noon.”
Aiken’s other accomplishments
He started the first computer science academic program
Aiken’s Death
Howard Aiken died on March 14, 1973
http://www.thocp.net/biographies/aiken_howard.html
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/04.09/HowardAikenMaki.html
http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/aiken.html
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/howard_aiken/
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761589179/howard_aiken.html
http://www.athsalumni.org/howardaiken.htm
Sources