Harvard Mark I

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Portion of the Harvard-IBM Mark 1, left side

The ASCC was built from switches, relays, rotating shafts, and clutches. It used 765,000 components and hundreds of miles of wire, comprising a volume of 51 feet (16 m) in length, eight feet (2.4 m) in height, and two feet (~61 cm) deep. It had a weight of about 10,000 pounds (4500 kg). The basic calculating units had to be synchronized mechanically, so they were run by a 50-foot (~15.5 m) shaft driven by a five-horsepower (4 kW) electric motor. From the IBM Archives:

The Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Harvard Mark I) was the first operating machine that could execute long computations automatically. A project conceived by Harvard University's Dr. Howard Aiken, the Mark I was built by IBM engineers in Endicott, N.Y. A steel frame long and eight feet high held the calculator, which consisted of an interlocking panel of small gears, counters, switches and control circuits, all only a few inches in depth. The ASCC used of wire with three million connections, 3,500 multipole relays with 35,000 contacts, 2,225 counters, 1,464 tenpole switches and tiers of 72 adding machines, each with 23 significant numbers. It was the industry's largest electromechanical calculator.

• See also: Wikipedia, Commons

• Related: History of computing hardware, Harvard Mark II, Harvard Mark III, Harvard Mark IV, Howard Aiken, Manchester Mark 1, WEIZAC, Atanasoff–Berry Computer, ENIAC, DASK, BESK

Oral history interview with Robert Hawkins Oral history interview with Robert Hawkins purl.umn.edu/107348 - Web

Oral history interview with Richard M. Bloch Oral history interview with Richard M. Bloch purl.umn.edu/107123 - Web

Oral history interview with Robert V. D. Campbell Oral history interview with Robert V. D. Campbell purl.umn.edu/107210 - Web

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IBM Archive: IBM ASCC Reference Room IBM Archive: IBM ASCC Reference Room www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/markI/markI_reference.html - Web

ASCC operational manual ASCC operational manual www.bitsavers.org/pdf/harvard/MarkI_operMan_1946.pdf - Web

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