History of Computers

World War II was a scientific war: Its outcome was determined largely by the effective deployment of scientific research and technical developments. The best-known wartime scientific program was the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos to develop the atomic bomb. Another major program of the same scale and importance as atomic energy was radar, in which the Radiation Laboratory at MIT played a major role. It has been said that while the bomb ended the war, radar won it.

Emphasis on these major programs can overshadow the rich tapestry of the scientific war effort. One of the threads running through this tapestry was the need for mathematical computation. For the atomic bomb, for example, massive computations had to be performed to perfect the explosive lens that assembled a critical mass of enriched uranium. At the outbreak of war, the only computing technologies available were analog machines such as differential analyzers, primitive digital technologies such as punched-card installations, and teams of human computers equipped