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The Harvard Mark I (also known as the IBM ASCC, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator) was the first widely known and influential large scale automatic digital computer.The Mark I was devised by Howard H. Aiken, created at IBM, shipped to Harvard in February 1944, and formally delivered there on August 7, 1944.
The building elements of the Mark I were switches, relays, rotating shaft s, and clutches. It was built using more than 750,000 components, amounting to a size of 50 feet (15.24 meters) in length, 8 feet (2.4384 meters) in height, and a weight of about 5 tons (4535.924 kilograms).
The most famous operator/ programmer of the Harvard Mark I was Grace Hopper. Hopper coined the term computer bug when a moth landed on the Mark I and shorted out the switchboard.
Other universities have their own Mark I computers as well, but the Harvard Mark I is generally described as the Mark I.
1 See also
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- Other early computers:
- Atanasoff Berry ComputerAtanasoff Berry Computer is the name applied, long after the fact, to an experimental machine for solving systems of simultaneous linear equations, developed in 1938-42 at Iowa State University by Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford E. The Atanasoff-B
- Colossus computerThe Colossus was the first programmable (to a limited extent) digital electronic computer, used for breaking German Fish Cyphers, especially the Lorenz cipher. It was designed by Max Newman and associates of Bletchley Park, and was built by the British Po
- ENIACENIAC short for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer was the first all-electronic computer designed to be Turing-complete, capable of being reprogrammed by rewiring to solve a full range of computing problems. It was preceded in 1941 by the fully
- Manchester Mark INote: This article is about the early British computer. Manchester Mk1 can also refer to the Avro Manchester heavy bomber in RAF service during the early stages of World War II. The Manchester Mark I was one of the earliest electronic computers, built at
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2 External links
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