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 systems ...

general purpose computers, designed by

George Stibitz George Robert Stibitz (April 30, 1904 – January 31, 1995) was a Bell Labs researcher internationally recognized as one of the fathers of the modern digital computer. He was known for his work in the 1930s and 1940s on the realization of Boolea ...

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 scientific development company owned by mult ...

, 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 The Harvard architecture is a computer architecture with separate storage and signal pathways for instructions and data. It contrasts with the von Neumann architecture, where program instructions and data share the same memory and pathway ...

) machine had two (design allowed for a total of six)

processors A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, a ...

("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 ...

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 sim ...

s * One of the early

general purpose computers * First American machine and first

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 be ...

*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 Processor may refer to: Computing Hardware * Processor (computing) **Central processing unit (CPU), the hardware within a computer that executes a program *** Microprocessor, a central processing unit contained on a single integrated circuit (I ...

, 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 switch ...

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