Moore School Lectures

Theory and Techniques for Design of Electronic Digital Computers (popularly called the "Moore School Lectures") was a course in the construction of electronic digital computers held at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering between July 8, 1946, and August 30, 1946, and was the first time any computer topics had ever been taught to an assemblage of people. The course disseminated the ideas developed for the EDVAC (then being built at the Moore School as the successor computer to the ENIAC) and initiated an explosion of computer construction activity in the United States and internationally, especially in Great Britain.

Background

In 1946 the Moore School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was at the center of developments in high-speed electronic computing. On February 14 of that year it had publicly unveiled the ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, developed in secret beginning in 1943 for the Army's Ballistics Research Laboratory. Prior even to the ENIAC's completion, work had begun on a second-generation electronic digital computer, the EDVAC, which incorporated the stored program model. Work at the Moore School attracted such luminaries as John von Neumann, who served as a consultant to the EDVAC project, and Stan Frankel and Nicholas Metropolis of the Manhattan Project, who arrived to run one of the first major programs written for the ENIAC, a mathematical simulation for the hydrogen bomb project.

World War II had spawned major national efforts in many forms of scientific research—continued in peacetime—that required computationally intensive analysis; the thirst for information about the new Moore School computing machines had not been slaked, but instead intensified, by the distribution of von Neumann's notes on the EDVAC's logical design. Rather than allow themselves to be inundated with requests for demonstrations or slow progress in computer research by withholding the benefits of the Moore School's expertise until papers could be published formally, the administration, including Dean Harold Pender, Prof. Carl Chambers, and Director of Research Irven Travis, respectively proposed, organized, and secured funding for what they envisioned as a lecture series for between 30 to 40 participants enrolled by select invitation.

The 8-week course was conducted under the auspices of the U.S. Army's Ordnance Department and the U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research, who promised (by verbal authorizations) the $3,000 requested to cover lecturer salaries and fees and $4,000 for travel, printing, and overhead. ($1,569 over this figure was ultimately claimed.)

Even as the Moore School found itself in the computing spotlight, its computer design team was disintegrating into splinter groups who hoped to advance computing research commercially, or academically at more prestigious institutions. In the former group were ENIAC co-inventors J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, who the previous March had departed the Moore School amidst a patent rights dispute to found the first computer company, the Electronic Control Company (later renamed to Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation), and took many on the Moore School staff with them; in the latter group were Herman Goldstine (the Army's liaison to the Moore School who served as administrative overseer of the ENIAC's construction) and Arthur Burks (a Moore School professor on the ENIAC design team), lured to the Institute for Advanced Study by von Neumann. Despite the somewhat acrimonious fracturing of the ENIAC/EDVAC group, these figures gave the majority of the Moore School Lectures, with Eckert and Mauchly receiving the highest salaries ($1,200 each), while Goldstine and the others received only travel expenses and an honorarium ($50 per lecture).

Lecturers and lectures

Lectures were given 5 days a week on weekdays and were up to 3 hours long; the afternoons were typically reserved for informal seminars.

Many of the pioneers of computer development contributed to the Moore School Lectures, most prolifically Pres Eckert, followed by John Mauchly and Herman Goldstine. The topics covered virtually all facets of electronic computing relevant to the construction and operation of digital computers, and included, by popular demand, an unscheduled presentation of the ENIAC during the latter half of the sixth week and the first half of the seventh week, with lectures by Mauchly, Sharpless, and Chu. Discussions of the ENIAC were resisted since its logical design had been obsoleted even before its completion by ongoing work on the EDVAC with its stored-program concept; nevertheless, it was the only electronic digital computer then in operation and the students petitioned to see demonstrations and learn of its design.

From the Moore School team

From the University of Pennsylvania

From Harvard University

From the U.S. Navy Office of Research and Inventions

From the National Bureau of Standards

From the University of California, Berkeley

From the University of Manchester, England

From RCA

From the Naval Ordnance Laboratory

From the Institute for Advanced Study

Independent consultant

The initial plan for the lectures, outlined by Chambers in a June 28, 1946, memorandum, was for them to be grouped into four major headings, with the second and third being presented concurrently after the completion of the first: General Introduction to Computing, covering the history, types, and uses of computing devices; Machine Elements, focusing on hardware and, indeed, software, under the term "code and control"; Detailed Study of Mathematics of Problems, what today might constitute a course in programming, including the Goldstine/Burks lectures on numerical mathematical methods and Mauchly's lectures on sorting, decimal-binary conversion and error accumulation; and finally a series of lectures on overall machine design called Final Detailed Presentation of Three Machines, though it actually came to include six machines, including the ENIAC, which despite its fame had not been an intended focus of any of the lectures.

The actual record of the lectures is incomplete. While many of the lectures were recorded on a wire recorder by Herman Lukoff and Dick Merwin, the recorder frequently broke down mid-lecture, and the recordings took several months to be transcribed and proofed by the lecturers. It wasn't until two years after the lectures, in 1948, that all of the material was assembled and published in four volumes edited by the Moore School's George W. Patterson, who was on the EDVAC staff. Some of the gaps have since been filled in with the notes of student Frank M. Verzuh.[1]

Students

28 students were invited to attend the Moore School Lectures, each a veteran engineer or mathematician:

Uninvited attendees saw at least some of the lectures:

Additionally, many of the lecturers attended a number of the lectures by others.

The individuals and institutions represented at the Moore School Lectures went on to be involved with numerous successful computer construction projects in the late 1940s and early 1950s, including EDSAC, BINAC, UNIVAC, CALDIC, SEAC and SWAC, the IAS machine, and the Whirlwind.

The success of the Moore School Lectures prompted Harvard University to host the first computer conference in January, 1947; that same year the Association for Computing Machinery was founded as a professional society to organize future conferences.

References

  1. ↑ Frank M. Verzuh Personal Notes on Moore School Lectures (CBI 51), Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota
  2. ↑ Oral history interview with James T. Pendergrass, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota
  3. ↑ Oral history interview with Cuthbert Corwin Hurd Oral history interview by Robert W. Seidel, 18 November 1994. Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.

External links

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