Harvard Mark I

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Howard Aiken (1900 - 1973) Grace Hopper (1916 - 1963)

In 1944, Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper developed the Harvard Mark I computer. This monstrous machine weighed 5 tons. It contained almost 760,000 separate pieces, including 3,000 decimal storage wheels, 1,400 rotary dial switches, and 500 miles of wire. It was primarily used by the U.S. Navy for gunnery and ballistics, and remained in operation until 1959.

The main functional advantage for the Mark I was its special subroutines for logarithms and trigonometry. It could also count numbers to 23 decimal places.

Some interesting facts about the inventors

"Only six electronic digital computers would be required to satisfy the computing needs of the entire United States," - Howard Aiken - 1947. Little did he know how wide-spread computers would end up being today.

Grace Hopper is responsible for coining the term 'bug' , meaning a computer fault. The original 'bug' was a moth causing a hardware fault in the Mark I, so Grace was forced to 'debug' the computer.