Harvard Mark IV

{{Short description|Electronic stored-program computer built at Harvard University in 1952}}

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| name = Harvard Mark IV

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| developer = Howard Aiken

| manufacturer = Harvard University

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| releasedate = {{Start date and age|1952}}

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| predecessor = Harvard Mark III

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The Harvard Mark IV was an electronic stored-program computer built by Harvard University under the supervision of Howard Aiken for the United States Air Force. The computer was completed in 1952.{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_onrASurveyomputers1953_8778395|title=A survey of automatic digital computers|last1=Research|first1=United States Office of Naval|date=1953|publisher=Office of Naval Research, Dept. of the Navy|page=[https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_onrASurveyomputers1953_8778395/page/n48 43]|language=en}} It stayed at Harvard, where the Air Force used it extensively.

The Mark IV was all electronic. The Mark IV used a magnetic drum and had 200 registers of ferrite magnetic-core memory (one of the first computers to do so). It separated the storage of data and instructions in what is now sometimes referred to as the Harvard architecture although that term was not coined until the 1970s (in the context of microcontrollers).{{cite journal |last1=Pawson |first1=Richard |title=The Myth of the Harvard Architecture |journal=IEEE Annals of the History of Computing |date=30 September 2022 |volume=44 |issue=3 |pages=59–69 |doi=10.1109/MAHC.2022.3175612 |s2cid=252018052 |url=https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9779481|url-access=subscription }}