Magnetic Drum Digital Differential Analyzer

Magnetic Drum Digital Differential Analyzer (MADDIDA)
Electronic scientists using MADDIDA at the Navy Electronics Laboratory
DeveloperNorthrop Aircraft Corporation
Release date1949; 75 years ago (1949)
Units sold6
Part of MADDIDA at Computer History Museum

The MADDIDA (Magnetic Drum Digital Differential Analyzer) was a special-purpose digital computer used for solving systems of ordinary differential equations.[1] It was the first computer to represent bits using voltage levels and whose entire logic was specified in Boolean algebra.[2] Invented by Floyd Steele, MADDIDA was developed at Northrop Aircraft Corporation between 1946 and 1949 to be used as a guidance system for the Snark missile. No guidance system, however, resulted from the work on the MADDIDA, and rather it was used for aeronautical research.[3][4] In 1952, the MADDIDA became the world's top-selling commercial digital computer (albeit a special-purpose machine), six units having been sold.[5] (The general-purpose UNIVAC I delivered its seventh unit in 1954.)

  1. ^ Reilly 2003, p. 164.
  2. ^ "Annals of the History of Computing" 1988, p. 358
  3. ^ Ulmann 2013, p. 164.
  4. ^ Ceruzzi 1989, p. 25.
  5. ^ Computer History Museum, MADDIDA Customer Demonstration