[HN Gopher] Herman Goldstine and the IAS Machine: Unveiling the ...
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       Herman Goldstine and the IAS Machine: Unveiling the Modern Computer
       (2023)
        
       Author : klelatti
       Score  : 31 points
       Date   : 2024-04-11 13:21 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (thechipletter.substack.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (thechipletter.substack.com)
        
       | cspeterson wrote:
       | This might be minor, but an error seems to be made repeatedly in
       | this article: the machine was not built at "Princeton's Institute
       | for Advanced Studies," but rather at "The Institute for Advanced
       | Study" which is located in Princeton, NJ but completely
       | independent from Princeton University.
        
         | rmorey wrote:
         | you're right but I think the phrasing is fair. Princeton in the
         | passage effectively refers to the location, not the university,
         | and there are other places called "Institute for Advanced
         | Studies" so you probably need to disambiguate
        
       | zeteo wrote:
       | Goldstine also wrote a very interesting book called "The Computer
       | from Pascal to von Neumann" that chronicles some of his
       | experiences and also shows the depth of his research trying to
       | draw inspiration from earlier calculating machines.
        
       | vajrabum wrote:
       | Looks like von Neumann was the first Open Source computing guy.
       | And I had no clue that Goldstine was the designer of the IBM 701
       | and the public domain IAS was it's engineering ancestor. So an
       | early example of monetizing open source too!
       | 
       | "The IAS Machine was highly influential, though, and plans for
       | its design were distributed widely, partly due to von Neumann's
       | insistence that advances be kept in the public domain. Many
       | computers were built using the IAS Machine as a starting point,
       | including the first IBM Mainframe, the IBM 701."
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | _" The engineering challenges, especially in the design and
       | construction of an acceptable primary memory unit, were more
       | difficult than originally anticipated."_
       | 
       | Right. This is, again, the memory hardware problem. Eckert had
       | been building computing machines since the 1930s, and his
       | programs were on cams. In 1949, IBM started selling a "memory
       | unit" the IBM 941, that stored 16 10-digit numbers, using about a
       | cubic meter of relays.[1] Multiple memory units could be plugged
       | into an IBM Card Programmed Calculator. It was possible to store
       | short programs in the relays.[1] So it was a very limited "stored
       | program" machine.
       | 
       | It was recognized by workers in the field for years before the
       | IAS machine that stored program computers were desirable, if only
       | someone could build something to store the programs. Something
       | with an affordable cost per bit. That was the limitation.
       | 
       | [1] http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/cpc.html
        
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       (page generated 2024-04-11 23:01 UTC)