About this Item
First edition; 4to; 9 plates from photographs of which 8 are double-sided, pencilled editorial notes to chapter 1, light tanning from a loose partial sheet of equations inserted between pages 292 and 293, contents faintly toned; original blue cloth, title to spine gilt, cloth rubbed and marked with scattered loss of size, particularly along the spine, faint ring mark to the upper board, small worn areas at the extremities, very good condition; 561pp. First edition of the first computer manual, written for the Harvard Mark I. One of the earliest general-purpose electromechanical computers, the Mark I 'brought Babbage's principles of the analytical engine almost to full realization, while adding important new features' (IBM's ASCC Introduction 2, IBM website via the Wayback Machine). Significant portions of this manual were composed by computer science pioneer Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992), who was 'the chief author of chapters 1-3 and the eight appendices following chapter 6. Chapters 4 and 5 were written by Aiken and Robert Campbell, and chapter 6, containing directions for solving sample problems on the machine, was primarily the work of Brooks J. Lockhart' (Hook & Norman, History of Information website). Interestingly, the present copy contains pencilled editorial notes in chapter 1, typically shortening and simplifying sentences as if for a new edition or perhaps a separate publication or talk. Though at first glance the hand looks similar to Hopper's, careful comparison with a technical manuscript produced during the same period does not seem to indicate a match ('Formulas and coding for problem G on the Mark I', Grace Murray Hopper Collection, Smithsonian National Museum of American History). The corrections also do not match the final text of Aiken and Hopper's article on the Mark I in Electrical Engineering 65, also published in 1946. Additionally, there are calculations on a scrap of lined paper loosely inserted between pages 292 and 293, but these not not match her hand, either. We have been unable to locate sufficient examples of Aiken's handwriting to determine whether he was the editor. The Mark I was first proposed in 1937 by Harvard professor of applied mathematics Howard Aiken (1900-1973), whose background was in both electrical engineering and physics, and who hoped to use electronic calculating machines to solve complex scientific problems. Initially designated the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, it was funded by the U.S. Navy and IBM, built by IBM at Endicott, New York, and delivered to Harvard in early 1944. The Mark I was used immediately by the Manhattan Project's John von Neumann to make calculations related to the implosion of the first atomic bomb. Grace Murray Hopper came to the project as a naval reservist after earning her PhD in mathematics at Yale and teaching at Vassar for thirteen years. She was one of the first three programmers of the Mark I and made enormous contributions to the project, for which she received the Naval Ordnance Development Award (Mitchell, The Contributions of Grace Murray Hopper, University of North Texas PhD Dissertation, 1994). 'In 1946 Aiken and Grace Hopper published A Manual of Operation for the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator. The instruction sequences scattered throughout this volume on the Harvard Mark I were among the earliest published examples of digital computer programs. Aiken saw himself as Babbage's intellectual successor, and in an excellent historical introduction to this technical manual he and Hopper placed the Harvard Mark I in its historical context' (Hook & Norman). '[The Harvard Mark I] manual was a milepost that marked the state of the art of machine computation at one of its critical places: where, for the first time, machines could automatically evaluate arbitrary sequences of arithmetic operations. Most of this volume (pp. 98-337, 406-557) consists of descriptions of the Mark I's components, its architecture, and operational co.
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