The Model V was among the early

electromechanical Electromechanics combine processes and procedures drawn from electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. Electromechanics focus on the interaction of electrical and mechanical systems as a whole and how the two systems interact with each ...

general purpose computers, designed by

George Stibitz George Robert Stibitz (April 30, 1904 – January 31, 1995) was an American researcher at Bell Labs who is 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 r ...

and built by

Bell Telephone Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

, 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 that was founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved and its ...

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

Ballistic Research Laboratory The Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) was a research facility under the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps and later the U.S. Army Materiel Command that specialized in ballistics as well as vulnerability and lethality analysis. Situated at Aberdeen Pr ...

(BRL).

Construction

Design was started in 1944. The tape-controlled (

Harvard architecture The Harvard architecture is a computer architecture with separate computer storage, storage and signal pathways for Machine code, instructions and data. It is often contrasted with the von Neumann architecture, where program instructions and d ...

) machine had two (design allowed for a total of six) processors ("computers") that could operate independently, an early form of

multiprocessing Multiprocessing (MP) 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. The ...

. The Model V 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 In information theory and coding theory with applications in computer science and telecommunications, error detection and correction (EDAC) or error control are techniques that enable reliable delivery of digital data over unreliable communi ...

, which led to invention of

Hamming code In computer science and telecommunications, 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 * 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 on subsets of real numbers formed by a ''significand'' (a Sign (mathematics), signed sequence of a fixed number of digits in some Radix, base) multiplied by an integer power of that ba ...

*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 and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

, 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 switc ...

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

microcode In processor design, microcode serves as an intermediary layer situated between the central processing unit (CPU) hardware and the programmer-visible instruction set architecture of a computer. It consists of a set of hardware-level instructions ...

Bibliography

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References

External links