He probably arrived in Paris from Darmstadt (Germany) by train that January. At 53 years old, Alwin Walther, Professor of Applied Mathematics and Founding Director of the “Institut für Praktische Mathematik” of the “Technische Hochschule” Darmstadtwas one of the most prominent figures in computing in Germany.
The computational prowess of Walther and his institute, using all kinds of manual, mechanical, and electromechanical methods, had attracted attention and support of the Nazi regime during World War II. But as Walther made his way to the academic heart of “liberated” Paris, in the Latin Quarter, few passers-by would have guessed this background.
Walther’s institute had been one of the main sources of support for the calculus needed to Werner von Braun’s rocketry efforts, especially the V-2, for the German army. In fact, during the war, Walther secured funding from the German Army to create an advanced electromechanical analog computer: an advanced differential analyzer that rivaled that previously created by Vannevard Bush at MIT. (The German system, the IPM-Ott DGMwas developed throughout the war, but was not submitted to Walther’s institute until 1948)
Alwin Walther and Werner von Braun
This work by Werner von Braun and the German military was not the only effort to link Alwin Walther to slave labor, such as those in the German concentration camps exploited in the V-2 rocket factories. More directly, Walther was evidently involved in a scheme with the Nazi SS to enslave Jewish scientists. held in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp to perform manual calculations.
The plan was carried out and was soon put into operation, along with the other activities of the Walther Institute. Its facilities and the vast majority of the buildings in the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt and much of the rest of the city were destroyed during Allied air raids on September 11 and 12, 1944.
In the new facilities created after the war, Walther and his institute had their sights set on electronic digital computing.. During the war, members of the institute and its machine shop had provided direct support to the famous electromechanical computer Z4 by Konrad Zuse. (The Z4 was a pioneering digital computer, originally intended for the German aircraft industry.)
Walther himself developed wartime plans for a large electromechanical computer along the lines of the Mark 1 by Howard Aiken, but they were abandoned. When Walther packed up his belongings for his trip to Paris in January 1951, he and his institute had just embarked on a major new project to create an electronic digital computer with stored programs. This machine, the Darmstädter Elektronischer Rechenautomat, or DERAwould come into operation in 1957 (we will talk about this later).
Beginnings of a computer view of human thought
The conference was organized by the Blaise Pascal Institutethe computer center founded in 1946 by the “National Center for Scientific Research” (CNRS). The French institute was made up of two laboratories, one dedicated to analog computing and the other, directed by louis couffignalto digital computing. Couffignal was the leading figure at the international conference in January 1951.
Couffignal had a Ph.D. in mathematics on the theory of computation at the University of Paris in 1938, with the ambition to create a new calculating machine based on . During the warlike occupation of the city by the Germans, Couffignal had met intensely and frequently with what is perhaps the France’s leading physiologist at the time, Louis Lapicque.
Lapicque, famous for his neuron integration model, and Couffignal found a common vision, seeing deep analogies and connections between the physiology of human thought and the processes and components of calculating machines. Imprisoned by the German Gestapo for helping the resistance, Lapicque managed to write his book “La Machine Nerveuse“, published in 1943.
In this book, Lapicque gave voice to this vision shared with Couffignal:
“The periodic and regular organization of the cerebellar elements makes the cerebellum close to artificial machines. Some of its processes can be understood by comparison with calculating machines or automatic telephone relays.”
Like many who came before them, Couffignal and Lapicque they used man-made instruments, of great fascination today, as analog tools to understand human bodies and minds. While earlier thinkers were fascinated by clockwork and saw themselves in gears and windings, Couffignal, Lapicque, and others in the 1940s they looked at electromechanical and electronic calculating machines and saw human bodies and minds reflected in them.
Working for the CNRS during the war allowed Couffignal to take over the management of the digital computing laboratory of the “Blaise Pascal Institute” in 1946. At that time, the institute was only equipped with desktop electromechanical calculators confiscated from the Germansbut Couffignal had the ambition to create a new French binary computer.
In the first year of his new management, he traveled to the United States to deepen his knowledge of American developments in both electronic computing as in what we could call the “computer vision of human thought“.
- In Philadelphia, got acquainted with ENIAC. (The ENIAC was a newly completed fully electronic digital computer, and a milestone in the history of computing.)
- in princetonCouffignal learned about the development of the computer of the “Institute for Advanced Studies” by john von neumann. (The IAS computer was a “stored program” machine, containing both software and data in its memory. The power of this approach made the computer a model for many of the world’s early digital computers.)
- at harvardCouffignal visited howard aiken and saw their electromechanical computers.
It was also in Cambridge where Couffignal found the opportunity to continue his interest in the computer vision of human thought, when he met the mathematician Norbert Wiener at MIT. In the depths of the work that would lead him to publish his book “Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine” in 1948 Wiener evidently found a kindred spirit in Couffignal. In 1947, Wiener returned the visit, meeting Couffignal and Lapicque in Paris.
The French computer: Couffignal’s machine
The same kind of analogical thinking that led Couffignal, Lapicque, and Wiener to see bodies and minds as servomechanisms (automatic control based on feedback), electromechanical relays, and electronic circuits had also led Couffignal in 1951 to lead the France’s main effort to develop a large-scale digital electronic computer in a very particular direction.
Already in his doctoral thesis of 1938Couffignal was dedicated to analogical thinking on calculating machines that connected with physiology. Wrote:
“To give a full account of the development (of calculating machines) we must create for machinery the analogues of comparative anatomy and physiology”
What Couffignal ultimately concluded was that this physiology of calculating machines showed an evolution in which increasing computing power was achieved by increasing complexity.
In 1947, when Couffignal was in control of the France’s biggest effort to build a large-scale digital computer, his 1938 evolutionary conclusion now carried real weight. France’s computer would depart from designs he saw in the United States, which in its “comparative anatomy” of computer design embraced a simplicity of computational logic, thus emphasizing the need for great memories.
For Couffignal, this was a kind of involution, a reversal against complexity and therefore against progress. The French computer, by contrast, would adopt large, parallel units of complex calculation logicand would minimize, even eliminate, memory.
On this, Couffignal explained:
“The problem of organizing a calculation is essentially the same as that of organizing the assembly line of a factory”
In January 1951, a “pilot machine” embodying Couffignal’s strikingly different approach to electronic digital computing it was up and running in his laboratory at the Blaise Pascal Institute. It was the result of four years of efforts by the main financier, the company Logabax, and the spending of millions of francs by the CNRS. Regardless of what can be said about him, was able to calculate square roots and sinusoidal functions.
The “cyber community” meets in Paris
Under the auspices of the CNRS, and with a additional funding from the Rockefeller Foundationand with his pilot machine ready for demonstrations, Couffignal organized an ambitious international conference that combined his two greatest passions: large-scale digital electronic computers and the computer vision of human thought.
The conference brought together some of the leading figures in digital computer development from around the world, as well as an international group of researchers inspired by the vision of the mind as a machine. After 1948, when Wiener’s book circulated the term cybernetics, this later group would become known as devotees of cybernetics.
The conference was titled “Les Machines a Calculer et la Pensée Humaine” (Calculation machines and human thought) and was held in the meeting rooms of the National Center for Pedagogical Documentation, located just three minutes walk from the Couffignal laboratory in the “Henri Poincare Institute”just around the corner, at 29 Rue d’Ulm.
The 6 days of the conference were divided into three parts of two days. The inaugural part focused on the “Recent progress in the Technique des Grosses Machines a Calculer“, new advances in the approach of large-scale digital computers. The pioneer of quantum physics, Nobel Prize and Secretary of the Academy of Sciences.
- Louis deBrogliedelivered the keynote address, which was followed by a series of presentations on the latest electronic digital computers.
- howard aikenfrom Harvard, talked about his machines Mark II, III and IV.
- Andrew Boothfrom Birkbeck College, described his experimental SEC and his new APEXC computer.
- eduard stiefelhead of applied mathematics at ETH Zurich, spoke of Konrad Zuse’s Z4 computer, now under Stiefel’s supervision.
- E. W. Cannonhead of mathematics at the National Bureau of Standards…
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