From: on Mon, Oct 16 2006 4:32pm

wrote:

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

Give us an example.

You GOT the "example."

He went into fantasy orgasm on ENIAC of 1946.

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

You copied off the Moore School website PR material.
In itself that material is either incomplete or
erroneous...such as the extravagant claim that
"ENIAC changed the world."

The FACT is that tomorrow, Thursday, 19 October, marks
the 33rd anniversary of a federal court decision on
who had the first electronic computer. The judge's
decision was that Iowa State University had it, the
Atanasoff-Berry Computer (familiarly called "ABC").

Not only that, court transcripts indicate that John
Mauchly had already seen the "ABC" but talked to both
Atanasoff and Berry in detail on that "ABC." Further,
Mauchly and Atanasoff exchanged mail following Mauchly's
trip to Iowa to see the "ABC."

If you wish to see more and in detail on the REAL
"first electronic computer," just go to:

http://www.iastate.edu

And follow the links. There's many pages of information
on the "ABC" plus that famous trial about "the ENIAC
patents." Sperry-Rand (who had purchased the rights to
the ENIAC patents) LOST that trial. TS for Sperry-Rand.
Not only that, the judge chided Mauchly in his decision
paper, stating that Mauchly had taken a priori knowledge
from the "ABC" and tried to pass it off as "his" for the
ENIAC.


As for the ABC, it was not completely electronic.

Really?!? WTF are you talking about? Look at the Iowa
State "ABC" pages. Nice illustrations of it.

More importantly, the original was never completed.

"Never completed?!?" WTF are you talking about?
It was "completed" in the 1939 to 1942 period. As far
as a federal court is concerned it was most definitely
COMPLETED, completed well enough for the judge to
declare it, the "ABC", was the FIRST electronic
computer. [TRY to get used to that, Jimmie, I know it
is damn difficult for you but for 33 years the "first"
electronic computer title has gone to the Atanasoff-
Berry Computer of 1939]

ENIAC was fully operational for over a
decade -

NOT "fully operational" by Moore School or the short-
lived 'company' of Mauchly and Eckert (they went broke
and Sperry-Rand had to bail them out by buying rights
to the machine). The US Army took it over (having paid
for it in the first place) and John Von Neuman suggested
the Army should CHANGE certain parts of it.

ENIAC was *NOT* the "First" electronic computer. Get
used to it.

ABC was not finished until 1998.

Bull****. What *I* described was a REPLICA. Built by
the Computer Sciences Department of Iowa State. Between
1942 and about 1994 (a mere 52 years), the original "ABC"
had been scrounged for parts for other projects. All that
remained of the original (in the 1990s) was one memory
drum. Atanasoff and Berry kept good notes and diagrams,
even wrote some internal papers about the "ABC." Those
were used to build the REPLICA.

"ABC" used a revolving drum holding capacitors for
electronic memory storage...each capacitor storing one
binary bit. "ABC" had a "recharge" section which would
keep the bit capacitors' charges up for as long as it
was on. Note: In the 1939-1942 time frame there was
no such thing as a magnetic memory drum to use by
anyone. [magnetic recording was not yet mature in that
time frame, but it was available...barely] Atanasoff
and Berry had to use what was available. "High-speed"
mass memory didn't exist until the invention of the
"Williams tube" in the UK, the one using a CRT faceplate
with conductive foil in small patches on it to form an
equivalent charge storage for each bit.

ENIAC was NEVER replicated in its original form. At best
is a Moore School internal project for "ENIAC on a chip,"
putting the whole thing on a single IC. That info is on
the ENIAC website, perhaps of interest, perhaps not since
Intel had the FIRST CPU-on-a-chip decades ago.


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

It was COMPLETE. It was FULLY OPERATIONAL as to its
intended tasks.

The "ABC" was intended to be used to solve certain
problems. It did that. While it was NEVER intended
to solve "all-purpose" computing problems (as if the
modern mainframes had existed in 1939 to use as a
model of that), it was FULLY OPERATIONAL enough for a
court to decide which electronic computer was FIRST.


Doesn't change the validity of what I wrote. The ENIAC was completed
and operational by 1946. ABC was not.

False. Firstly, YOU NEVER mentioned the "ABC." Secondly,
"ABC" was completed and operational by 1942, four years
prior to the ENIAC first running.

The patent in question was not
relevant to which machine was the first general purpose, high speed,
electronic digital computer.

The TIME FRAME is the relevant item, Jimmie, the TIME FRAME.
1939 to 1942 is WELL BEFORE the ENIAC.

Further, John Mauchly essentially committed intellectual
property theft of certain aspects of "ABC" to use in ENIAC.

Trashcan the "high speed" adjectives for ENIAC, Jimmie.
It is NOT "high speed" at all. It was slower in operation
than my Apple ][+ of 1980. It was slower than ALL of the
first personal electronic computers made in the 1960s and
1970s. "Programming" of ENIAC sometimes "took weeks" for
a single task according to some REAL computer history sites
and textbooks.

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.

I've never tasted a "sour graoe." What is it?

The ARRL *DOES* 'sin by omission' of lots of radio-electronic
history. 'Sin of omission' refers to mentioning ONLY what
the ARRL thinks is relevant for amateur radio and to make
prospective members think they can join a completely 'honest'
organization. ARRL is also a POLITICAL ENTITY, Jimmie, it
lobbies for things *it* wants, but says what it wants is
"for the good of amateur radio." [typical POLITICAL spin]

Sorry, Jimmie, but what I wrote *IS* completely TRUE. Try
untwisting your knickers a bit and quit trying to defend
the ARRL as if you were an army of one. [you've never
served in any military, don't know how to fight for your
or anyone else's life] ARRL *IS* a political entity and
deserves every comment it gets, good or bad.