Word: eniac
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...After the Soviet atomic explosion and the subsequent Washington decision to press for an H-bomb, calculations based on the theories of Teller and others were set up on a machine called ENIAC. But there was fear that this electric brain would be too slow. Stan Ulam, a mathematician, with one helper, "undertook to execute the same job by straightforward hand computation. The next few months saw an amazing competition between the tortoise and the (electronic) hare." Ulam's "results were available even before the lengthy instructions to the machines had been completed . . . In a real emergency the mathematician...
...Ulam's results contradicted the theories of the physicists. They had taken hope when the machines' early returns seemed to confirm the physicists. But when ENIAC's answers were complete, Ulam was vindicated, and the physicists had to start theorizing all over again...
...Neumann is one of the masterminds behind many electronic brains that extrapolate election figures, coordinate weather data, and work out staggering mathematical problems far beyond the scope of human brain power (Univac, Eniac, etc.). In 1951 he designed an electronic calculator, Maniac (mathematical analyzer, numerical integrator and computer), that in six months (instead of several lifetimes) made the H-bomb calculations derived from the equations of his fellow Hungarian, Dr. Edward Teller...