wrote:
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."

Where? I think you can't provide one, and are just dodging the facts.

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.

Nope. Not at all. You are mistaken.

Here's one source:

http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/comphist/61ordnance/chap2.html

And another:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eniac

There's also the book about ENIAC, which you probably haven't/won't
read.

In itself that material is either incomplete or
erroneous...such as the extravagant claim that
"ENIAC changed the world."

Nope. Not at all. You are mistaken.

ENIAC *did* change the world. It was the true beginning of modern
computing. It's the root of the tree:

http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/comphist/61ordnance/chap7.html

Is the US Army wrong?

The FACT is that tomorrow, Thursday, 19 October, marks
the 33rd anniversary of a federal court decision on
who had the first electronic computer.

So what? That does not contradict what I wrote.

ENIAC was the world's very first fully operational, high speed, general
purpose, electronic
digital computer.

That's what I wrote before, and it's a fact.

The judge's
decision was that Iowa State University had it, the
Atanasoff-Berry Computer (familiarly called "ABC").

The judge was ruling on the patents, not on which machine was the
world's very first fully operational, high speed, general purpose,
electronic digital computer. Which was ENIAC

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."

No one denied that - not even Mauchly himself.

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

http://www.iastate.edu

The Iowa State PR site.

And follow the links.

What links? Can't you provide something more direct?

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.

The ABC was not even a true computer.

As for the ABC, it was not completely electronic.

Really?!? WTF are you talking about?

The facts, Len. It was part electronic and part electromechanical.
Motors and switching drums, storage of intermediate results on paper,
and much more.

Look at the Iowa
State "ABC" pages. Nice illustrations of it.

Which prove my point.

More importantly, the original was never completed.

"Never completed?!?" WTF are you talking about?
It was "completed" in the 1939 to 1942 period.

Nope. It was never fully operational. It never completed a full-scale
calculation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff-Berry_Computer

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.

Was the judge an engineer?

The judge was ruling on the patents, not on which machine was the
world's very first fully operational, high speed, general purpose,
electronic digital computer. Which was ENIAC.

[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]

The ABC was not a computer in the modern sense. Or even in the 1945
sense.

All the ABC was designed to do was to solve systems of linear
equations. It could not do anything else.

By definition, a true computer is Turing-complete. ENIAC was
Turing-complete, ABC was not. ENIAC was a true computer, ABC was not.
End of story.

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).

Boy, Len, you really are on a roll with the mistakes. You make 'em in
quantity!

ENIAC was fully operational at the Moore School *and* at the Aberdeen
Proving Grounds. That's not an opinion - it's the official Army
history:

http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/comphist/61ordnance/chap2.html

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.

Eckert and Mauchly came up with the idea and convinced the Army to fund
it. The Army accepted and used ENIAC for almost a decade.

The improvements suggested by John Von Neumann (note the spelling) were
later incorporated, as were other improvements by the original
inventors.

ENIAC was *NOT* the "First" electronic computer.

Who said it was? Not me.

ENIAC was the world's very first fully operational, high speed, general
purpose, electronic
digital computer.

ABC was a special purpose calculator.

Get used to it.

Take your own advice.

ABC was not finished until 1998.

Bull****.

No, a fact.

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.

Because the original was never fully operational. Explain how something
that is not fully operational can be complete.

See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff-Berry_Computer

"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.

An electromechanical system. Not electronic.

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.

So they used an electromechanical system rather than an electronic
system. They also used paper storage for intermediate results.

"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.

So? What's your point?

ENIAC was NEVER replicated in its original form.

Doesn't matter. Even as ENIAC was being built, Eckert and Mauchly
thought up improvements, which wound up in EDVAC. They could not be
included in ENIAC because the design phase was over. Had to meet the
schedules.

ENIAC worked for almost a decade. The original ABC was never fully
functional and was abandoned for more than five decades.

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.

Irrelevant.

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

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

Incorrect on both counts. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff-Berry_Computer

All the ABC could do was solve systems of linear equations. That's all
Atanasoff intended, and he abandoned the machine for other work. He and
Berry did not challenge the ENIAC patents - Honeywell did, because IBM
was trying to use them to monopolize the industry. That monopoly
attempt backfired on Big Blue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_v._Sperry_Rand

The "ABC" was intended to be used to solve certain
problems. It did that.

Systems of linear equations and nothing else. That's a special-purpose
calculator, not a computer. ENIAC was a true computer, ABC was not. End
of story.

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.

The court was about the patents.

A patent does not require a fully operational example, either. All it
requires is that the concept not contradict known science.

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

False.

No, true.

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

Not according to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff-Berry_Computer

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,

Who is this person you call "Jimmie", Len?

My name is Jim. "Jimmie" isn't me.

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.

How? What elements were used? The addition-subtraction method was
completely different. ENIAC did not use an electromechanical drum and
did not use binary.

If anything, Mauchly was more influenced by the counting circuits he
had used previously for other purposes.

Trashcan the "high speed" adjectives for ENIAC,

No.

It is NOT "high speed" at all.

Not by today's standards.

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.

Irrelevant.

ENIAC was high speed because it was orders of magnitude faster than
anything that had existed before. ABC used a 60 Hz clock - ENIAC was
more than 100 times faster. Faster than any previous machine by at
least an order of magnitude, usually by several orders of magnitude.

"Programming" of ENIAC sometimes "took weeks" for
a single task according to some REAL computer history sites
and textbooks.

Writing software takes time, Len. That's what they were doing.

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?

Sour grapes, You should know.

The ARRL *DOES* 'sin by omission' of lots of radio-electronic
history.

Nope.

'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.

You're really on a roll with the nonsense, Len. Give a concrete,
factual example for a change. Oh wait - you can't. Facts aren't your
style.

ARRL is also a POLITICAL ENTITY,

it
lobbies for things *it* wants, but says what it wants is
"for the good of amateur radio." [typical POLITICAL spin]

"The good of amateur radio" is an opinion, Len. Aren't they allowed to
put forth an opinion?

Sorry,

but what I wrote *IS* completely TRUE.

No, it isn't. It's a typical bunch of your errors, mistakes, and
general attention-seeking nonsense.

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.

Why should you let facts stand in the way, Len? That's not your style.

Here are those references again:

ELECTRONIC COMPUTERS WITHIN THE ORDNANCE CORPS
Index:
http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/comphist/61ordnance/index.html

Chap 2 on ENIAC:
http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/comphist/61ordnance/chap2.html

Tree of Computing:
http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/comphist/61ordnance/chap7.html


Other references:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_v._Sperry_Rand

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff-Berry_Computer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eniac