Reflecting on Lecture Two .
Upon reflecting the week two lecture (software studies) of Net Communications, the mention of the ENIAC as the first created computer prompted an interest in me to further investigate its history.
And so what did I discover?
There are parallels to gaming and the development of the first digital computer.
Parallels between the histories of digital games and the Cold War between the United States and The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in the 1940’s can be made to explain the birth of the first digital computer. During World War II, the military “needed to develop firing tables for its artillery, so that gunners in the field could quickly look up which settings to use with a particular weapon on a particular target under particular conditions” (Eniac is built; 1998). Thus from this necessity came the birth and creation of ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), the world’s first electronic and digital computer. Referred to as the “giant brain”, ENIAC was designed to solve computing problems for the United States Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL). The Ballistics Research Laboratory were responsible for calculating artillery firing tables and reporting these figures to the army, however when a decline was notable BRL appointed John Mauchly in 1943 to create a computer that would speedily complete the artillery calculations. The development of ENIAC was a costly one that took over a year to design and over a year to develop. Although intended to assist the army during the World War II it was completed at the wars end. However it was used consistently in The Cold War “working on such projects as calculations for the design of [the] hydrogen bomb” (Eniac is built; 1998). On the flipside, although ENIAC helped to assist the army if ever it needed to be reprogrammed it was said to take two entire days to reprogram with a lot of tedious tasks to attend to such as re wiring. Through the creation of the “giant brain” we can evaluate and create parallels to the creation of gaming. The developments of ENIAC helped to advance and aid digital computing and influence the creation of EDVAC and UNIVAC (computer programs also used to assist the army). This movement to continually advance and develop a better digital computer and program created a discourse to explore “the potential of what could be done” (Eniac is built; 1998) thus contributed to the creation of the development of the computer.
Reference:
Websites
PBS Online (1998), ENIAC is built, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dt45en.html, April [Date Accessed]
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