Researcher Resurrects the First Computer 149
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.
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.
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
If you newed all the variables of a coin toss, you'd get the same result every time.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If one knows enough of what is going on in the computers, one can know what new Random(); will return.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The point still stands; 10^26 unknown variables are really not to be argued with, and as a century of physics has shown us, are nothing to be afraid of~.
Your premise -- the one about about enough knowledge leading to a deterministic outcome of any system -- is inherently so impractical that it is unworkable: there is no system we know of that is so completely cut off from the rest of the universe that we know it to be isolated and describable completely without influence of the outside world's microstate -
Re: (Score:2)
I was discussing the macro universe, not the quantum universe. There is a whole different set of rules.
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:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Meh! Check *this* out:
cd /usr/ports/games/sex ; make install clean ; sex
"Land o' Goshen!" stammered the bull-dyke prostitute as the bung-hole stuffing drug sucker diddled her muscular buds and hammered his spouting earthmover into her hungry paradise valley.
Same effect without all the poetic subtlety of a more prudish era! Everything old is new again. The creators of both programs obviously had too much time on their hands.
Re: (Score:1)
Gentoo, muthafucka:
$sudo emerge sex
$ sex
"No, no, do the goldfish!" yelled the wanton DARPA contract monitor as the sphincter licking midget lashed her dribbling knees and reamed his swinish plunger into her porous swamp.
Beat that!
Re: (Score:2)
"Gentoo, muthafucka"
Here's a quarter, kid. *ting!* Go get yourself a real OS. ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
You mean "go dumb down and stop having freedoms"? Because that is the reason I'm preferring Gentoo. Got any problem with that?
Just curious. What do you call a real OS? Something more primitive, like an old UNIX? Or something more dumbed down, like Ubuntu, Mac or even Windows?
Now get off my lawn!
Re: (Score:2)
The command sequence I listed earlier was meant for FreeBSD, which is what I use. So far as I know, the only UNIX variants to have a /usr/ports tree are FreeBSD and OpenBSD.
Calm down -- I was just ribbing. Nobody's suggesting you use Windows.
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)
Re: (Score:2)
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
EPICAC by Kurt Vonnegut (Score:1)
in Welcome to the Monkey House.
The deathless verse, of this cybernetic Cyrano?
"Love is a hawk with velvet claws / Love is a rock with heart and veins / Love is a lion with satin jaws / Love is a storm with silken reins"
The unnamed first-person narrator begins by discussing EPICAC's origins and why he wants to tell EPICAC's story. The narrator says that EPICAC is his best friend, even though it is a machine. As far as the narrator is concerned, the reason EPICAC no longer exists is because it became more human than its designers originally intended. The narrator works on EPICAC during the night shift with fellow mathematician Pat Kilgallen, with whom the narrator falls in love. He decides to ask Pat to marry him, but because he is so stoic during the proposal, Pat declines. In order to show that he can in fact be "sweet" and "poetic" as Pat has requested, the narrator tries and fails at poetry writing.
The narrator asks EPICAC's opinion on how he should proceed with Pat. EPICAC initially does not understand the terms the narrator uses, such as "girl" and "love" and "poetry." Once the narrator provides EPICAC with proper dictionary definitions, EPICAC generates a poem for Pat. The narrator takes this poem and passes it off as his own. Pat is so delighted that she and the narrator kiss for the first time. The next night, the narrator asks EPICAC to write a poem about their kiss, and EPICAC delivers another poem for the narrator to claim as his own. When Pat reads this poem she is so overwhelmed that she can do little else but cry. The following night the narrator asks EPICAC to devise a marriage proposal poem for Pat. However, instead of simply creating poetry as with previous requests, EPICAC surprises the narrator by saying that it would like to marry Pat.
The narrator realizes that EPICAC has fallen in love with Pat and tries to explain to EPICAC that Pat cannot love a computer. EPICAC resigns itself to the fact that it cannot be with Pat, and the narrator realizes now that he cannot ask EPICAC for any more poems. He finds Pat and asks her to marry him again, citing his previous poems as expressions of his feelings. Pat accepts his marriage proposal, but adds the stipulation that for every anniversary, the narrator must write her another poem. The narrator agrees because he will have a full year to devise another way to create poetry.
The next day the narrator receives an urgent call from his supervisor. He rushes to the room where EPICAC is housed to discover Dr. Von Kleigstadt and a huge group of military men crowded around the remains of EPICAC. During the night, EPICAC destroyed itself, effectively committing suicide because it could not be with the woman it loved. It did, however, leave the narrator and Pat a marriage present -- five hundred original love poems. The narrator now has enough anniversary poems to keep his vow to Pat for centuries to come, and is relieved by this gesture from his friend.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPICAC_(short_story) [wikipedia.org]
The whole story is here: http://astro.ocis.temple.edu/~tarantul/epicac.html [temple.edu]
It seems that every man's thought, when first contemplating the vast possibilities of electronic calculation, turn to the notion: "How can I use this thing to get laid
Electric Dreams (Score:2)
Miles: "You played it for her, you can play it for me."
Computer: What?
Miles: Play it, Sam.
Computer: What key?
Miles: Your favorite.
Computer: Do you want verses first, or the choruses?
Miles: Any way you like.
Computer: Yeah!
[instrumental bridge of Jeff Lynne's song "Video" plays]
Computer: [singing] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 / Baby, I love you to bits / And I want to see your tits.
Miles: No. Stop! It's all wrong.
Computer: Wrong?
Miles: It sounds like soda pop.
Computer: It is!
Miles: [reading the hard copy] And those w
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: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
You mean GoodPoetryGuy, I'm sure.
Re: (Score:1)
Um, no.
Re:A poem, for vous (Score:5, Funny)
Roses are red,
Violates are Orange,
Some poems rhyme,
Not this one.
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!
Re: (Score:1)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
The fist computer to be crucified will be in 2012.
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
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.)
functional replica != resurrect (Score:3, Funny)
Great, now I've got a Computer version of Jursassic Park running around in my head.
Re: (Score:2)
You're right, and it's not even the first. The Manchester team rebuilt the Manchester Mk. 1 for the 50th anniversary.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Darling Duck? (Score:1)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Twilight Zone brought up that issue already link [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
... Despite your violent behaviour, all you've managed to break is my heart.
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)
Re: (Score:2)
Links that are of interest to fans of the Manchester Mk. 1 and the Manchester Baby:
Aww ! (Score:1)
Zombie Computers? (Score:1)
Will It Run Duke Nukem 3D??? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course it will, it's a general purpose computer. Of course the port may take quite a while to turn out in punch cards... And you might need to worry more about "Pixels per Minute" than "Frames per Second"
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
Re: (Score:2)
So those would have put out something to the effect of, "Bow-chicka-whirr-whirr-buzz-buzz-click-click-wow-wow."
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.
Re: (Score:2)
YOU try doing hard real-time coding with no timestamp counter or system clock! :) Seriously, the banner program was more impressive, IMHO. I've provided links in another post to video footage from the 50th anniversary CD.
I hope it doesn't get infected... (Score:4, Funny)
...with the ILOVEYOU virus.
Re: (Score:2)
Or maybe the original program BECAME the ILOVEYOU virus. Evolution takes along time, but there have been many clock cycles since the poetry code was first written.... Be afraid. Be very afraid.
ENIAC (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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
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.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
As another user pointed out, that is a hoax.
But don't be alarmed - I suggest a trip to one of my favourite blogs, Paleo-Future [paleofuture.com], where they've catalogued several genuine funky visions of these futuristic computer things. Just search for "computer" in the blog archive, click away, and be amazed. =)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Photoshop this mock-up of a submarine's maneuvering Room. [fark.com].
first stored-program computer .. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
According to this it was Konrad Zuse and the Z3, in 1941
The Z3 wasn't stored-program in the modern sense, as it responded to instructions as they were read at input via a punched tape. Looping was obtained by gluing the two ends of a tape together. The Manchester machines stored their programs in random access memory, thus could have jump and branch instructions, which the Z3 lacked.
Correction..... (Score:2)
"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." .....You mean, one of the first examples of a spam-generating program. I see spammers have been doing their History homework.....
555 Hertz and 16384 bytes (Score:2)
Thats a doubling speed of 18 month (41 doublings) or order of magnitude per 5 years (12 magnitudes).
Exactly Moore's Law!
Konrad Zuse and his Z series? (Score:2)
The wiki should give some overview of his ideas and work in the 1940's.
I guess he was 'almost' at "the first fully electronic general-purpose stored-program computer" stage.
I've been always been told... (Score:2)
I've been always been told that my modern day calculator got more horsepower than that first computer back in the day!!
Electronic Brain (Score:2)
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.
Interestingly, this is still the standard term to refer to computers in Chinese. Unfortunately, I can't write it here due to Slashdot's Unicode inadequacies.
Won't Be Long Now (Score:2)
It's just a matter of time. The computer now, and before long, the dead.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
power consumption of 25 kilowatts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Mark_1 [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:1)
Sure, if you want to wait a month to boot up, and another week for "ls" to return results.
Re: (Score:1)
They gave up on goatse back then when it took 3 weeks before even the first pimple appeared.
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".
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Dynamic code and dynamic linking have no meaning. Neither does self-modifying code, although that tends to be rather rare these days.
In important senses, self-modifying code is still in major use. Even with C and C++, it's important as it is the key to how modern debuggers work.
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.
Apart from needing a lot more memory, Linux (like all other modern OSes outside the embedded space) also needs virtual memory, which wasn't invented until a few generations of machine - i.e. about a decade - later.
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.
We also shouldn't forget Frederick Williams [wikipedia.org] (a professor of electronic engineering) who was important to its development. It was he who saw what was goi
Re: (Score:2)
So basically what you're saying is that the MMk1 is the first computer that could run:
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!!1"
20 GOTO 10
Re: (Score:2)
Not quite, as that could be achieved by looping an input tape on (e.g.) the Z3. It was the first that could achieve:
10 LET c=1
20 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!!1"
30 LET c=c+1
40 IF c20 THEN GOTO 20
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Quibbling, here, but MMk1 lacked certain features that are essential for practically all modern OSs, including processor interrupts, memory paging and memory protection. You couldn't put a multitasking system on it. You might be able to get something akin to CP/M or DOS working, though.
Re: (Score:2)
The effective equivalent of an industrial heater, at a significantly higher costs and with orders of magnitude greater power consumption?
Re: (Score:2)
AFAIK the first ones were the Z1 -> Z3 a couple of years earlier than the Mark I
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_(computer) [wikipedia.org]
These computers weren't stored-program computers; they read instructions from punched tape and executed them immediately.