Three fathers of technology

This month, we celebrate the birthdays of three important scientists, each a “father” of a technology that has shaped this century.

First up: April 9, the 75th birthday of John Presper Eckert, the father (well, one of the fathers) of the digital computer. While a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania in the mid-1940s, Eckert collaborated with John W. Mauchly to create (under contract to the U.S. War Department) ENIAC, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator, which, using 18,000 vacuum tubes, could calculate a ballistic trajectory faster than a projectile could fly it.

Though primitive by modern standards (for one thing, it couldn’t store programs), ENIAC paved the way for all the computers that followed. Eckert and Mauchly, along with John von Neumann, took the next step themselves, designing UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Calculator), the first commercially available general-purpose computer.

In 1969, the U.S. government presented Eckert with the National Medal of Science. The least we can do, as we use his invention for everything from managing finances to shooting space aliens when the boss isn’t looking, is celebrate his birthday.

April 22 is the 90th birthday of another “father”: J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.

Oppenheimer graduated from Harvard in 1925, then studied in Europe for four years just as the theory of quantum mechanics emerged. For the next 13 years he taught at the University of California and the California Institute of Technology, building up large schools of theoretical physics and making important contributions in various areas of study.

Then came the Second World War. Oppenheimer and others realized that their theories pointed to the possibility of creating an explosive chain reaction in uranium-235 or plutonium. In 1942, Oppenheimer agreed to direct a top-secret laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico aimed at putting theory into practice.

It worked. Dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the atomic bomb ended the war. Oppenheimer received the Presidential Medal of Merit in 1946, and the following year became the director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey, and chairman of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).

In 1949 the committee rejected a proposal to initiate a program to create an even more powerful weapon, the hydrogen bomb. Being a staunch opponent to the development of the hydrogen bomb and a strong proponent of arms control did not win Oppenheimer any friends in the Cold War climate of the 1950s, and in 1954 he was removed from the committee on the basis that his past association with Communists and “fellow travelers” made him a security risk. The move was entirely political–nobody really doubted Oppenheimer’s loyalty. The AEC made some amends in 1963, giving him its highest honor, the Enrico Fermi Award.

Oppenheimer spent his last few years studying the relationship between science and society: he had a lot of experience to draw on. He died in Princeton on February 18, 1967.

Finally, on April 25, we celebrate the 120th birthday of a man whose influence on the 20th century isn’t lessened by the fact he was born in the 19th: Guglielmo Marconi, the father of radio.

As a young man, Marconi read of Heinrich Hertz’s experiments with electromagnetic waves, which showed that an electrical spark could generate a similar spark some distance away, and theorized it should be possible to use that phenomenon to transmit information.

The Italian government, with notable short-sightedness, refused to back his research, so Marconi went to London, instead, where he found backers and, in 1896, patented his system.

In 1897 he formed Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company, Ltd., in 1899 he established communication across the English Channel, and, in December of 1901, he guaranteed universal adoption of wireless telegraphy when he managed to receive a radio-wave signal in St. John’s, Newfoundland, that had originated in Cornwall, England. Within six years even the general public had access to transatlantic telegraphy.

In the First World War Marconi developed shortwave transmission as a means of secret communication for the Italian wireless service; after the war he represented Italy at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

Marconi shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in physics, but he received his greatest tribute after his death in Rome on July 20, 1937: all the radio stations in the world observed a two-minute silence.

The father of the digital computer; the father of the atomic bomb; the father of radio. Without these three men, the world would be a very different place: maybe better, maybe worse, but definitely different.

Maybe, just this once, we should celebrate Father’s Day in April.

Permanent link to this article: https://edwardwillett.com/1994/04/three-fathers-of-technology/

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Easy AdSense Pro by Unreal