IP: Gore and the Information age

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

 He gave a first class speach on commercial research and government stimulation


        PHILADELPHIA (Reuter) - The task Vice President Al Gore will
ask the world's first all-electronic computer to do at its 50th
anniversary celebration Wednesday is a no-brainer.
         ``It will count to 46 and count to 96, and that's it,'' said
Gregory Farrington, dean of the University of Pennsylvania's
School of Engineering and Applied Science, where the Electronic
Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was developed.
         ENIAC was unveiled to the public on Valentine's Day in 1946,
an event that come to be seen as the birthdate of the modern
computer era and is now being commemorated in a series of events
sponsored by Penn and the Association for Computing, the first
organization of computer scientists.
         Kicking off Penn's celebration will be the ceremonial
restarting of ENIAC by Gore at a ceremony Wednesday.
         Actually, only a small portion of the machine remains at
Penn. Some of the original 30 tons of steel, vacuum tubes and
wire have been scrapped and a piece is housed at the
Smithsonian Institution in Washington, which also owns the
section that remains at Penn.
         ENIAC has not run for about four decades. The Smithsonian
gave one-time only permission to Penn to run its portion, which
consists of two ``accumulators'' -- number counters -- about
eight feet tall and eight feet long. There were 18 accumulators
in the orginal machine, plus sections that performed
multiplication, square roots and other functions. It had 17,468
vacuum tubes and cost $450,000.
         At Gore's flick of a switch, the computer's lights will
blink and flash and show the numbers corresponding to the year
of its birth and its 50th anniversary.
         Gore will also give a speech on the role of technology in
American business. Later Wednesday, Penn will sponsor a
commemorative dinner honoring surviving members of the ENIAC
develelopment team and other computer pioneers.
         The U.S. Postal Service will also unveil a stamp
commemorating the computer era.
         Among other events has been a six-game chess match pitting
world champion Garry Kasparov against a specially built IBM
supercomputer called ``Deep Blue,'' which made history of its
own by beating Kasparov in the opening classic-style game
Saturday. Kasparov rebounded to win Sunday.