Moore School Lectures

Theory and Techniques for Design of Electronic Digital Computers (popularly called the "Moore School Lectures") was a course in the construction of electronic digital computers held at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering between July 8, 1946, and August 30, 1946, and was the first time any computer topics had ever been taught to an assemblage of people. The course disseminated the ideas developed for the EDVAC (then being built at the Moore School as the successor computer to the ENIAC) and initiated an explosion of computer construction activity in the United States and internationally, especially in the United Kingdom.

Background

The Moore School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was at the center of developments in high-speed electronic computing in 1946. On February 14 of that year it had publicly unveiled the ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, developed in secret beginning in 1943 for the Army's Ballistics Research Laboratory. Prior even to the ENIAC's completion, work had begun on a second-generation electronic digital computer, the EDVAC, which incorporated the stored program model. Work at the Moore School attracted researchers including John von Neumann, who served as a consultant to the EDVAC project, and Stan Frankel and Nicholas Metropolis of the Manhattan Project, who arrived to run one of the first major programs written for the ENIAC, a mathematical simulation for the hydrogen bomb project.

World War II had spawned major national efforts in many forms of scientific research—continued in peacetime—that required computationally intensive analysis; the thirst for information about the new Moore School computing machines had not been slaked, but instead intensified, by the distribution of von Neumann's notes on the EDVAC's logical design. Rather than allow themselves to be inundated with requests for demonstrations or slow progress in computer research by withholding the benefits of the Moore School's expertise until papers could be published formally, the administration, including Dean Harold Pender, Prof. Carl Chambers, and Director of Research Irven Travis, respectively proposed, organized, and secured funding for what they envisioned as a lecture series for between 30 and 40 participants enrolled by select invitation.

The 8-week course was conducted under the auspices of the United States Army Ordnance Department and the U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research, who promised (by verbal authorizations) the $3,000 requested to cover lecturer salaries and fees and $4,000 for travel, printing, and overhead.