Los Alamos national laboratory (LASL)

History

1952: MANIAC I - one of the first computers

After the end of World War II and end of the Manhattan project on creation of an atomic bomb Nicholas Metropolis returned from the Los Alamos laboratory to the University of Chicago where he was going to create computer center for studying of computers. When its plans were not fated to materialize, he received the invitation to return again to the Los Alamos laboratory there to construct the computer and computer center for Laboratory.

Planning of the computer began at the beginning of 1949. MANIAC I in the construction followed "von Neumann architecture" as the IAS machine Neumann's background which that at that time created at Institute of perspective researches in Princeton was imitated.

MANIAC I became operational in March, 1952.

MANIAC, one of the first computers, Los Alamos nuclear laboratory, 1952.

MANIAC I was used for the solution of a wide range of problems from the field of hydrodynamics, in development of thermonuclear weapon, was able to solve chess problems (search of all possible options of arrangement of queens) and even to play simple chess on a chessboard 6х6. He played a significant role in improvement of the Monte-Carlo method, on it an attempt to decode DNA was made.

On the computer Fermi, Teller, Rikhtmeyer, Ulam, Gamov, etc. executed the calculations. The machine was very simple in programming so even scientists (for example Fermi and Rikhtmeyer) learned to create programs for it.