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 Mark
I |
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Mark I |
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Achievement
Invented/developed the Mark I
Biography
Howard Hathaway Aiken was born March 8, 1900 in Hoboken,
New Jersey. However he grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana where he attended
the Arsenal Technical High School. After high school he studied at
the University of Wisconsin where he received a bachelor's degree
in electrical engineering. During college Aiken worked for the Madison
Gas Company; after graduation he was promoted to chief engineer there.
In 1935 Aiken decided to return to school. In 1939 he received a Ph.D.
from Harvard University. It was while working on his doctoral thesis
in physics that Aiken began to think about constructing a machine
to help with the more tedious tasks of calculations. Aiken began to talk
about his idea and did research into what could be done. With help from colleagues at the university, Aiken succeeded in convincing
IBM fund his project.
The idea was to build an electromachanic machine that could perform
mathematical operations quickly and efficiently and allow a person
to spend more time thinking instead of laboring over tedious calculations.
IBM was to build the machine with Aiken acting as head of the construction
team and donate it to Harvard with the requirement that IBM would
get the credit for building it. The constructing team was to use machine
components that IBM already had in existence.
It took seven years and a lot of money to finally get
the machine operational. Part of the delay was due to the intervention
of World War II. Officially the computer was called the IBM Automatic
Sequence Controlled Calculator but most everyone called it the Mark
I. After completing the Mark I, Aiken went on to produce three more
computers, two of which were electric rather than electromechanical.
More important than the actual computer (whose major purpose was to
create tables), was the fact that it proved to the world that such
a machine was more than just fancy, it was a practical purpose machine.
Perhaps more important than the invention of Mark I was Aiken's contribution
to academia. He started the first computer science academic program
in the world.
Aiken retired from teaching at Harvard in 1961 and moved to Ft. Lauderdale,
Florida. He died March 14, 1973 in St. Louis, Missouri.
Chronology
Honors and awards
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