A Week-End Off: The First Extensive Number-Theoretical Computation on the ENIAC

The first extensive number-theoretical computation run on the world's first U.S. digital general-purpose electronic computer, the ENIAC, is reconstructed. The problem, computing the exponent of 2 modulo a prime, was set up on the ENIAC during a week-end in July 1946 by the number-theorist D.H. Lehmer, with help from his wife Emma and John Mauchly. Important aspects of the ENIAC's design are presented and a reconstruction of the implementation of the problem on the ENIAC is discussed in its salient points. Key words: ENIAC, Derrick H. Lehmer, number theory, Fermat's little theorem, early programming, parallelism, prime sieve

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: CIE
• Authors: Liesbeth De Mol, Maarten Bullynck
• Keywords: Applied Computing, CIE 2008, ENIAC, General-purpose Electronic Computer, Number-theoretical Computation Run