JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

“Leprechaun, an Automatic Digital Computer the Size of a Television Set”  was a short article written for Computers and Automation in the July 1957 issue.  It is uncredited, by the two-pager I think was the product of the editor, Edmund Berkeley, and discussed a remarkable new computer that was as “small” as a not-by-today’s-standards small television set.  The Leprechaun used seriously fewer components than a “regular” machine (though that standard is not identified), using “only about 9,000 electrical components”, half of which were transistors).

Leprechaun represents a significant advance in computer design, with its innards very reachable and accessible, making it a highly useful tool for testing other components for other machines. The TRADIC (for TRAnsistor DIgital Computer or TRansistorized Airborne DIgital Computer) was also the first transistorized computer in America, completed in 1954, and the godchild of  J. H. Felker of Bell Labs for the for the U.S. Air Force, and was initially designed for use aboard an aircraft or a naval vessel (making it the first airborne transistorized digital computer). The idea of the manageably-sized computer had only recently lifted itself from science fiction thoughts of it being able to fit in the trunk of a car (as envisioned somewhat earlier by Isaac Asimov) and here we see it, already in the future-made-present, miniaturized to the size of a television set.