Down to the details, a giant in computing history
Seventy years ago, the first programmable computer in the United States began humming away in a basement lab where the Maxwell-Dworkin building stands today. The Harvard Mark I was of “light weight, trim appearance,” according to a brochure published a year later, in 1945. Designed by Harvard mathematician Howard Aiken (1900-1973) and built by IBM, it was 51 feet long, 8 feet high, and weighed 10,000 pounds. The machine contained thousands of gears, switches, and control circuits, and was driven by an electric motor that turned a 50-foot shaft. In May 1944, the Mark I was put to work with the Navy, performing basic mathematical functions to support the war effort. Among its tasks: calculating Bessel functions used in designing torpedo shapes, which led to the nickname “Bessie,” according to Juan Andres Leon, a former doctoral student in Harvard’s History of Science Department who conducted research on the machine. Leon’s work, together with...