Communications of the ACM
Sept. 15, 1947: Association For Computing Machinery Gets Whirring
The Harvard Mark I automatic machine, completed in 1944, computed three additions or subtractions per second.
Credit: Computer History Museum
The Association for Computing Machinery was founded on September 15, 1947. Interest in the infant field of computer science was growing in 1947. Building on advances in World War II computer cryptography and other fields, engineers and inventors were seeking each other out through existing organizations. Harvard-educated mathematician Edmund C. Berkeley decided to convene a group at Columbia University in New York City.
Others also tried to bring together early computer science pioneers. Prior to the founding of ACM, the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers held six meetings on analog- and digital-computation machinery during 1946 and 1947. Harvard University, home of the Mark I and Mark II computers, sponsored a January 1947 symposium on large-scale digital-calculating hardware. Meanwhile, also in Cambridge, MIT's Electrical Engineering department held its own six-session series on electronic computing in March and April of 1947.
Deciding that it was time to get together and establish a dedicated group, Berkeley convened a meeting at Columbia University with the purpose of advancing the science, development, construction and application of the new machinery for computing, reasoning and other handling of information. The Association for Computing Machinery was born.
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