Harvard Mark IV

Harvard Mark IV
DeveloperHoward Aiken
ManufacturerHarvard University
Release date1952; 72 years ago (1952)
PredecessorHarvard Mark III

The Harvard Mark IV was an electronic stored-program computer built by Harvard University under the supervision of Howard Aiken for the United States Air Force. The computer was finished being built in 1952.[1] It stayed at Harvard, where the Air Force used it extensively.

The Mark IV was all electronic. The Mark IV used magnetic drum and had 200 registers of ferrite magnetic-core memory (one of the first computers to do so). It separated the storage of data and instructions in what is now sometimes referred to as the Harvard architecture although that term was not coined until the 1970s (in the context of microcontrollers).[2]

  1. ^ Research, United States Office of Naval (1953). A survey of automatic digital computers. Office of Naval Research, Dept. of the Navy. p. 43.
  2. ^ Pawson, Richard (30 September 2022). "The Myth of the Harvard Architecture". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 44 (3): 59–69. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2022.3175612. S2CID 252018052.