SEAC video

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.