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Herman Goldstine, ENIAC Developer, Dies at Age 90
CodeFixer writes "Herman Goldstine, who as a mathematician working at the Ballistic Research Lab convinced the US Army to fund the development of the ENIAC and EDVAC, has died at the age of 90. His obituary can be found at the New York Times and descriptions of his involvement in the development of the ENIAC can be found at the Army Research Laboratory."
We, the Slashdot community, salute you.
I'm trying to remember where I saw the article - maybe it was here, but the English had an electronic computer for breaking the Enigma codes in WWII before we Yanks had one.
I wonder if Goldstine heard about the British one and knew that we needed one too?
You still can. It is called basic research. Like the Eniac, many things being done right now will seem to have minor signifigance for a long time, then they become VERY important. The guys playing around with quantum mechanics in the 1920's changed the world, but not right away. Kary Mullis' work in the early 80's made all modern DNA tools possible and enabled something whose effect on society is still unknown.
It's not a coincidence, a majority of technology funding is precisely for weapons research. Big tech companies get major weapon systems contracts (like HP and Microsoft). And universities which do a lot of research in technology also have weapons research labs that are heavily funded by the military (MIT being the obvious example).
The entire tech industry was founded on the basis of military research.
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
At this point, you could say that about Linus Torvalds, too. After 8 years as a programmer, I'm more impressed by people who can manage programmers than by programmers.
His 90 years were spent in the final decades of the Industrial Revolution, started (depending on who you cite) some 200 years before he was born. He did help usher in the next Big Deal; information technology and globalization.
That one is still being worked out. I don't think we have fully entered into the Golden Age of Global IT just yet; we're still hacking, the equivalent of James Watt tinkering with steam engine designs in 1769.
Once Watt figured out the optimal steam engine design, the next revolution was ready to roll. Including two global conflicts and sooty skys and everything else, but you take the bad with the good. And it's been mostly good.
So what will be the equivalent of the steam engine for IT? The personal computer? The web server and HTTP protocol? Or F/OSS and Linux? Has the revolutiion begun on the basis of what we have, or are we just setting the groundwork for the real innovations yet to come?
I suspect the latter, but even with the delay I fully expect to see this revolution work itself out in rather less than 90 years. I am 45, I nevertheless expect to personally see the fruit of this labor born out; everything happens faster on the 'net.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
Atanassoff's machine was not programable, could only solve one function at a time, had to have the results of the first function fed back to the machine in order to solve a second function, and had no technologies in common with ENIAC.
Sudents from Iowa can only graduate in CS if they reject all truth in order to perpetuate a lie that the first computer was invented in thier home state.
Read, L