A noted physicist and Harvard professor, Howard Aiken designed and built the Mark I calculator in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The first large-scale digital calculator, the Mark I provided the impetus for larger and more advanced computing machines. Aiken's later conceptions, the Mark II, Mark III, and Mark IV, each surpassed its previous model in terms of speed and calculating capacity.

Howard Hathaway Aiken was born on March 8, 1900, in Hoboken, New Jersey, and was raised in Indianapolis, Indiana. Because of his family's limited resources, he had to go to work after completing the eighth grade. He worked twelve-hour shifts at night, seven days a week, as a switchboard operator for the Indianapolis Light and Heat Company. During the day he attended Arsenal Technical High School. When the school superintendent learned of his round-the-clock work and study schedule, he arranged a series of special tests that enabled...