The History of the ENIAC Computer
Updated December 16, 2014. "...With the advent of everyday use of elaborate calculations, speed has become paramount to such a high degree that there is no machine on the market today capable of satisfying the full demand of modern computational methods." - from the ENIAC patent (U.S.#3,120,606) filed on June 26, 1947. The ENIAC I In 1946, John Mauchly and John Presper Eckert developed the ENIAC I (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator). The Ballistics Research Laboratory, or BRL, the branch of the military responsible for calculating the tables, heard about John Mauchly's research at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering. continue reading below our video Loaded: 0% Progress: 0% John Mauchly had previously created several calculating machines, some with small electric motors inside. Partnership of John Mauchly & John Presper Eckert What Was Inside The ENIAC? Contributions of Doctor John Von Neumann Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation
Flare | Apps | Dependency Graph
This visualization shows the dependencies among classes within the Flare library. Classes are paced along a circle with the radius length signifying the depth of the class in the package structure. A link indicates that a class imports another. Links are routed along the package structure tree, forming “bundles” between packages. When the mouse hovers over a class, the incident links will highlight. Clicking on a class shows the chain of dependencies for that class. Clicking a second time similarly shows all classes that in some form depend on the selected class. As the labels can be small and hard to read in a constrained web page, take a look at the full size version for a more legible graph. Launch full size version. View the source code.
Jean Sammet | National Center for Women & Information Technology
Background Jean E. Sammet is a retired computer scientist and programmer who is best-known for her work on FORMAC, the first widely used general language and system for manipulating nonnumeric algebraic expressions. Sammet supervised the first scientific programming group for Sperry Gyroscope Co. (1955-1958). She joined IBM in 1961 to organize and manage the Boston Programming Center. During the 1970s and 1980s, she worked for IBM’s Federal Systems Division in various positions, emphasizing programming language issues including Ada. Sammet is the author of “PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES: History and Fundamentals,” which became a standard book on its topic, and was called an “instant computer classic” when published in 1969. She was very active in ACM and held many positions including President, Vice-President, Editor-in-Chief of Computing Reviews, General and/or Program Chair for the first two SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages Conferences (HOPL) in 1978 and 1993.
Fred Benenson's Blog | data, copyright, photography, not necessarily in that order
You could think of this post as telling the story of two Kickstarter projects. Since its a long post, here's a quick summary: I recently ran a Kickstarter project.I wanted to share all the financials and details of how I shipped my rewards.I discovered we could do a better job helping creators process their backer's addresses.We recently deployed a change to backer surveys that should do just that. So I hope this post will educate Kickstarter creators on how to smoothly fulfill their rewards, but also shed a little light on how we do product development at Kickstarter. The Kickstarter project was pretty simple -- I FOUGHT SOPA AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID T-SHIRT-- and the other project was actually a Kickstarter built by our product team, which we (and I use "we" loosely, Jed, Tieg, Daniella and Meaghan did all the work) shipped last week: The address confirmation tool helps backers validate their addresses when filling out reward surveys from creators.
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Chpt. 1)
Frederick Engels Socialism: Utopian and Scientific I [The Development of Utopian Socialism] Modern Socialism is, in its essence, the direct product of the recognition, on the one hand, of the class antagonisms existing in the society of today between proprietors and non-proprietors, between capitalists and wage-workers; on the other hand, of the anarchy existing in production. But, in its theoretical form, modern Socialism originally appears ostensibly as a more logical extension of the principles laid down by the great French philosophers of the 18th century. Like every new theory, modern Socialism had, at first, to connect itself with the intellectual stock-in-trade ready to its hand, however deeply its roots lay in material economic facts. The great men, who in France prepared men’s minds for the coming revolution, were themselves extreme revolutionists. One thing is common to all three. This historical situation also dominated the founders of Socialism. The answer was clear. Notes 1.
A Java library for the Twitter API
Rediscovering Utopia | Betterhumans > Column
"Without a vision the people perish."—Proverbs 29:18 The month in which Islamic terrorists inspired by a utopian vision of a pan-Islamic Sultanate blew up 50 Turks and Britons in Istanbul might seem a strange one in which to argue for the importance of the utopian dimension in politics. But decidedly pragmatic and nonutopian militants are also killing Iraqis and Americans in Baghdad as part of a well-financed resistance to American "liberation." More often, from medieval peasant revolts to Martin Luther King, utopian visions of a freer, more equal and more united future have helped people mobilize against the crushing pragmatic acceptance of day-to-day tyranny and exploitation. Nonetheless, modern conservatives argue that all utopianism leads inexorably to totalitarianism and death camps since utopianism equals Communism, and democratic capitalism was supposedly just the victory of common sense. But is utopianism really so bad? Transhumanist visions Similarly, eco activist J.P.
simplify
simplify A library by Ekene Ijeoma for the Processing programming environment. Last update, 10/01/2012. A java/processing port of simplify.js Feel free to replace this paragraph with a description of the library. Download Download simplify version 0.1.1 (1) in .zip format. Installation Unzip and put the extracted simplify folder into the libraries folder of your Processing sketches. Keywords. ? Reference. Source. Tested Platform osx,windows Processing 2.0b3 Dependencies ?
Renaissance Now? - Rushkoff
I first posted the embryo of this idea on a bbs called the Well back in 1991 or so. I was wondering, at the time, if recent advances in math, physics, technology and culture constituted a new renaissance. The conversation went on for over a year, and became the basis – or at least an the adjunct – for my book, Cyberia. I still find myself coming back to this notion of renaissance – whether I’m speaking about open source culture or religion. The birth of the Internet era was considered a revolution, by many. I prefer to think of the proliferation of interactive media as an opportunity for renaissance: a moment when we have the opportunity to step out of the story, altogether. Take a look back at what we think of as the original Renaissance – the one we were taught in school. Likewise, calculus – another key renaissance invention – is a mathematical system that allows us to derive one dimension from another. The great Renaissance was a simple leap in perspective.
