Talk:Harvard Mark II

Additional detail on history
I am not very experienced with The Wikipedia world, so I am not sure how or where to go about adding information. The Harvard Mark II computer was built at the request and recommendation of Prof. C. (Charles) Clinton Bramble, a mathematician and a U. S. Navy officer (Bureau of Ordnance, U.S. Naval Proving Grounds, Dahlgren, Virginia), starting in 1944. Dr. Bramble very quickly recognized the value of the Mark I and was able to convince the Navy to finance a second machine, initially for computing ballistic "firing tables" that were used for artillery targetting. Dr. Bramble was a personal friend of my grandfather (Dr. Ralph E. Root, Professor Emeritus, U. S. Naval Postgraduate School, Annapolis, MD), and I heard the basic story of the Mark II first hand in the early 1960's. The Smithsonian Oral History collection has a transcript online of a 1973 interview with Howard Aiken (http://invention.smithsonian.org/downloads/fa_cohc_tr_aike73027.pdf) that is fascinating to read. Dr. Bramble and Dr. Root are also listed in the Genealogy of Mathematics that is maintained at the University of North Dakota. Dave Tuttle 21:39, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Bug is in the Smithsonian now
The log book with the bug may have been at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division in 1987 (as well as other museums over the years), but it's at the National Museum of American History now, where it shall probably remain ... I removed the mention when I added a cite web reference that points to it. -- 08:22, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Bug Missing from Article
This article says nothing about the bug found in the computer. Here is a quote from Grace Hopper's article:

"While she was working on a Mark II Computer at Harvard University in 1947, her associates discovered a moth stuck in a relay and thereby impeding operation, whereupon she remarked that they were "debugging" the system. Though the term computer bug cannot be definitively attributed to Admiral Hopper, she did bring the term into popularity.[22] The remains of the moth can be found in the group's log book at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.[23]"

I was wondering if anyone could switch the above quotation up a bit and insert it into this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.120.153.138 (talk) 15:07, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

what is ths special feature of mark i and mark ii — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.244.121.14 (talk) 02:01, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Grace Hopper / MentorshipART
Irma Wyman worked on a missile guidance project at the Willow Run Research Center.


 * To calculate trajectory, they used mechanical calculators. In 1947-48,

She visited the U.S. Naval Proving Ground where Grace Hopper was working on similar problems and discovered they were using a prototype of a programmable Mark_II computer EarthSea-Keeper (talk) 23:09, 4 June 2023 (UTC)


 * More cites:
 * https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=6bcfb486deb303b6c&q=Irma%20Wyman#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=Irma%20Wyman&gsc.page=1 GeoVenturing (talk) 00:19, 5 June 2023 (UTC)