The Model V was among the early

electromechanical In engineering, electromechanics combines processes and procedures drawn from electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. Electromechanics focuses on the interaction of electrical and mechanical systems as a whole and how the two system ...

general purpose computers, designed by George Stibitz and built by

Bell Telephone Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...

, operational in 1946. Only two machines were built: first one was installed at

National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a United States federal agency founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved and its assets ...

(NACA, later NASA), the second (1947) at the US Army’s

Ballistic Research Laboratory The Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) was a leading U.S. Army research establishment situated at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland that specialized in ballistics (interior, exterior, and terminal) as well as vulnerability and lethality analys ...

(BRL).

Construction

Design was started in 1944. The tape-controlled ( Harvard architecture) machine had two (design allowed for a total of six) processors ("computers") that could operate independently, an early form of

multiprocessing Multiprocessing is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or the ability to allocate tasks between them. There ar ...

. Weighed about .

Significance

* Inspired

Richard Hamming Richard Wesley Hamming (February 11, 1915 – January 7, 1998) was an American mathematician whose work had many implications for computer engineering and telecommunications. His contributions include the Hamming code (which makes use of a Ha ...

to investigate the automatic error-correction, which led to invention of

Hamming code In computer science and telecommunication, Hamming codes are a family of linear error-correcting codes. Hamming codes can detect one-bit and two-bit errors, or correct one-bit errors without detection of uncorrected errors. By contrast, the s ...

s * One of the early

general purpose computers * First American machine and first George Stibitz design to use

floating-point arithmetic In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can b ...

*Had an early form of

*Had a very primitive form of an

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

, albeit in hardware. A separate hardware control unit existed to direct the sequence of computer operations.

Model VI

Built and used internally by

, operational in 1949. Simplified version of the Model V (only one processor, about half the

relay A relay Electromechanical relay schematic showing a control coil, four pairs of normally open and one pair of normally closed contacts An automotive-style miniature relay with the dust cover taken off A relay is an electrically operated swit ...

s) but with several improvements, including one of the earliest use of the

microcode In processor design, microcode (μcode) is a technique that interposes a layer of computer organization between the central processing unit (CPU) hardware and the programmer-visible instruction set architecture of a computer. Microcode is a la ...

Bibliography

* * * * *

References

External links