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. Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ... Howard Hathaway Aiken is considered one of the pioneers of the computer field, being the primary engineer behind IBMs Harvard Mark I computer. ... Seal of the Air Force. ...

The Mark IV was all electronic, and used solid-state components. The Mark IV used magnetic drum and 200 registers of ferrite magnetic core memory. It seperated the storage of data and instructions in what is known as the Harvard architecture. In physics, the solid state is one of the three phases of matter (solid, liquid, and gas). ... The Magnetic Drum was invented by G. Taushek in 1932 in Austria. ... A 16×16 cm area core memory plane of 128×128 bits, i. ... The term Harvard architecture originally referred to computer architectures that used physically separate storage and signal pathways for their instructions and data (in contrast to the von Neumann architecture). ...

The Mark IV was finished in 1952. It was built for the US Air Force but it stayed at Harvard, where the Air Force used it extensively.

References:

• A History of Computing Technology, Michael R. Williams, 1997, IEEE Computer Society Press, ISBN 0-8186-7739-2

See also: Harvard Mark I, Harvard Mark III, Howard Aiken Portion of the Harvard-IBM Mark 1, left side. ... The Harvard Mark III, also known as ADEC (for Aiken Dahlgren Electronic Calculator) was an early computer that was parially electomechanical and partially electronic. ... Howard Hathaway Aiken is considered one of the pioneers of the computer field, being the primary engineer behind IBMs Harvard Mark I computer. ...