Birth of the first computer: ENIAC

In February 1946, J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly were about to unveil, for the first time, an electronic computer to the world. Their ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, could churn 5,000 addition problems in one second, far faster than any device yet invented.


J. Presper Eckert (the man in the foreground turning a knob) served and John Mauchly (center) designed ENIAC to calculate the trajectory of artillery shells. The machine didn't debut until February 1946, after the end of World War II, but it did launch the computer revolution.


Credit: Computer History Museum

ENIAC contained nearly 18,000 vacuum tubes and filled a 1,500 square-foot room. To program it, different accumulators had to be wired to each other.


Credit: Computer History Museum

A power-hungry beast, ENIAC ran on 170,000 watts. But contrary to rumor, the lights in Philadelphia did not dim when it ran.


Credit: Computer History Museum

After a disagreement with the University of Pennsylvania over patents, Mauchly and Eckert left to form the Eckert-Mauchly Computer, which was bought a few years later by Sperry Rand and later became Unisys. Although Eckert stayed on, Mauchly left and was nearly broke when he died in 1980.


Mauchly and one of ENIAC's programmers
Credit: Computer History Museum

Women who performed many of the mathematical calculations and developed the programming techniques. Although they didn't get credit at the time, their role has recently become better acknowledged.
"The audience was absolutely astounded. ENIAC ran the trajectory faster than it took the bullet to trace it. People got, as a souvenir, a printout of the trajectory we ran", said Jean Bartik, one of the surviving programmers, about the first demonstration of ENIAC to the military and other scientists.


Frances Blias and Elizabeth Jennings with ENIAC
Credit: Computer History Museum

Iowa State professor John Atanasoff liked fast cars and scotch, according to interviews he gave. After driving to a bar in Illinois, he had a few drinks and sketched out on a napkin a concept out for an electronic device that could perform math functions with signals from vacuum tubes. The ABC Computer was built in 1941. It could perform multiplication, but worked stopped on the project after the attack on Pearl Harbor and Atanasoff never returned to it.
Did Mauchly steal ideas from the Atanasoff? He visited Atanasoff and the two discussed computers before ENIAC was built. Mauchly defenders, however, say ABC just confirmed his own ideas and ENIAC used a far different architecture. A court, however, invalidated the ENIAC patents. Still, ABC was never used on any real computing projects.


Credit: Computer History Museum

Thanks to Mainak Sir for sharing the link. This is like the wheat that paved the way for my future bread.

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