COMPUTER PIONEER'S WORK ADDS UP.Byline: Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. On the 50th anniversary of the first electronic computer, Richard Wesley Hamming remembered what life was like without computers to do calculations. There were no operational electronic computers at Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) (previously known at various times as Site Y, Los Alamos Laboratory, and Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National in New Mexico when Hamming was there in the 1940s, just mechanical relay calculators he described as "very primitive accounting equipment housed in wooden wartime buildings; it looked and sounded like a Hollywood mad scientist's museum." Those calculators performed "one operation per second," he said. The year Hamming left Los Alamos, the first electronic computer, ENIAC ENIAC in full Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer Early electronic digital computer built in the U.S. in 1945 by J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly. , or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator, a behemoth behemoth (bē`hĭmŏth, bĭhē`–) [Heb.,=plural of beast], large, fanciful primeval monster, like Leviathan, evoking the hippopotamus mentioned in the Book of Job. that filled an entire room with vacuum tubes and cables, was demonstrated at the University of Pennsylvania (body, education) University of Pennsylvania - The home of ENIAC and Machiavelli. http://upenn.edu/. Address: Philadelphia, PA, USA. . ENIAC seemed lightning-fast in those days, performing 14 mathematical functions per second, or a little more power than a $40 calculator today. ENIAC turned 50 Wednesday. "Now we can do a million per second," Hamming said. Hamming, 81, is the computer scientist and mathematician who developed the Hamming Codes, which allow computers to correct their own mistakes. For his efforts, he will be honored with Germany's Eduard Rheim Foundation, which will present him the Eduard Rheim Award for Achievement in Technology on Oct. 12 in Munich. The award includes a prize of $100,000. "This is proof that you should live for a long while," he said Wednesday. Hamming worked on the Manhattan Project, which developed the first nuclear bombs, in 1945 and 1946. From 1946 to 1976, he was with Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey, where he ran computers in the mathematics and computing research department. In 1950, he published his findings on error-correcting computer codes, whose principles have been applied to such technologies as phones, computers, computer disks, video equipment and digital imagery. The Richard W. Hamming Medal Richard W. Hamming Medal is an award given annually by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the international organization, for 'exceptional contributions to information sciences, systems and technology'. The medal is named after mathematician Richard W. , accompanied by a $10,000 prize, was created in his honor by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Not to be confused with the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE). The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers or IEEE (pronounced as eye-triple-e in 1986. Hamming joined the NPS NPS National Park Service NPS Naval Postgraduate School NPS Net Promoter Score (customer management) NPS Non-Point Source pollution NPS Native Plant Society NPS Norfolk Public Schools (Virginia) faculty in 1976 as adjunct professor of computer science and continues "to educate admirals" at the Navy school to this day. "I'm not quitting," he said. "I'm finishing my 20th year and as long as I can go to class excited, I'll keep going. But it's getting harder and harder as I get older and older." |
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