[2] Invented by Floyd Steele, MADDIDA was developed at Northrop Aircraft Corporation between 1946 and 1949 to be used as a guidance system for the Snark missile.

[3][4] In 1952, the MADDIDA became the world's top-selling commercial digital computer (albeit a special-purpose machine), six units having been sold.

Development on the project began in March 1946 at Northrop Corporation with the goal of producing a subsonic cruise missile designated "MX-775", which came to be called the Snark.

[6] Northrop's parameters for this project were to create a guidance system that would allow a missile to hit a target at a distance of up to 5,000 miles (8,000 km) with a precision that would be 200 yards (180 m) better than the German "vengeance" weapons V1 and V2.

[10] Physicist Floyd Steele, who had reportedly in 1946 already demonstrated a working DIDA before the press in 1946 in his Los Angeles home, was hired as conceptual leader of the design group.

[13] In his design for MADDIDA, Steele was influenced by the analog computer invented in 1927 by Vannevar Bush, which had digital components.

[15] Steele hired Donald Eckdahl, Hrant (Harold) Sarkinssian, and Richard Sprague to work on the MADDIDA's germanium diode logic circuits and also to do magnetic recording.