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Herman Goldstine, ENIAC Developer, Dies at Age 90

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the on-to-greener-pastures dept.

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."

13 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Ironic - He died just like his machine by CompWerks · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Quotes about the ENIAC:

    "Thus ended the life of the once glorious pioneer in the field of digital computation"

    "It's death was a natural one--it had served its purpose."

    As quoted from: The ENIAC Story

    --
    If you can read this sig - the bitch fell off.
  2. A sad day by Gorffy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A great man who paved the way for many other great men and women. as a side note, It's interesting how so much technology, such as ENIAC, get started as tools of war.

  3. Re:Visionary guy by Gorffy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    IBM also supplied many armies with the punch-card machines/readers used to keep track of war records. the armies included the US army and the German army.

  4. How long? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How long will you have to live to see as much change as this guy saw?

  5. ENIAC on a chip and a java applet - enjoy! by mrmeval · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The ENIAC Java Applet and the ENIAC on a chip project

    --
    I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
  6. One of the first great underclockers by Benanov · · Score: 2, Interesting
    To ensure reliable operation, circuits were constructed of rigidly tested standard components, which were operated at current, voltage, and power levels below their normal ratings.
    (And apparently the thing still ran hot.) Hats off to a pioneer. --Benanov
  7. Re:Goldstine was project manager not designer by tetranz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Not to denegrate Goldstine's contributions, they were important but he was really more of a project manager .....

    Yes, that's true. I enjoyed listening to an audio version of ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer Fasinating stuff. I seem to remember that there were a lot of personality clashes.

  8. ENIAC instruction set and architecture by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Could someone "in the know" describe the instruction set and architecture of the ENIAC. Could it be modeled in TTL or discrete transistors? I assume that no one has done a simulator in software.

  9. The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann by phr2 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    (written by Dr. Goldstine) is an excellent book about the history of early computers. It's an academic history book, not a mass market popularization, but it's readable. ISTR that about half of it is about the pre-electronic era and the other half is about ENIAC, EDVAC, and so forth. Goldstine became pretty good buddies with von Neumann and a lot of the familiar stories about von Neumann come from this book.

    Goldstine was also related in some way to the German 19th century poet Heinrich Heine, FWIW.

  10. Re:How many times do I need to ask? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Both. They resent the freedom that they don't have and so they want to stamp it out. Not to mention, they become brainwashed by some charismatic death cult leader. Since they are uneducated to begin with, it is easy for them to believe whatever the leader tells them.

  11. MathSciNet by Phragmen-Lindelof · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you look at Goldstine's publication list on MathSciNet (usually only available on University netwoks which subscribe), you find a strong collaboration with von Neumann and early uses of computers to solve scientific problems. For example:

    "Preliminary Discussion of the Logical Design of an Electronic Computing Instrument" by Arthur W. Burks, Herman H. Goldstine, and John von Neumann, 2d ed. Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N. J., 1947.

    "Planning and Coding of Problems for an Electronic Computing Instrument" by Herman H. Goldstine and John von Neumann, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N. J., 1947.

    "Numerical inverting of matrices of high order" by Herman H. Goldstine and John von Neumann, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 53, (1947). 1021--1099.

    "Calculation of plane cavity flows past curved obstacles" by G. Birkhoff, H. H. Goldstine and E. H. Zarantonello, Univ. e Politec. Torino. Rend. Sem. Mat. 13 (1954), 205--224 (with a review by David Gilbarg).

    "Blast wave calculation" by Herman H. Goldstine and John von Neumann, Comm. Pure Appl. Math. 8 (1955), 327--353.

    (I mention Gilbarg's review in part because I had an office (approximately) across from his at Stanford for a semester in 1991.) Gilbarg's review begins
    "This paper describes the first systematic calculations ever carried out on cavity and jet flows past curved obstacles, comprising altogether fifty symmetric plane flows past convex and concave bodies, under several different conditions of streamline detachment. The computations were performed on a high speed digital computer, using an improved version of a scheme previously described by Birkhoff, Young, and Zarantonello ... "

  12. not to be mean, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Sorry to rain on everyone's parade in saluting what a wonderful person he was, but as a eniac programmer told me, Goldstine was a 'mean old son of a gun'. One major jerky thing he did was credit him and his wife for training the programmers and writing the manual, when in actuality the programmers were pretty much left to their own devices with a pile of schematics of the massive machine. Also the only reason Von Neumann and him got credited with a lot of the work was because as soon as Eckert and Mauchly wrote anything, it was immediately above their security clearance level. A lot of people credit Von Neumann with having the vision to use the computer that Mauchly and Eckert built, portraying them as just like people who put it together for no reason, but Eckert visualizing some really great things. For instance, small punchcards, that you could carry around, that could keep track of your debt instead of more traditional lines of credit at the local pharmacy...

  13. Re:Slashdotted by timecop · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I wonder, does anything from gnaa.us get long links?
    what is this?