RadioBanter - View Single Post - N0IMD Caught In Two-Faced Flames AGAIN

[email protected] · October 17th 06, 12:32 AM posted to rec.radio.amateur.policy

wrote:

Even though Jim posts with authority, not all of his postings are
factual.

Give us an example.

He went into fantasy orgasm on ENIAC of 1946.

Just stating facts, Len. Nothing I stated about that machine was
incorrect.

He conveniently
left out the Colossus work in the UK from 1942 onwards and
made NO mention of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer at Iowa State
University in 1939. The "ABC" was recreated (almost exactly
as the original) in 1998 at ISU in Ames, IA.

Was the Colossus a general purpose machine? Was it electronic, or
partly electromechanical? Did it have a jump instruction?

Or was it a custom-made special-purpose decryption machine?

As for the ABC, it was not completely electronic. More importantly, the
original was never completed. ENIAC was fully operational for over a
decade - ABC was not finished until 1998.

I had originally mixed up 'Ohio' and 'Iowa' and 'OSU' v 'ISU.'
[thanks to a private e-mail from another, non-RRAP person]
My apologies to Iowa State and its grads and fans. Ohio State
had a good computer science section in 1970s and 1980s,
probably still has. Just the same, Professor John V. Atanasoff
had the first idea that was put into practice with the help
of graduate student Clifford Berry...in 1939 to 1942. Iowa
State has some very good pages on the "ABC" in the Internet,
including the working replica.

But the original ABC was never fully operational, nor complete.

left out an important patent civil suit between
Honeywell and Sperry-Rand (which had bought out the ENIAC
rights to bail out a near-bankrupt Eckert and Mauchly).
ENIAC had claimed to be the "first." Problem is, Mauchly
had visited ISU, even staying at Atanasoff's hourse for days,
learning about the "ABC," seeing it, talking to Cliff Berry.
In 1941. All of that came out in court and ISU has copies
of the judge's 19 October 1973 final decision paper.

Doesn't change the validity of what I wrote. The ENIAC was completed
and operational by 1946. ABC was not. The patent in question was not
relevant to which machine was the first general purpose, high speed,
electronic digital computer.

That sort of SELECTIVE highlighting with the sin of
omission or related facts is what the ARRL does most of
the time.

That's just sour graoes in your part, Len. Completely untrue.