Magnetic Drum Digital Differential Analyzer

Magnetic Drum Digital Differential Analyzer (MADDIDA)
Electronic scientists using MADDIDA at the Navy Electronics Laboratory
DeveloperNorthrop Aircraft Corporation
Release date1949 (1949)
Units sold6

The MADDIDA (Magnetic Drum Digital Differential Analyzer) was a special-purpose digital computer used for solving systems of ordinary differential equations. It was the first computer to represent bits using voltage levels and whose entire logic was specified in Boolean algebra. Invented by Floyd Steele, MADDIDA was developed at Northrop Aircraft Corporation between 1946 and 1949 to be used as a guidance system for the Snark missile. No guidance system, however, resulted from the work on the MADDIDA, and rather it was used for aeronautical research. In 1952, the MADDIDA became the world's top-selling commercial digital computer (albeit a special-purpose machine), six units having been sold. (The general-purpose UNIVAC I delivered its seventh unit in 1954.)

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