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Howard Aiken was born in Hoboken, New Jersey on 8 March, 1900. During his schooling period he began work as a switchboard operator. After the completion of high school in 1918, he received his bachelor is degree from University of Wisconsin. In 1923, he became a professor at the University of Miami. He received his masters in physics from Harvard in 1937.  He wanted to build a machine that used parts that had already been invented to save on cost and time. He built the Mark I, first program-controlled calculator the world had an early form of a digital computer with Grace Hopper at Harvard. It was controlled by both mechanical and electrical devices. It was slow, requiring 3-5 seconds for a multiplication operation, but it was low-priced, and as per the requirement of that time.
Although he continued to build other computers yet they would soon be made outdated by more advanced electronics. He died on 14 March, 1973.