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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."
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.
I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Goodbye World
Hey - he was 90. We should all be so lucky. Life causes death.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
New York Times
Jun. 28, 2004 12:00 AM
BRYN MAWR, Pa. - Herman Heine Goldstine, a mathematician who worked on the earliest electronic computers and helped the military develop the famous ENIAC, died June 16 at his home in Bryn Mawr. He was 90.
His death was announced by the T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., which renamed a postdoctoral fellowship in the mathematical sciences in his honor. No cause of death was given.
Goldstine, a winner of the National Medal of Science, worked on the ENIAC, as the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer was code named, when he was in the Army during World War II. He then became one of the chief scientists of the International Business Machine Corp. for 26 years.
In retirement, he followed his interest in putting science into the larger human context as executive officer of the American Philosophical Society from 1984 to 1997.
During World War II, Goldstine was an ordnance mathematician calculating artillery firing tables. When the War Department embarked on a top-secret program to develop ENIAC, the Army put him in charge of its part of the project.
The result had 18,000 vacuum tubes arrayed as number-crunching machinery, measuring 30 feet by 60 feet and weighing 30 tons. It took 30 months and 200,000 hours of work to contrive; the results were kept under wraps until after the war.
After that, Goldstine pursued the new computer science in academia and private industry. Born in Chicago, the lawyer's son studied mathematics at the University of Chicago, receiving a bachelor's degree (and was named to Phi Beta Kappa) in 1933, a master's degree in 1934 and a doctorate in 1936.
He taught at the University of Michigan but left when war broke out to become a ballistics officer in the Army. He advanced to lieutenant colonel and was awarded several medals, eventually being named to the Hall of Fame of the Army Ordnance Department in 1997.
In 1946, Goldstine joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton as a permanent member and assistant project director of its electronic computer project. His work contributed to the second-generation calculator built at the institute by John von Neumann. Von Neumann introduced it in 1952 as EDVAC, for Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer.
Goldstine joined IBM as manager, later director, of mathematical sciences for research in 1958. In 1965, he became director of scientific development for data processing. Part of his responsibilities was to act as liaison between the academic community and the company's research centers. After 1969, he was a scientific consultant to the research director and an IBM fellow.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
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.
we have to appreciate how different this guy's computing experience was
for example, he had software bugs just like we all do
except this guy's experience with bugs was literal:
when the eniac went bonkers, personnel had to run and check every single vaccum tube in the whole gigantic apparatus to find the "bug"...
moths would be attracted to the dull glow of the old vacuum tube transistors, and would inevitably fry themselves, and short the transistor, at some point in their dance around the bulbs
that is where the term "software bug" came from
and that is what herman goldstine's debugging experience was most probably like
bugs, and debuggers, have come a long way
but they show us how we owe a little appreciation to the pioneers like mr. goldstine
rip my man
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The Brainiac who made Eniac had a Cardiac.
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.
If you've got a NY Times link that requires registration, you can skip it by copying and pasting the original NY Times URL directly into regular Google Search.
If the article is relatively new, it will probably tell you "Sorry, no information is available for the URL" but will then offer you a link to the address you just typed in - just click on this link. The HTTP-Referer will then be google.com and you can read it without registration.
A few extra keystrokes, but gets around the registration process every time.
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.
How long will you have to live to see as much change as this guy saw?
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
EDVAC and ENIAC
ENIAC, short for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, was the first all-electronic computer designed to be Turing-complete, capable of being reprogrammed by rewiring to solve a full range of computing problems. It was preceded in 1941 by the fully tape-programmable but still mechanical Z3 designed by Konrad Zuse and by the all-electronic rewire to reprogram but not fully general purpose British Colossus computer. Both ENIAC and Colossus used thermionic valves, that is, vacuum tubes, while Z3 used mechanical relays. The requirement to rewire to reprogram ENIAC was removed in 1948.
EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) was one of the earliest electronic computers. Unlike the ENIAC, it was binary rather than decimal, and was the first stored program computer ever designed. This design became the standard architecture for most modern computers. The design for the EDVAC is therefore considered a major milestone in the history of computer evolution. While the EDVAC was the first stored program computer to be designed three other stored program computers were built before the EDVAC finally became operational. (the British Small-Scale Experimental Machine at Manchester University, the EDSAC at Cambridge University, and the Australian CSIR Mk I).
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Not to denegrate Goldstine's contributions, they were important but he was really more of a project manager and made sure the defense department kept the money flowing. Presper Eckert and Dr. John Mauchly were the principle designers of the machine.
The power of modern communication - /. hears about it 12 days after his death.. :S
Here's a better write-up..
----
Computer Developer Herman Goldstine Dies
By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 22, 2004; Page B07
Herman H. Goldstine, 90, a mathematician who played a key role in early development of the electronic digital computer during World War II, died June 16 at a retirement community in Bryn Mawr, Pa. He had Parkinson's disease.
Dr. Goldstine, who later worked at IBM, wrote "The Computer From Pascal to von Neumann" (1972), a highly readable account of the history of mathematics and the way it influenced the development of computer science.
During World War II, Dr. Goldstine worked for the Army's Ordnance Department, which had an interest in developing faster and more accurate artillery and bombing tables.
Assigned to the Army's Ballistics Research Laboratory in Aberdeen, Md., he began persuading Army officials to invest money in a computer project underway at the University of Pennsylvania engineering school. Dr. Goldstine became the Army's liaison to the project, which was being led by John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert.
The result, presented Valentine's Day 1946, was ENIAC, short for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer.
It was the first electronic digital computer and an unwieldy device -- 18,000 vacuum tubes, filling a room 30 feet by 50 feet and using 150 kilowatts of power. "It was like fighting the Battle of the Bulge to keep it running daily," Dr. Goldstine later said.
The ENIAC could store 20 numbers of 10 digits each in its electronic memory and was a milestone in general-purpose computing. It impressed many at the time by performing rapid digital processing.
Besides his supervisory role, Dr. Goldstine was credited with some of the mathematical underpinnings of the ENIAC. He also said he had a major role in bringing Johnny von Neumann to the ENIAC project after seeing him one day in 1944 at the Aberdeen train station and persuading the math giant to visit Penn.
At the time, von Neumann was attending a scientific advisory committee meeting at the Army's Ballistics Research Laboratory. He was intrigued by high-speed devices that would help with his work on the atom bomb at Los Alamos, N.M. Many of the difficult calculations for the first atom bomb were made with electronic calculators that were essentially office machines.
"Fortunately for me, von Neumann was a warm, friendly person who did his best to make people feel relaxed in his presence," Mr. Goldstine wrote in his 1972 book.
"The conversation soon turned to my work," he wrote. "When it became clear to von Neumann that I was concerned with the development of an electronic computer capable of 333 multiplications per second, the whole atmosphere of our conversation changed from one of relaxed good humor to one more like the oral examination of the doctor's degree in mathematics."
Herman Heine Goldstine was a Chicago native and received bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees in mathematics from the University of Chicago.
Early in his career, he taught mathematics at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan.
In 1941, he married Adele Katz, who helped program the ENIAC and wrote an operating manual for it. She died in 1964.
Survivors include his wife, Ellen Watson Goldstine, whom he married in 1966, of Bryn Mawr; two children from his first marriage; and four grandchildren.
After his Army work, Dr. Goldstine worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., helping create a stored-program machine that became the model for the early IBM computers.
He worked at IBM from 1958 to 1984, serving as director of mathematical sciences in research, director of scientific development for the data processing division and consultant to the research director.
In retirement, he spent 13 years as execut
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.
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.
Including the legendary Nazi concentration camp punchcard systems
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3832141.stm
Brocklesby Park Cricket Club
The NY Times story doesn't mention Macauly and Eckert at all. If you read the book "Eniac", they developed the ideas to make the first computer and Goldstein was a facilitator for funding, helping out with some of the theoretical background. It's strange they weren't mentioned in the article.
What happens when Army computers get slashdotted? *hides in his nuclear bunker...for a week...* I'm betting most of the military computers are Win-based... And yeah, do imagine all the change this guy was so lucky to see! Forever will he remain, in the archives of Slashdot.
Awww, man - can't someone host a mirror on a thin pipe, so I can make the obligitory
"looks like the site is hosted on an ENIAC"
joke?
No?
*sulks*
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.
My dad worked with the ENIAC, and from his recollections to me, I can tell you that the people involved with that machine created nearly everything we now take for granted in software development (or wish we had, for those of us at shoddy development houses). We owe our lives to these guys. As the inventors of computers and computer science pass, let's not forget the ways they did it (i.e. check the code BEFORE it goes in the computer), and let's not doom ourselves to repeat the mistakes they tried so hard to help us avoid.
stuff |
I just read some sad news on slashdot - Troll Orthogonal was found dead at his computer this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to troll culture. Truly a slashdot icon.
;-)
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
He wrote The Computer from Pascal to Von Neuman besides working on the ENIAC. An excellent read.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Not "Hooper". Though apparently, many web pages seem to make the same mistake.
Goldstine was also related in some way to the German 19th century poet Heinrich Heine, FWIW.
The phrase "as such little faults and difficulties are called" implies that the term already existed prior to Edison's writing.
The quote you provided was written by the computer operators, not Hopper herself, and it corroborates that the term was in use prior to their finding of the bug: "First actual case of bug being found" implies that "un-actual" (fictional) bugs had been describe prior to the log entry.
He also created the first random-number generator - The ENI-Meeny-Miney-Moe-iAC.
make world, not war
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
Open filament? Excessive gas? Cathode interface? Low Emission? Loss of vacuum?
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