What does this mean about the computer?

Question

high-capacity memory and modules or relays operating on the yes/no principle. What does that mean. It is about the Z1 computer back in 1936.

Answer 1

Means that before the transistor logic gates were created with vacuum tubes and relays, High Capacity memory in 1936 was a couple of kilobytes. the Z1 was the predicessor to the 8086

Answer 2

Yep, vacuum tube and relay technology of the past.

The yes/no principle is essentially the same as a switch or a transistor being "on or off", or the programming of "1's or 0's" to accomplish the same thing.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

This was the precurser to our modern day computers. Before we had digitial computers (think 0's and 1's), we had mechanical computers. They were used mostly for the war effort to calculate the trajectory of missiles. Our weapons had become so efficient that we did not have to be really close to a targe to fire it; however, that meant we could not see it to aim them. Because of the many variables involved it would take the original "computers" (mathematicians, mostly women, who "computed" the problems) at least a month to calculate the different trajectories. This took too long, so the Bush Differential Calculator was built. This was a huge mechanical computer, powered by electricity. It could take all day to set up and if a gear was wearing out, somebody made a mistake, or a bolt slipped all the answers would be wrong. Maunchly & Eckert, two gentlemen of insatiable curiousity figured there had to be a better way. Using over 17,000 vacuum tubes, they built Eniac. If a tube had power in it, it was on or yes, if there was no power in it, it was off or no. They mistakenly set it up on a decimal system figuring it would be easier to run and humans to understand, it was understood later that binary would work even better. Basically Eniac was a huge calculator, it would solve the problems entered in and store them in accumulators, that stored them until it had to forward it to be calculated again. This was a huge change from the mechanical calculators that would calculate a problem and then stop.

For more information; please read the information below from a paper I wrote.

E.N.I.A.C
Computers run our lives. Even the most luddite of individuals have some interaction with computers in their daily lives; from the Walk/Don’t Walk sign on your journey to work, the ATM that gives you cash, the digital alarm clock on your bedside table or the e-mail program you sign on to, almost every moment of your day is influenced by a computer. Most of us could not survive without some kind of computer contact in our lives. None of this would be possible without the creation of E.N.I.A.C.
E.N.I.A.C. (See Appendix A for photo - ENIAC)– Electrical Numerical Integrator and Computer was officially turned on February 14, 1946. This behemoth weighed thirty tons and covered 1,800 square feet. It contained over 17,000 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resisters and 10,000 capacitors. It took over 200,000 man-hours to complete and came with the hefty price tag of $468,804.22…and it was finished too late to do what it was originally intended to do; calculate firing tables for the Allies during World War II.
The long and winding road that led to ENIAC and eventually to our modern day computers started out simply enough. In 1642 in France, Blaise Pascal built an adding machine, a mechanical calculator that could add, but that was all that it could do because the gears in the machine were moved by hanging weights, which could only move in one direction. The machine never really caught on because there was no glaring need for it.
Next in 1646, Gottfried Leibniz based his work on Pascal’s but was able to take it a step further, his machine could multiply, divide and subtract also. Leibniz discovered the same thing Pascal did, nobody wanted to buy his really cool machines! It was still a lot cheaper to have several clerks with pencil and paper ciphering frantically.
When the Industrial Revolution came along, there was finally a need for speed. Circa 1820 mechanical calculators usage finally became more commonplace. Part of that was due to the fact that mankind was building machines everywhere; there became a mania for things mechanized. The other factor in the equation was that the mechanical calculator had finally become quicker and more accurate than a clerk.
Into this era entered Charles Babbage; his original intent was to simplify the tables used in maritime navigation, industry, etc. He designed a massive machine called the “Difference Engine”. Charles’ theory was that most computations were just equations repeated over and over and that was where the errors would pop up. His machine was mathematically very simple but mechanically it was incredibly complex. The machine ended up not being built; it wasn’t actually possible to build it in the nineteenth century and Babbage was distracted by the endless possibilities of new inventions…he came up with a better design (the Analytical Engine) and abandoned his first creation. Unfortunately, Babbage’s design for the Analytical Engine was so far advanced that the general populace and the English government thought he was certifiably nuts. Sadly, the Analytical Engine was never built, there was no real need for it, but it laid the groundwork for things to come.
Fast forward to World War I. Wartime has brought the advent of bigger, better guns. It is now possible to shoot things one could not even see; unfortunately, not seeing them makes it almost impossible to hit the targets. In order to calculate the trajectories of the missiles used, firing tables came into being. These were tables designed to analyze all the variables, firing range, direction, atmospheric pressure, atmospheric temperature, propellant temperature, gun tube temperature, projectile weight and temperature, flight time, corriolis effect to name just a few (USS Francis M. Robinson (DE-220) Association). There were million of calculations involved. The Navy hired hundreds of women and set them at the task. They were referred to as computers because they computed the equations. It could take a hundred women forty hours to complete the calculations for one gun. Guns were constantly being improved on, which meant the tables had to be refigured, to make matters worse, tables developed for Europe, could not be used in Africa because of the differences in the soil composition. Even with the tables it took a lot of time to get the correct numbers for aiming the guns; since the enemy was not about to sit around while the gunners figured out where to point their guns, and was in all probability shooting back at them, speed of calculation was an issue. The Armed Forces needed something fast and accurate. The analog ballistic computer was born. It was a mechanical computer that required six operators to frenetically enter the variables. It worked; but there were issues with it too. It was driven by gears, which could become worn down or fall out of alignment and, of course, it was operated by humans, who were only as good as their training. The machine was large and unwieldy. Most large ships carried at least two. They were bulky and slow but they were a definite improvement over slide rules. See Appendix B for photo. Ford Range Finder Photo
Moving forward towards World War II, firing tables were still being calculated, mostly by the Navy Department’s female “computers”. The War Department desperately needed firing tables completed. The Allies were fighting a frenzied battle and they were not winning. In came the Bush Differential Analyzer. It filled an entire room. (See Appendix C - Bush Differential Analyzer) If you click on the following link you can actually see the Bush Differential Analyzer in action. http://www.science.uva.nl/faculteit/museum/flyingsaucers.mov This machine was blazingly fast compared to the human computers, but still could take thirty minutes to solve the problem and that was after the calculations had been set up. It had the same issues the analog ballistic computer did, it was only as accurate as the person setting it up, a gear could get out of alignment, etc. and it also had an issue with its torque amplifier. The torque amplifier had a tendency to fail, but usually not until the end of the trajectory run . This meant that the entire calculation would be lost and the machine had to be fixed too. These are rather large issues when the fate of the free world rests on your shoulders.
Enter Robert Mauchly and Pres Eckert; both of whom had been pondering an electronic calculator. Mauchly had originally intended a machine to be used to predict the weather. He reasoned that if he had enough data and a machine that could crunch numbers fast enough he would be able to identify the cycles in regard to rainfall, drought and blizzard. For that amount of data, he would need a truly fast machine. Not a mechanical calculator driven by electricity, but an actual digital machine. Eckert, a phenomenal mathematician and an electrical engineer with a passion for invention believed this could be done. Mauchly and Eckert thought that instead of using the gears and wheels that drove the ballistic computers and the differential analyzers they could use electron pulses. This would mean that instead of having a machine that moved with gears and pistons, the “calculator” would have no moving parts. It would move at the speed of light. This was groundbreaking! It had never been done successfully before, it really had not been considered before; and they would do this with…vacuum tubes. They just needed the money, but that was not coming any time soon.
All this changed when a graduate student mentioned Mauchly’s theory to a Lt. Goldstein. Stationed at the University of Pennsylvania; Lt. Goldstein was in charge of the firing table operation. He was ordered to get the tables completed immediately, no matter what. It was an impossible task. Even with the Bush Differential Analyzer, the tables could not be finished before the guns were shipped. When Goldstein heard about Mauchly it must have been an answer to a prayer. He approached Mauchly, who agreed that his machine could take care of Goldstein’s problems. It was just number crunching, after all. It wasn’t difficult for Mauchly and Eckert to change the machine’s intention. It had not, after all been built yet. On April 9, 1943 Mauchly and Eckert went before the upper echelon of the Army, Navy and the Ballistics Research Laboratory. They were given the go ahead (much to their surprise) and Project PX was off and running.
This was great! They could build their dream computer; except, of course, they did not actually know how to do it. It would take two more years and lots of cash before ENIAC became a reality. As stated by Scott McCartney “ENIAC, they had decided, would have three main parts. First, there would be self-contained machines to handle the math operations: units built for addition, a high speed multiplier and a box wired to handle division and square roots. Second, there would be memory units to store numbers and instructions. Most of these would be electronic, since numbers had to move quickly through the machine. But some would be big mechanical panels with switches that could be set to represent constants in a calculation. The numbers drawn from these would be electronic, but the values would be set with switches. Either way, there would be no paper tape, because anything on paper was too slow. Punch cards would be used only in the initial phase of inputting the original problem. Third, ENIAC had to have a master programmer to control the machine, not to actually crunch numbers but to bark orders to the rest of the machine and keep its electron pulses in order. (Terms like “memory” and “programmer” were already becoming standard computer terms.) In addition to the three main parts, ENIAC needed some peripheral controls, like a unit to initiate the computation and a cycling unit to keep all synchronized.” (McCartney – 62-63) The amazing thing is that the basic build these two wunderkind came up with is still used in our computers today (without the punch cards).
ENIAC had twenty accumulators. Numbers were sent to the accumulators and stored there or added together. The accumulators were nine feet high and just stuffed with vacuum tubes. They were also full of electricity. Eckert was so concerned that someone would get electrocuted when they opened the doors that he put a fail-safe switch on the door. It turned off all the voltage if it was opened to ensure that there would be no fatalities on the project.. The accumulators stored numbers up to 9,999,999,999 or down to -9,999,999,999. It worked with a ring counter. This was a set of ten vacuum tubes in a circle. If you inputted the number “3”, the third tube would light up, then if you added a “9” to the equation, the second tube in the first ring would light instead and the first tube on the second ring would also light (it represented the number “10” and you would have built a twelve! If an accumulator reached its limit, it would send the pulse to the next accumulator in line. (McCartney – 72-73)
Not to say that building ENIAC was not fraught with problems. The vacuum tubes of the day (and the most advanced technology that Mauchly and Eckert could work with) were quite fragile. To counter this, they purchased the best, most reliable tubes they could find; which in itself was difficult because the factory were so short-handed due to the war. After getting the tubes, they ran tests and figured that if they used them at only ten percent of their rated settings, the tubes would last.
Eckert worried about rodents too. Mice and rats like to chew on wires. One wrong nip and ENIAC would come to a screaming halt. Eckert let some mice go hungry, after a day or two they put wires into their cages. Whatever wire the mice didn’t eat was the wire chosen for ENIAC.
After they had created the accumulators, they built the master programmer. This was the part of the machine that allowed certain operations and loops, much like the computers of today. Essentially it allowed a variation of “if” and “or” statements which are used in programming today. This is the one thing that made ENIAC different from a big calculator. It could do something with a number once it had completed the calculations.
In June of 1944, two of the accumulators were completed. It was enough to test ENIAC. The tests were successful. The age of digital computers had arrived. The war ended before ENIAC could be used for building firing tables, but ENIAC’s use did not end there. ENIAC was used to do the computations to test the feasibility of building a hydrogen bomb. Nothing else is known about that test because it is still classified today.
ENIAC was outdated before it was finished, but it was a springboard for every computer that came after it. ENIAC ran programs for the United State Government (including weather programs, hydrogen testing and the probability of whether or not the Russians would invade the United States) until 1955 when it was retired, although it came out of retirement briefly in 2006 to celebrate its 60th anniversary.
Finally, a comparison between ENIAC and the computer we know and love today:

ENIACIntel Core Duo Chip
Debut19462006
Performance5,000 addition problems/sec21.6 billion ops/sec
Power use170,000 watts31 watts max
Weight28 tonsNegligible
Size80’w x 8’h90.3 sq. mm.
What’s inside17,840 vacuum tubes151.6 M transistors
Cost$487,999$637
(Kanellos, Michael - 2)

Appendix A
< http://dept.physics.upenn.edu/~pcn/Course/250/Week.of.04.04/eniac.jpg >


Appendix B


(USS Francis M. Robinson (DE-220) Association).

Appendix C

STS 3700B 6.0 HISTORY OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY