ComputerHistory, please consider the slides. It's very very frustrating to see this video and miss the slides. Please make your video director take this seriously. He can't be sleeping in the controls because he may not find the lecture interesting. This is a disservice to your audience. Thank you!
As our host also seems obsessed with firsts, it seems only fair to mention the now-taken-for-granted "bit." Everything in computing is bitwise, and the bit was invented right here by Eckert in his demand that every electrical pulse in his machine, whether a clock pulse, a data pulse, or a control pulse, every pulse was to be identical in size and shape on the oscilloscope. "This way, he remarks, there will be no reason I cannot use a set of data as a control signal." Claude Shannon may have called it the "bit" in his famous 1948 paper, but Eckert was making it real already in 1946. This was the crucial step, as the airfoil was in aviation. Let's not overlook the intense rivalry that has existed between scientists and engineers for over a century now. This too has its role.
