![]() They simulated the explosion of several atomic bomb designs being evaluated at Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico, using the Monte Carlo technique by which a complex system is simulated, step by virtual step, to repeatedly map the probability distribution of possible outcomes. But a few years later, Klára Dán von Neumann and Los Alamos scientist Nicholas Metropolis wired ENIAC to run the first modern code ever executed on any computer: hundreds of numerical instructions executed from an addressable read-only memory ( ENIAC’s function table switches). When one task, such as an addition, finished, a pulse triggered the next. ![]() Completed in 1945, it was configured for each new problem by wiring connections between its many components. The Electrical Numerical Integrator and Computer was the first programmable electronic computer. Ushered in both the use of computer code and the computer models of nuclear devastation that shaped the Cold War arms race
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