The Harvard Computation Laboratory at night (ca. 1947)

It was around this time that the lab’s director, Howard Aiken, reputedly predicted that “only six electronic digital computers would be required to satisfy the computing needs of the entire United States.”

Yet Aiken and his graduate students were pioneers in the early days of computing machine design and theory.

“Within a few years, courses of instruction were offered at Harvard in a variety of topics including numerical analysis, switching theory, computer hardware, and automatic data processing,” wrote Gerard Salton, a former student. “In the areas of computer use and instruction, Harvard seemed to be ahead of anyone else by some ten years.”