Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer

Howard Hathaway Aiken (1900-1973) was a major figure of the early digital era. He isbest known for his first machine, the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator or Harvard MarkI, conceived in 1937 and put into operation in 1944. But he also made significant contributions tothe development of applications for the new machines and to the creation of a university curriculumfor computer science.This biography of Aiken, by a major historian of science who was also acolleague of Aiken's at Harvard, offers a clear and often entertaining introduction to Aiken and histimes. Aiken's Mark I was the most intensely used of the early large-scale, general-purposeautomatic digital computers, and it had a significant impact on the machines that followed. Aikenalso proselytized for the computer among scientists, scholars, and businesspeople and explored novelapplications in data processing, automatic billing, and production control. But his most lastingcontribution may have been the students who received degrees under him and then took prominentpositions in academia and industry. I. Bernard Cohen argues convincingly for Aiken's significance asa shaper of the computer world in which we now live.