« Maniac » est un ordinateur primitif construit sous la direction de Nicholas Metropolis au Laboratoire national de Los Alamos. Il effectue les calculs techniques nécessaires à la construction de la première bombe à hydrogène. Le 1er novembre 1952, « Ivy Mike » vaporise l’îlot Elugelab et quatre-vingts millions de tonnes de corail.
https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/computing-and-manhattan-project
Although it eventually was used for a variety of purposes, MANIAC’s first job was to perform the calculations for the hydrogen bomb. When Enrico Fermi casually suggested the idea of building a fusion device in the early ‘40s, Edward Teller became fascinated by the idea of designing and constructing a hydrogen bomb. Polish-American mathematician Stanislaw Ulam soon joined Teller to help build the so-called “Super”. Using a design that Oppenheimer had called “technically sweet,” the two created the Teller-Ulam device, which used a fission reaction to ignite a fusion reaction.
MANIAC, along with IAC and ENIAC, was used to perform the engineering calculations required for building the bomb. It took sixty straight days of processing, all through the summer of 1951. On November 1, 1952, the first full-scale thermonuclear device was tested at Elugelab Island. The “Ivy Mike” test vaporized the entire island, as well as eighty million tons of coral. MANIAC’s calculations had been successful.
https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/computing-and-manhattan-project