Chapter 317: The Plugs and the Point

On the tenth of December, 1945, at the Moore School in Philadelphia, A room of tubes was put to work. The room had been built for the path of a shell. The work of that December was a study brought from Los Alamos, Of a further weapon, which had not been made. John von Neumann brought the study. The cities of August were already behind the calendar. Do not make the room into the bomb. The bomb had already been a city. Do not make the study into the reason the room existed. The contract was a table of firing. The contract was signed on the fifth of June, 1943. The Army's laboratory at Aberdeen wanted the tables. Herman Goldstine brought the money and watched the work. John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert designed the machine. They called the work Project PX. A person who calculated for a living was called a computer. The machine took the name of that work. Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. The letters are ENIAC. The name does not say what the December work was. It did not hold its own instructions. A problem was set with plugs and with switches. It kept its numbers in tens. To map a problem onto the panels took weeks. To set the cables took days. The setting was the work. A program stored in the machine is a later form. It is not this room. In 1936 a limit had been written about finite means. This room is one such means. It is not that paper. Six of the computers were set to the machine. Kay McNulty. Jean Jennings. Betty Snyder. Marlyn Wescoff. Frances Bilas. Ruth Lichterman. Goldstine called them operators. The designation given the women was subprofessional. The men with the same mathematics were called professionals. On the evening of the fourteenth of February, 1946, They showed the machine. Betty Snyder and Jean Jennings had set the demonstration. It was the path of a shell. A person at a desk would have taken weeks. Herman Goldstine and Adele Goldstine were credited for it. The next day the machine was dedicated. The dinner did not invite the six. The press called the room a giant brain. A room of tubes is not a brain. Tubes failed. The room stopped until the failed one was found. Do not call it the first. In England Tommy Flowers had already set a machine of tubes To one purpose, and the purpose was kept secret. In Berlin, Konrad Zuse had already run a sequence On a machine of relays. The bombing destroyed that machine in 1943. In Ames, John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry Had started a machine of tubes. The work was stopped in 1942. This was the one they showed. On the twenty-ninth of July, 1947, they turned it on at Aberdeen. The proving ground was the place the tables had been for. At eleven forty-five in the night, on the second of October, 1955, It was turned off. The move did not change the kind of work. A table for a gun is a table for a gun. On the sixteenth of December, 1947, at Murray Hill, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain made a small thing work. Two gold points touched a slab of germanium. A small change at one point steered a larger current at the other. They had not yet named it. William Shockley was the head of their group. He was not the hand on the point that day. On the twenty-third they showed it to the laboratory. He called the demonstration a magnificent Christmas present. Early in 1948 he worked out a different device, A layer between two layers, which could be made to a pattern. That device was not the object in the December room. Before the announcement, the laboratory chose a name. John Pierce offered the word. They called it a transistor. On the thirtieth of June, 1948, in New York, they told the press. The device of that December was delicate. Do not move the later device back into the Christmas demonstration. A tube is a finite means. A point on a crystal is a finite means. Either can fail. Either can be set to a path, or to a study, or to a voice on a line. The setting is not the machine's verdict. Do not make the shell's table into a judgment. Do not make the switch into a mind. The press had a phrase for the room. The phrase was not a description. Count the days. Keep the six names the dinner left out. Say what the contract was. Say what the December work was. The two are different facts. Say which afternoon the point worked. Say which year the name existed. The machine did not choose the cities. The crystal did not choose its use.