Early Computing at the University of Alberta and the Introduction of the LGP-30
To re-create the University of Alberta's computing milieu of some 40 years ago, this article surveys the university's computational procedures before the arrival of the first computer and discusses the university's acquisition and use of the LGP-30
Early Computing at Los Alamos
Computing at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory evolved during World War II from hand calculation through punched-card computation to electronic computing on the ENIAC. The paper describes the evolution of the methods and their applications: computations of equations in nuclear reactions in developing the atomic bomb. 1. Introduction analytic techniques and solutions were not available; consequently, the only recourse was a computational During World War II, computing at the Los Alamos Scientific (now National) Laboratory (LASL) evolved from hand computing (1943)) supported by mechanical calculators, through punched-card computation, to electronic computing on the ENIAC (1945). Computing applications ranged from computational support for experimental work to critical-mass calculations and the hydrodynamics of implosions and explosions. They required solution to practical numerical computational problems of singularities in integral-equation kernels, extrapolation techniques, stability in partial-differential equation integration, and propagation of numerical errors. Because only limited testing of the final products (atomic bombs) of Los Alamos research and development was possible, the results were critically dependent on detailed calculations of the new physical phenomena being exploited. These phenomena involved extremely high densities, pressures, and temperatures , requiring nonlinear mathematics for which
Time and Heritage
As a historian studying what can be considered a form of intellectual history, I have slowly come to adopt Michel de Certeau’s observation made at the end of the 1980s that ‘objectifying the past, for the last three centuries, has undoubtedly left unconsidered time within a discipline that has continued to use it as a taxonomic instrument’. To a certain degree, time has become commonplace for the historian who has preserved or instrumentalized it. It is not considered because it is inconceivable, but because we do not think of it or, more simply, we do not think about it. As a historian attempting to pay attention to the time I’m living in, I have thus, like many others, noticed the swift development of the category of the present until it has become obvious that the present is omnipresent. This is what I refer to here as ‘presentism’.