...continued Alan Hodges continues with the section Using The World's First Computer http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/scrapbook/manmach.html > Using the world's first computer > F. C. Williams himself had no interest in the use of the machine > he had built. Speaking in an oral history of Pioneers of Computing, > Science Museum, 1976, he said: > > Well let's be clear right from the start, I never have been > interested in computing, and I'm still not interested in > computing. What I'm interested in is computers. I'm an engineer, > I define the computer right from square one as a device which > was designed to facilitate the performance of mathematics, the > greater part of which would be very much better not done, and > I've never changed that view really... > > Users were seen as rather a nuisance while the machine was in > development, but Newman immediately found a genuine mathematical > problem that could be run on the prototype Manchester computer, and > thereby rescued a little of the originally intended function for the > machine in pure mathematics. > This was the problem of finding Mersenne primes. > At that time the largest known prime was 2^127 - 1, and had been so > since 1876, when Lucas discovered a test for primality of numbers > of this type, a test which was extremely well suited to a computer. > They ran a program successfully, and then Turing coded a faster > version of it, but even so did not discover the next prime, which > was out of range at 2^521 - 1, and found only in 1952. > > The largest known prime now is again a Mersenne prime, and found > by exactly the same method, only on a somewhat larger and faster > computer). [snip] > The 1949 programme gained newspaper publicity for the Manchester > computer, although (or because) readers of the day would have > assumed prime numbers to be the epitome of pure mathematical > uselessness. Nowadays these investigations are seen rather > differently because of the connection between large primes and > cryptographic security. As usual the mathematicians were ahead of > their time. !!! I like Williams! Note that it is claimed that the 1949 search for Mersenne Primes was documented in a newspaper. In conclusion, it is strongly probable that:- Prof. Newman at Manchester University was the first person to use a computer to test Mersennes using "Baby" the Manchester Mark 1 in 1949. Please have a read about "Baby" - The First Real Computer on:- http://www.computer50.org/mark1/index.html Regards, Paul Landon As an off-topic footnote, anyone interested in History or Biographies should look up the some of the flowery characters mentioned above. Some biographies have been "ethically cleansed" and have missing data, data that should never be allowed to detract from their Mathematical and Engineering greatness but is still fascinating. Some of those stories could cause tittering schoolboys to find Maths interesting or sniggering schoolgirls to enjoy Computing. They could even be used to justify increased Federal funding; so that this century's Ada doesn't have to finance herself that way ;-) _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
