The Automatic Sequence Control Calculator (ASCC), also known as Mark I, was the first large American digital computer to work from a program and produce reliable results. It was designed by Howard H. Aiken, a physicist at Harvard University, and built by IBM and the United States Navy.

While in graduate school during the 1930s, Aiken became dissatisfied with calculating differential equations by hand or existing calculators. He decided to build a better machine based on the Analytical Engine of the British computer pioneer Charles Babbage.

Aiken designed a machine to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, calculate exponents, handle probabilities, and look up trigonometric function values on tables. It would read the initial data from a punched card, perform the calculations, and punch the results on other cards. Like Babbage, Aiken organized his data in registers, and he specified fixed decimal points.

In 1937, Aiken contacted several...