Re: [HM] scientific notation

Stacy Langton (langton@acusd.edu)
Wed, 21 Apr 1999 09:25:01 -0700 (PDT)

A short history of floating-point arithmetic is given by Donald
Knuth in "The Art of Computer Programming", vol. 2, 3d edition, pp.
225-226. Knuth traces the *idea* back to the Babylonians. He says that
floating-point arithmetic was proposed independently by Torres y Quevedo,
Madrid, 1914; Zuse, Berlin, 1936; and Stibitz, New Jersey, 1939. "The
first American computers to operate with floating point arithmetic
hardware were the Bell Laboratories' Model V and the Harvard Mark II,
both of which were relay calculators designed in 1944."

Knuth's essay gives further information and many references.

Stacy Langton
University of San Diego
langton@acusd.edu

On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, James A Landau wrote:

> A question related to scientific notation is: when did floating-point
> arithmetic on computers originate.
>
> Webster's Tenth Collegiate Dictionary gives the first usage of the term
> "floating point" as 1948.
>
> R. K. Richards _Arithmetic Operations in Digital Computers _ (Princeton, New
> Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1955) includes a discussion (page 317)
> of a series of computers built by Bell Laboratories bewteen 1940 and 1950.
> These were electromechanical computers with relays doing most of the work.
> "The floating-decimal-point idea seems to have appeared first in the Bell
> Laboratories Mode V, which was completed in 1946".
>
> James A Landau
>