History
During World War II, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) funded the construction of an Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC) for Howard H. Aiken at Harvard University. The machine, formally dedicated in August 1944, was widely known as the Harvard Mark I. The President of IBM, Thomas J. Watson, Sr., did not like Aiken's press release that gave no credit to IBM for its funding and engineering effort. Watson and Aiken decided to go their separate ways, and IBM began work on a project to build their own larger and more visible machine. Astronomer Wallace John Eckert of Columbia University provided specifications for the new machine; the project budget of almost $1 million was a fortune for the time. Francis "Frank" E. Hamilton (1898–1972) supervised both construction of the ASCC as well as its successor. Robert R. "Rex" Seeber Jr. was also hired away from the Harvard group, and became known as the chief architect of the new machine. Modules were manufactured in IBM's facility at Endicott, New York under Director of Engineering John McPherson after the basic design was ready in December 1945.
Read more about this topic: IBM SSEC
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
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—Ben C. Bradlee (b. 1921)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)