After a recovery and restoration process that lasted years, the Computer History Museum has shared 21 recordings never before seen video of the legendary 1976 computing conference.
Research on the history of computing, nicknamed the Woodstock of computing, brought together a global elite of computer pioneers. Dag Spicer, Senior Curator at the Computer History Museum (CMH), announced this new resource that provides a fascinating insight into the early years of the digital electronic computer.
“For five days in the summer of 1976, the first generation of computer science 'rock stars' had their own Woodstock. From around the world, dozens of engineers, scientists, and computer science pioneers gathered to reflect on the first 25 years of their discipline in the hot, sunny (and perhaps a little eerie) climate of the Los Alamos National Laboratories, birthplace of the atomic bomb,” explains Dag Spicer in a blog post dated June 7, 2022. For the record, in its early days (1950s and 1960s), computing was a field wide open for exploration.
In his article, Dag Spicer recounts that because many things were new, the innovatorss who built computers during this period of early discovery they often invented things of permanent and lasting value to computingeither in hardware or in software.
He recalled that engineer Bob Everett's comments on MIT's legendary Whirlwind computer described MIT's 1952 development of magnetic-core memory, thus solving the biggest bottleneck faced by early computer designers.
Before magnetic core memory, there was no reliable, digital, electronic memory and random access with which to build computers, which delayed progress until it was resolved.
Bob Everett (June 26, 1921 – August 15, 2018) was an American computer scientist. He was an honorary member of the board of directors of the MITER Corporation. In 2009, he was named a Fellow of the Computer History Museum for his work on MIT's Whirlwind and SAGE computer systems and for his lifetime leadership in advanced research and development projects.
Spicer further recalls that at the time, "programmer," "systems analyst," or other formal and now-familiar professional titles did not exist: these machines were built by engineers, technicians, mechanics, and scientists for whom their often demanding nature could be justified by the advanced calculations they performed.
He goes on to say that almost all of these early machines were "number processors," designed to calculate and solve advanced scientific and engineering problems.
“Having the conference in Los Alamos was therefore appropriate, in a way, given the vast amount of computation required to fulfill the national security mission of laboratories in wartime and beyond. Today, some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world are in laboratories,” he said. One of the videos that has been restored is of a talk by John Mauchly, co-inventor of ENIAC, America's first large-scale electronic computer. Mauchly explained that the ENIAC had to stay on 24 hours a day to keep its 18.000 vacuum tubes in good condition.
Turning them on and off, like a light bulb, drastically shortened their lifespan. Another important passage that has been restored is by computer scientist and computer historian Brian Randell. His lecture was on the British World War II Colossus computer engines.
They were special purpose computers used to decrypt messages of the German high command during World War II. Based in the south of England at Bletchley Park, these gigantic decryption machines regularly provided vital intelligence to the Allies.
Its existence was a closely guarded secret during the war and decades after. According to historians, Randell's lecture had the effect of a bomb and provoked a reassessment of the entire history of computing. According to conference attendee (and inventor of ASCII) Bob Bemer, Professor Randell came on stage and asked if anyone had ever wondered what Alan Turing did in World War II. He then told the story of Colossus: that day at Los Alamos was almost the first time the UK's Official Secrets Act allowed any disclosure.
Finally if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can check the details in the following link.
It is very interesting, nowadays everything is so easy to use that the sense of the fundamentals was lost… The current software is bloated and of little use compared to before… They were real genius scientists, nowadays nobody thinks about breaking codes .