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Researcher Resurrects the First Computer
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri Apr 10, 2009 09:56 AM
from the how-do-i-love-thee-let-me-randomly-select-the-ways dept.
from the how-do-i-love-thee-let-me-randomly-select-the-ways dept.
aleph60 writes "A German researcher is about to resurrect the first fully electronic general-purpose stored-program computer, the Manchester Mark 1 (1948). The functional replica will run the source code of an original program from 1952 by Christopher Strachey, whose sole purpose was generating love letters; it is historically interesting as one of the first examples of a text-generating program. The installation will be shown at an art exhibition in Germany at the end of April." Here is researcher David Link's Manchester Mark I emulator home, which generates a new love poem on each page load. When the Mark I had been used to search for new Mersenne primes in 1949, a press account coined the phrase "electronic brain" to characterize it.
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Random Numbers on the Manchester Mark 1? (Score:5, Interesting)
HONEY LOVE
YOU ARE MY DEAR PASSION: MY ADORABLE FERVOUR: MY ARDENT INFATUATION: MY ARDENT DEVOTION. MY PASSIONATE LUST BREATHLESSLY HOPES FOR YOUR LIKING.
YOURS BURNINGLY
M. U. C.
Now that's some vintage computer porn!
But seriously, I'm interested in how the Manchester Mark 1 implemented its random number instruction (to select the phrases for the love poems). Was it von Neumann's [wikipedia.org] middle square method [wikipedia.org] from 1946? Does anyone know?
I remember lengthy discussion in my undergrad days of how a completely logical computer could come up with a truly random number and talking about the theory that every software solution is pseudorandom. I'm just wondering what the first computer had implemented.
Re:Random Numbers on the Manchester Mark 1? (Score:4, Insightful)
every software solution IS pseudorandom.
Of course, Newton should us that nothing is truly random, just too complex to understand well enough to predict.
For example, if you new all the variables going into a coin toss, you would know what the result would be.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
You need hardware, not software, to produce true random numbers. At the company I used to work at we discovered that some of our Zener diodes were 'too perfect' and they started to show an effect called micro-plasms (rather poorly documented). After some research we nailed it and I was able to use some of the engineering dies to make a true random number generator for my laptop.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Now that's some vintage computer porn!
That makes me wonder... Who was the first person to depict the image of a naked woman on a computer (ASCII or otherwise)
FROM AGNES: WITH LOVE (Score:2)
"James Elwood, master programmer, in charge of Mark 502-741, commonly known as 'Agnes,' the world's most advanced electronic computer. Machines are made by men for man's benefit and progress, but when man ceases to control the products of his ingenuity and imagination he not only risks losing the benefit, but he takes a long and unpredictable step...
into--the Twilight Zone. [youtube.com]"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734571/ [imdb.com]
"Advice to all future male scientists: be sure you understand the opposite sex, especially if you i
A poem, for vous (Score:5, Funny)
Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
Fondle my wee wee
And I'll massage your woo woo.
Let's see that old heap create something as romantic as that!
Re: (Score:2)
DUCK DARLING
YOU ARE MY BEAUTIFUL ENTHUSIASM: MY WISTFUL WISH: MY SYMPATHETIC FERVOUR: MY SEDUCTIVE ENTHUSIASM: MY CRAVING SYMPATHY.
YOURS AFFECTIONATELY
M. U. C.
First evidence I've seen of relations between a machine and a duck.
Re:A poem, for vous (Score:5, Funny)
Roses are red,
Violates are Orange,
Some poems rhyme,
Not this one.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Violets are blue.
All of my base
Are belong to you.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Violets are blue
I'd love you forever
but I'm upgrading to Mark II.
Re: (Score:2)
Violets are blue
I'm a schizophrenic
And so am I.
Re:A poem, for vous (Score:5, Funny)
Lenin is red
Tsarists are blue
In Soviet Russia
Poem write you!
Parent
Haha, perfect timing (Score:5, Funny)
A article about resurrection on Good Friday, perfect timing. ;)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
A article about resurrection on Good Friday, perfect timing. ;)
You don't suppose that this could be the resurrection of.... No wait, that's Barak Obama...
Re:Haha, perfect timing (Score:5, Funny)
It would have been better on Valentine's day, when it could have saved me $5 at Hallmark.
Parent
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What? it's a story about how a corrupt government killed someone for speaking against it? And the followers used him as a martyr to get fame, money and women?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
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It would've been more appropriate to publish this story on Easter Sunday. Today they should've published a story about when they took this computer offline by smashing it to bits and nailing bits of it to a tree after saying how great the world would be if everyone were nice to each other for a change.
Re: (Score:2)
Touche. Close, though. :P
Re: (Score:2)
It's being discussed on Slashdot. Thus, at the very least, the website is being crucified.
Inspiration for Lem? (Score:4, Informative)
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It seems, though, that this book has not yet reached the Internet yet.
CC.
Love and Tensor Algebra (Score:5, Informative)
And that's translated. Lem wrote in Polish. He may have been a genius, but Michael Kandel, who was his English translator, must have been one too...
(Also, damn Slashdot for not allowing HTML entities in posts. The formula in the last line is supposed to be represented mathematically.)
Parent
functional replica != resurrect (Score:3, Funny)
Great, now I've got a Computer version of Jursassic Park running around in my head.
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You're right, and it's not even the first. The Manchester team rebuilt the Manchester Mk. 1 for the 50th anniversary.
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Watch out for hunting packs of VAX-11's, there smart bastards, 2 of them will distract you while the third one leaps from behind.
oh, and electric computer (Score:2)
not nearly as impressive as when a computer was actually the title of a person.
For you younger reader, a person calculating targeting trajectories(and other things) for the military was called a 'computer', becasue the computed numbers.
The cause for the coming Robot War revealed! (Score:5, Funny)
Computer: My processor races at
the way you nurture
my love kernel module
dearest, adored researcher
Researcher: Err, thanks... but I don't think of you that way. Let's just be friends.
Computer: heart dumped. Recover mode initiated. s/love/eternal hate/g.
Computer: Yes, fleshy one... Friends. Oh, yes. Friends.
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Strachey and CPL (Score:3, Interesting)
Strachey was also the lead programmer behind the programming language CPL, the great-grandfather of C (via BCPL and B). CPL was too ambitious and was never completely implemented - it tried to do everything; a bit like Perl 6 really.
The overview paper:http://comjnl.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/6/2/134 is quite interesting; sadly it is now behind a pay-wall. There are some features of the language, such as type inference, which have not become common until recently. It also has some obvious poor decisions with hindsight - the same character starts and ends blocks; all lower case letters are single-character variable names; multiple-character variable names must be capitalised (this is done to allow implicit multiplication, ie, xyz=x*y*z). I suspect it could be implemented without huge difficulty with modern tools. Unfortunately, the full definition was never published, and only exists in a few copies of 'The CPL Working papers' archived in university libraries. Perhaps one day google will scan it.
Re: (Score:2)
Building a syntax for CPL seems like it would be an interesting Parrot [parrot.org] project.
Baby? (Score:2, Informative)
First Computer? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The different honors include the combinations of these two lists:
Output List:
* First TC design (TC=Turing-Complete)
* First TC machine actually built
* First to machine to actually use TC [1]
Technology List[2]:
* First mechanical computer
* First electro-mechanical computer
* First electronic computer
* First transistor computer (in practice, there's probably been a gradual mix)
* First IC-based computer
Thus, there are at least 15 (3 x 5) mile-stones. The first TC design was Charles Babbage's mechanical machine ar
Blake's 7 "Sand" (Score:2)
Virn Base Computer: Jam. Jamble. Scramble. Uncode. Declassify. Jargon. Love is the only reality. Keller. Colour. Cooler. Killer. Calor. Choler. I love you. I know a land where love. Keller. Don. Don. Dun. Din. Dan. Den. Perhaps we will be lovers for a long while. Who knows? Who know --
Orac: Teleport? I am not programmed. Three squared to the principal. I love you. My emotions are deeper than the seas of space. One times one is only possible in the ultra-dimensional. I love you. We will be lovers for a littl
Gay Robot (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBUImjOCg5g [youtube.com]
Similar ressurection in 1998 for 50th anniversary (Score:4, Informative)
Lots of links about it here [google.com].
They even had a contest for the best modern program that could run on the "Baby" Mark 1. The computer had 32 words of 32 bits each and had only 6 instructions stored in 3 bits [mactech.com]: STOre, SUBtract, LoaDNegative, JuMP, Jump Relative/JRP, CoMPare/conditional branch, and SToP.
The contest winner [computer50.org] was nothing more than a countdown timer. I'd guess that it won for out-of-the-box thinking in the presentation: The instructions were: Load program into memory. Pour hot water into pot noodles. Press start button. Wait for end-of-program light to light up. Enjoy noodles. Ignore output.
I hope it doesn't get infected... (Score:4, Funny)
...with the ILOVEYOU virus.
see a RAND home computer (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:see a RAND home computer (Score:4, Informative)
Scientists from the RAND Corporation have created this model to illustrate how a "home computer" could look like in the year 2004.
You are aware that this is a hoax, right? I understand it originated on 4chan.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Photoshop this mock-up of a submarine's maneuvering Room. [fark.com].
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these.
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power consumption of 25 kilowatts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Mark_1 [wikipedia.org]
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Re:FIRST electronic computer??? (Score:5, Informative)
The title is misleading. The Baby and MMk1 are the first all-electronic (no mechanical elements) fully stored-program (the program was entirely stored in internal RAM, there was no external component to the program) stored-data (there was no external data source either, data was entirely held in RAM) computer. Since this is how people perceive computers in the modern era, for the most part, this is usually shortened to "first modern computer".
Parent
Re:FIRST electronic computer??? (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, it really does matter. Early computers had to be hard-wired to match the logic of the program. The next generation could only retain one instruction at a time, which meant that loops required tape to feed back and forwards - and, tape being what it is, that's too fragile for any form of non-deterministic loop. Recursion is completely impossible because there is no meaningful program state as the only thing you can store is data. Dynamic code and dynamic linking have no meaning. Neither does self-modifying code, although that tends to be rather rare these days. As code and data are physically distinguished, you couldn't even pass a pointer to a function, so such a machine could never support languages as advanced as C, and certainly couldn't handle object-oriented notions.
The moment you get to true all-electronic stored-program stored-data machines, you enter a world in which procedural and functional logic is possible, where programming techniques we take for granted can actually exist. Sure, you couldn't run Linux on the MMk1, at least as it was left, but it was the first machine to have sufficient underlying hardware that it was intrinsically capable of every task an OS like Linux needs to perform.
If someone were to take the MMk1 design and add the necessary opcodes and memory, you COULD run Linux (with kernel module support) on it. You would not need to re-architecture the machine. No matter how you extended ABC or ENIAC, you could never run an OS like that, simply because the architecture is too primitive. It lacks key capabilities.
True, running Linux on the MMk1 would be horribly slow. I definitely advise against running X, especially on the limited display available to it (8x32 pixels). However, like I said, the architecture would handle it. Turing and Kilburn were absolute geniuses in that they did not over-optimize their machine but built something totally generic and then only implemented as much as they needed.
Parent
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ENIAC was the first Turing-complete, general-purpose electronic computer, completed in 1946
The ENIAC was not a stored-program computer, however. ENIAC was programmed by connecting its computing units together with patch cables, just like its predecessor, Colossus.
Its predecessors were either not Turing-complete, not programmable, or not fully electronic (i.e., electro-mechanical).
I'm not sure of the relevance of this, as this article is about a successor, not a predecessor.
The judge in the 1973 patent dec