
Early Supercomputers: A Visual Overview - ljf
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2015/04/early-supercomputers-visual-overview.html
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dalke
This is a poor quality discussion of the history. What little context it gives
also contains errors.

> After ENIAC came EDVAC, a change of much more than a few letters. Created by
> the brilliant John von Neumann, ...

No. EDVAC was designed by Mauchly and Eckert, not von Neumann. It was
definitely not _created_ by von Neumann.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDVAC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDVAC)

> On a side note, as early 1945 or so, computers gave us the term "bug" for a
> problem with a machine. Coined by Grace Hopper, because -- quite literally
> -- a moth got caught in the circuitry.

No, "bug" existed with that meaning in Edison's lab. The Mark II log book says
"First actual case of bug being found." Even the term "debug" existed before
the Mark II.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug)
.

Note also the Wikipedia page says: "The date in the log book was September 9,
1947,[10][11] _although sometimes erroneously reported as 1945._ ", with an
image of the log book for that date, showing at the least that it was on "9/9"
and not "early" in the year.

> able to handle the chaos of weather prediction

On a related note, Edward Lorenz became interested in chaos when working on a
weather model, in 1961, on the non-supercomputer Royal McBee LGP-30.

> The first human vs. machine challenge is also up for debate

What is the debate? [http://www.chessmaniac.com/history-of-chess-
computers/](http://www.chessmaniac.com/history-of-chess-computers/) says "In
1957 a chess program was written by Alex Bernstein at MIT for an IBM 704. ...
. This was the first full-fledged game of chess by a computer."

Then there's the lack of attribution or labels. For example, one of the
images, the one overlooking the machine room, with the Cray in it, is from
[http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/crays/cray-q2/cr...](http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/crays/cray-q2/crayq2-minnesota-1986.html)
and labeled "Cray Q2 Supercomputer at Minnesota Supercomputer Center".

~~~
ljf
Fair enough comment, I just liked the pictures to be honest, but the detailed
history you added was excellent and insightful, thanks for that.

