7/29/2023 0 Comments Ibm hal 9000![]() ![]() The computers weighed in between 3,000 and 5,000 pounds and used hexadecimal. This made it one of the first, if not the first, computer to be operated remotely. In addition, ORDVAC could be used by telephone from the University at night when the Army wasn’t using it. Even though many computers of this era used the same basic design, none had compatible instruction sets except for ILLIAC and ORDVAC. That seems like no big deal today, but in 1952 these machines were so large and expensive that only one of each was built. Programs written on one could be run on the other. At that point, ILLIAC and ORDVAC were quite possibly the only two identical computers in existence. Twins, Compute-by-Phone, and other Oddities That machine was the ILLIAC - later known as ILLIAC I. As part of the contract, the Army agreed to fund the construction of an identical machine for the University to keep. It used over 2,000 vacuum tubes (mostly 6J6s and 5687s) and had 1K of 40-bit words using Williams tubes. The Army took delivery of the new machine in 1952. With this wave of computer research, the Army wanted to have a stored program machine and turned to the University of Illinois to build ORDVAC. These machines are often known as “IAS machines” after the Princeton lab that published the EDVAC report. The exact number is hard to pin down since many machines reused older machines, but however you count, there were at least a dozen. In all, there were probably at least 18 machines based on this paper’s architecture including MANIAC, Johnniac, and SILLIAC. Maurice Wilke’s EDSAC and the Manchester Baby were the first to build a computer based on Von Neumann’s new design, but they wouldn’t be the last. In it, Von Neumann proposed changes to EDVAC that would make it a stored program computer - that is, a computer that treats data and instructions the same. This book outlined the design and construction of the Army computer that succeeded ENIAC. This was a time when the 1945 book “ First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC” was sweeping through the country from its Princeton origins. The Urbana story starts in the early 1950s. Sometimes you learn more from failure than you do successes and at least one of the ILLIAC series is the poster child for that. In particular, the ILLIAC IV was a dream of a supercomputer that - while not entirely successful - pointed the way for later supercomputers. ![]() As the home of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Urbana was known for producing a line of computers known as ILLIAC, several of which had historical significance. But Urbana has a place in real-life computer history. Why pick such an odd location? Urbana is hardly a household name unless you know the Chicago area well. If you are a fan of the novel and movie 2001: A Space Oddessy, you may recall that the HAL 9000 computer was “born” in Urbana, Illinois. You might be surprised to find that you can trace HAL’s origins to a computer built for the US Army in 1952. Science fiction is usually couched in fact, and it’s fun to look at an iconic computer like HAL 9000 and trace the origins of this artificial intelligence gone wrong.
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