Artifact Details

Title

SEAC video

Catalog Number

102743247

Type

Moving image

Description

This digital access video is a composite of multiple SEAC videos covering topics including the SEAC team, why SEAC was built, applications, imaging, users, influence, components, input/output, and memory.

The Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) was one of the earliest electronic, stored-program digital computers in the United States. It was completed in 1950 by the U.S. National Bureau of Standards and used 1,500 vacuum tubes and had 512 45-bit words of memory. Until it was retired in 1964, it ran important problems in meteorology, national defense, mathematics, physics and digital imaging.

This presentation features key individuals from the SEAC project, design engineers Ruth Hauter Cahn, Robert Elbourn, Sidney Greenwald and Russell Kirsch. It is organized into 11 sections that address key questions about SEAC, for example, "What makes SEAC the first computer?," why it was built, its uses, its influence and how it was built and worked.

Date

2006

Credits

Kirsch, Russell A.

Duration

00:39:55

Format

MOV

Credit

Gift of Russell A. Kirsch

Lot Number

X6226.2012

Related Records

102706053 SEAC video
102743246SEAC video transcript