Chapter 15 Thoughts

This post details my impressions about chapter 15 of the textbook. This chapter focused on the construction of the Harvard Mark 1 by IBM. One of the first interesting thoughts I had after reading this chapter was that if Thomas Watson hadn't taken the risk to continue production during depression, IBM wouldn't have had enough money to construct the Harvard Mark 1. Without IBM, it seems unlikely that Aiken would have been able to actually construct the computer that he dreamed of. A second point that I found interesting was that Aiken had very little to do with the actual construction of his machine, yet was reluctant to give IBM the credit it deserved. A final point that I found interesting was that the Mark 1 was technically inferior to Babbage's designs for the Analytical Engine. This fact truly speaks to the level of Babbage's genius, that he was so far ahead of his time design-wise that a machine he designed with 19th century components was more advanced than a machine that was constructed nearly 100 years later.