Harvard Secret Computer Lab- Grace Hopper, Howard Aiken, Harvard Mark 1, 2 , 3 rare IBM Calculators

Computer History: IBM, Harvard University Mark 1, 3, 4, 5: Grace Hopper, Howard Aiken, at Harvard Computation Laboratory, worked on Secret Computing Machines in the early 1940's. Harvard Mark I, Harvard Mark II, III and IV computers are explored through vintage film and photos. Historical Harvard Computation Laboratory, Cambridge, Mass. was home to many computer pioneers, mathematicians, scientists and engineers. Aiken's machines were mechanical, electromechanical or combination, and finally electronic (Mark IV). His machines were the largest of their kind at the time, and produced fast numbers of calculations for the Navy and Air Force. The technology of the machines was made obsolete by the early 1950's as more advanced technologies were produced by others.

Of particular mention here are some of the achievements made by Lt. Grace Hopper (Dec. 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992), who worked with Howard Aiken on the Mark I, II and III computers. Hopper went on to work on more advanced systems after her time at Harvard.
This presentation explores some of the background of the four Aiken machines and the people who were instrumental in their construction. Locations include Harvard University, Cruft Laboratory, Cambridge, Mass., Endicott, New York, Dahlgren, Virginia. (The old Aiken Computation Laboratory of 1948 was demolished in 1997, and replaced with the modern Maxwell-Dworking Laboratory in 1999, which was funded by Bill Gates and Steven A. Ballmer.)

Runs 12 mins. Provided for educational purposes and historical comment only. - Computer History Archives Project (CHAP) (Not affiliated with Harvard Univ.)

Original films and material, courtesy of
IBM Archives
National Archives & Records Administration
Harvard University Archives
Computer History Museum
American Natural History Museum/Smithsonian
Naval History and Heritage Command

See Also Video: Harvard moves the Mark 1 Computer (Aiken's Calculator, IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC), in 2021:

Additional References:
A Survey Of Automatic Digital Computers 1953,
Office of Naval Research, Washington D.C.
Digital Computer Newsletter, Office of Naval Research, Physical Sciences Division, 1949
"Makin’ Numbers: Howard Aiken and the Computer,” edited by I. Bernard Cohen and Gregory W. Welch, with Robert V.D. Campbell, MIT Press, 1999
"Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age," MIT Press, 2009, Kurt W. Beyer
Fair Harvard, Samuel Chamberlain, Donald Moffat, Harvard Univ. Press, 1949
Oral History Collection, Grace Hopper, Smithsonian
Oral History Transcript of Grace Hopper, Computer History Museum
Oral History Robert D. Campbell, Charles Babbage Institute
Oral History Richard Milton Bloch, Computer History Museum
The Annals of the Computation Laboratory of Harvard University, Vol XXVI, Proceedings of a Second Symposium on Large-Scale Digital Calculating Machinery, Cambridge, Mass. 1951
New York Times article, August 8, 1944
Popular Mechanics Magazine, March, 1949, “Brains that Click,”
“The American Weekly” magazine, October 15, 1944, “Harvard’s Robot Super Brain”
TIME Magazine, January 20, 1947, pg. 48, “A Robot’s Job”

[yogibarista]

Of course, and as most would know, Grace Hopper's FLOW-MATIC was the basis for another language - COBOL

[patmcdonald]

A fellow badger Aiken was a very brilliant man. Grace Hopper was gracious and seriously a byte ahead of her time.

[bblod]

Cool. It's always enjoyable to look back at the history of computers. Six year lifespan 😮. That's an expensive upgrade.😂

[frankowalker]

11:15 Ten people working for almost an hour for what the 'Calculator' can do in less than one second. They never said how long it took to program the machine to get the calculation in there. LOL. (Just my bit of fun.)

[theJellyjoker]

9:00
The original desktop is now my desktop background.

[emonk]

I'm partially through the book, "Machines that think" and I'm reading it on my phone that is a billion times faster than any computer Aiken would have dreamed about.

[GothGuy]

I have to wonder what became of these machines as time went on, and newer and better
technology came along. these huge behemoths served their purpose for the time, and
sadly I presume most of them were disassembled and relegated to scrapheaps somewhere. 😢

[QHPRN]

Thank you very much. I knew about the Harvard Mark I, but had never heard about the next 3.

[johnsavard]

I recently learned, from a web site I found when searching for information about the SSEC, that when the SSEC was removed from IBM's worldwide headquarters to make room for the 701, it went to Harvard. A photo of people at Harvard inspecting it was included in a children's encyclopedia, The New Book of Wonder, from 1954. Did that end up here?

[darylcheshire]

Grace Hopper retired as a rear admiral. She did lectures in uniform.

[parrotraiser]

The later machines were contemporaries of the work done by Bletchley Park alumni that led to Ace and Leo 1. They provided cover for developments whose real source has to be obscured to preserve the secrecy of Ultra.

[dalecomer]

"Ordnance problems" would include modeling "explosive compression" for the team at Los Alamos. Too bad John Atanasoff didn't have Aiken's connections. Atanasoff went to work for Bu Ord during the War but not building computers, doing acoustics research. A math prof at school was a coder for the Mark I when he was a grad student. Made it sound like he had the time of his life.

[philboydstudge]

The IBM ASCC, a.k.a. the Harvard Mark I was very much a collaboration between IBM and Harvard. Howard Aiken was the machine's architect, specifying its operation and general plan. The detailed work of designing the hardware and logic was carried out by Clair Lake, Frank Hamilton, and Benjamin Durfee of IBM. Lake was IBM's premier hardware designer, responsible for designing much of IBM's commercial product line. Hamilton was a talented electronic designer who would later play a pivotal role in IBM's post-war transition from mechanical to electronic data processing. Lake, Aiken, Hamilton, and Durfee are listed as co-inventors of the ASCC by US patent #2616626 "Calculator". Lake, Hamilton, and Durfee deserve credit where credit is due for their vital work on the ASCC.

[ranwild]

Looks like an electronics skunkworks incubator :-))) It is where the tech from the ALIENS was grown! 😁