[Harvard Mark I]

Theodore Miller Edison’s copy with his purchase notes to front free endpaper and an addressed card laid in. T.M. Edison (1898-1992) was the youngest son of Thomas Alva Edison and also a scientist.

FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST COMPUTER MANUAL, rarely seen in dust jacket. THE "FIRST EXTENDED ANALYSIS OF WHAT IS NOW KNOWN AS COMPUTER PROGRAMMING" (OOC p 299).

The electromechanical Harvard Mark I ("Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator"), designed by Howard Aiken, became operational in 1944 and was "the first programmable calculating machine to actually produce mathematical tables, fulfilling the dream of Charles Babbage originally set out in print in 1822" (OOC). "Aiken's Mark I opened the eyes of many to the possibilities of large-scale, programmed automatic computing. Actual witnesses to the developments of the mid 1940's ... agree that its dedication inaugurated the computer age" (Cohen p. 303).

The Mark I's Manual was equally significant. Computer historian Paul Ceruzzi stated the Manual was "a milepost that marked the state of the art of machine computation at one of its critical places: where, for the first time, machines could automatically evaluate arbitrary sequences of arithmetic operations. Most of this volume ... consists of descriptions of the Mark I's components, its architecture, and operational codes for directing it to solve typical problems ... The Manual is one of the first places where sequences of arithmetic operations for the solution of numeric problems by machine were explicitly spelled out. It is furthermore the first extended analysis of what is now known as computer programming since Charles Babbage's and Lady Lovelace's writings a century earlier. The instruction sequences, which one finds scattered throughout this volume, are thus among the earliest examples anywhere of digital computer programs" (Introduction to the Babbage Institute reprint edition, 1985). Cohen. Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, [1999]; Hook & Norman. Origins of Cyberspace 411.