ENIAC

ENIAC, short for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer,^[1] was the first large-scale, electronic, digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems,^[2] although earlier computers had been built with some of these properties. ENIAC was designed and built to calculate artillery firing tables for the U.S. Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory. ENIAC U.S. Army Photo http://ftp. ... ENIAC U.S. Army Photo http://ftp. ... For other uses, see Artillery (disambiguation). ... External ballistics is the part of the science of ballistics that deals with the behaviour of a non-powered projectile in flight. ... The United States Army is the largest and oldest branch of the armed forces of the United States. ... The United States Army Ballistic Research Laboratory (BRL) at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland was the center for the armys research efforts in interior, exterior, and terminal ballistics and vulnerability/lethality analysis. ...

The contract was signed on June 5, 1943 and Project PX was constructed by the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering from July, 1943. It was unveiled on February 14, 1946 at Penn, having cost almost $500,000. ENIAC was shut down on November 9, 1946 for a refurbishment and a memory upgrade, and was transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland in 1947. There, on July 29 of that year, it was turned on and would be in continuous operation until 11:45 p.m. on October 2, 1955. is the 156th day of the year (157th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1943 (MCMXLIII) was a common year starting on Friday (the link will display full 1943 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is about the private Ivy League university in Philadelphia. ... The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania came into existence as a result of an endowment from Alfred Fitler Moore on June 4th, 1923. ... Year 1943 (MCMXLIII) was a common year starting on Friday (the link will display full 1943 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 45th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full 1946 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 313th day of the year (314th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full 1946 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Aberdeen Proving Ground is a United States Army facility located at Aberdeen, Maryland (in Harford county). ... Official language(s) None (English, de facto) Capital Annapolis Largest city Baltimore Largest metro area Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area Area  Ranked 42nd  - Total 12,407 sq mi (32,133 km²)  - Width 101 miles (145 km)  - Length 249 miles (400 km)  - % water 21  - Latitude 37° 53′ N to 39° 43′ N... Year 1947 (MCMXLVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1947 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 210th day of the year (211th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 275th day of the year (276th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays the 1955 Gregorian calendar). ...

ENIAC was conceived and designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania.^[3] The team of design engineers assisting the development included Bob Shaw (function tables), Chuan Chu (divider/square-rooter), Kite Sharpless (master programmer), Arthur Burks (multiplier), Harry Huskey (reader/printer), and Jack Davis (accumulators). Eckert and Mauchly examine a printout of ENIAC results in a newsreel from February 1946. ... Eckert and Mauchly examine a printout of ENIAC results in a newsreel from February 1946. ... This article is about the private Ivy League university in Philadelphia. ... Arthur Walter Burks (born October 13, 1915 in Duluth, Minnesota) is an American mathematician who in the 1940s as a senior engineer on the project contributed to the design of the ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. ... Harry Huskey (born 1916) is an American computer designer pioneer. ...

Programmers operate the ENIAC's main control panel at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering. "U.S. Army Photo" from the archives of the ARL Technical Library. Left: Betty Jean Jennings; right: Fran Bilas.

Image File history File links Two_women_operating_ENIAC.gif‎ Other versions Originally from en. ... Image File history File links Two_women_operating_ENIAC.gif‎ Other versions Originally from en. ... The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania came into existence as a result of an endowment from Alfred Fitler Moore on June 4th, 1923. ... Jean Bartik (b. ... Two women operating the ENIACs main control panel. ...

Description

ENIAC was massive compared to modern PC standards. It contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. It weighed 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 8.5 feet (2.6 m) by 3 feet (0.9 m) by 80 feet (26 m), took up 680 square feet (67.6 m²), and consumed 150 kW of power. Input was possible from an IBM card reader, while an IBM card punch was used for output. These cards could be used to produce printed output offline using an IBM accounting machine, probably the IBM 405. Structure of a vacuum tube diode Structure of a vacuum tube triode In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube, or (outside North America) thermionic valve or just valve, is a device used to amplify, switch or modify a signal by controlling the movement of electrons in an evacuated space. ... Closeup of the image below, showing the square shaped semiconductor crystal various semiconductor diodes, below a bridge rectifier Structure of a vacuum tube diode In electronics, a diode is a two-terminal component, almost always one that has electrical properties which vary depending on the direction of flow of charge... Automotive style miniature relay A relay is an electrical switch that opens and closes under the control of another electrical circuit. ... Resistor symbols (non-European) Resistor symbols (Europe, IEC) Axial-lead resistors on tape. ... See Capacitor (component) for a discussion of specific types. ... A solder is a fusible metal alloy, with a melting point or melting range of 180-190°C (360-370 °F), which is melted to join metallic surfaces, especially in the fields of electronics and plumbing, in a process called soldering. ... The short ton is a unit of mass equal to 907. ... The kilowatt (symbol: kW) is a unit for measuring power, equal to one thousand watts. ... For other uses, see IBM (disambiguation) and Big Blue. ... A 407 at US Armys Redstone Arsenel in 1961. ...

ENIAC used ten-position ring counters to store digits; each digit used 36 tubes, 10 of which were the dual triodes making up the flip-flops of the ring counter. Arithmetic was performed by "counting" pulses with the ring counters and generating carry pulses if the counter "wrapped around", the idea being to emulate in electronics the operation of the digit wheels of a mechanical adding machine. ENIAC had twenty ten-digit signed accumulators that used ten's complement representation and could perform 5,000 simple addition or subtraction operations between any of them and a source (e.g., another accumulator, constant transmitter) every second (Note: It was possible to connect several accumulators to run simultaneously, so the peak speed of operation was potentially much higher due to parallel operation). It was possible to wire the carry of one accumulator into another to perform double precision arithmetic but the accumulator carry circuit timing prevented the wiring of three or more for higher precision. The ENIAC used four of the accumulators controlled by a special Multiplier unit and could perform 385 multiplication operations per second. The ENIAC used five of the accumulators controlled by a special Divider/Square-Rooter unit and could perform forty division operations per second or three square root operations per second. The other nine units in ENIAC were the Initiating Unit (started and stopped the machine), the Cycling Unit (synchronized the other units), the Master Programmer (controlled "loop" sequencing), the Reader (controlled an IBM punch card reader), the Printer (controlled an IBM punch card punch), the Constant Transmitter, and three Function Tables. A ring counter is a type of counter composed of a circular shift register. ... In digital circuits, the flip-flop, latch, or bistable multivibrator is an electronic circuit which has two stable states and thereby is capable of serving as one bit of memory. ... adding machine Older adding machine. ... In a computer CPU, an accumulator is a register in which intermediate arithmetic and logic results are stored. ... In mathematics and computing, the method of complements is a technique used to subtract one number from another using only addition of positive numbers. ... In computing, double precision is a computer numbering format that occupies two storage locations in computer memory at address and address+1. ... In mathematics, a square root of a number x is a number r such that , or in words, a number r whose square (the result of multiplying the number by itself) is x. ...

The ENIAC, at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering. (U.S. Army Photo)

The references by Rojas and Hashagen or (Wilkes 1956)^[3] give more details about the times for operations, which differ somewhat from those above. The basic machine cycle was 200 microseconds (20 cycles of the 100 kHz clock in the cycling unit), or 5,000 cycles per second for operations on the 10-digit numbers. In one of these cycles, ENIAC could write a number to a register, read a number from a register, or add/subtract two numbers. A multiplication of a 10-digit number by a d-digit number (for d up to 10) took d+4 cycles, so a 10- by 10-digit multiplication took 14 cycles, or 2800 microseconds—a rate of 357 per second. If one of the numbers had fewer than 10 digits, the operation was faster. Division and square roots took 13(d+1) cycles, where d is the number of digits in the result (quotient or square root). So a division or square root took up to 143 cycles, or 28,600 microseconds—a rate of 35 per second. (Wilkes 1956:20^[3] states that a division with a 10 digit quotient required 6 milliseconds.) If the result had fewer than ten digits, it was obtained faster. PD image of ENIAC Image from [1] Copyright info at [2] Of note, this is PD, provided the phrase U. S. Army Photo is along with the photo. ... PD image of ENIAC Image from [1] Copyright info at [2] Of note, this is PD, provided the phrase U. S. Army Photo is along with the photo. ... A microsecond is an SI unit of time equal to one millionth (10-6) of a second. ...

Reliability

ENIAC used common octal-base radio tubes of the day; the decimal accumulators were made of 6SN7 flip-flops, while 6L7s, 6SJ7s, 6SA7s and 6AC7s were used in logic functions. Numerous 6L6s and 6V6s served as line drivers to drive pulses through cables between rack assemblies. Left to right: octal (top and bottom view), loctal, and miniature (top and side view) sockets. ... In a computer CPU, an accumulator is a register in which intermediate arithmetic and logic results are stored. ... 6SN7 is a dual triode vacuum tube, on an 8 pin octal base. ... In digital circuits, the flip-flop, latch, or bistable multivibrator is an electronic circuit which has two stable states and thereby is capable of serving as one bit of memory. ... Pair of 6L6GC tubes: Left: General Electric version from 1960s Right: current manufacture from Svetlana Electron Devices, Russia 6L6 is the designator for a vacuum tube introduced by Radio Corporation of America in July 1936. ... 6V6 is the designator for a vacuum tube introduced by Radio Corporation of America RCA United States in late 1937. ...

Detail of the back of a section of ENIAC, showing vacuum tubes.

Some electronics experts predicted that tube failures would occur so frequently that the machine would never be useful. This prediction turned out to be partially correct: several tubes burned out almost every day, leaving it nonfunctional about half the time. Special high-reliability tubes were not available until 1948. Most of these failures, however, occurred during the warm-up and cool-down periods, when the tube heaters and cathodes were under the most thermal stress. By the simple (if expensive) expedient of never turning the machine off, the engineers reduced ENIAC's tube failures to the more acceptable rate of one tube every two days. According to a 1989 interview with Eckert the continuously failing tubes story was therefore mostly a myth: "We had a tube fail about every two days and we could locate the problem within 15 minutes." Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (880x802, 210 KB) Summary Detail of the back of a panel of ENIAC, showing vacuum tubes. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (880x802, 210 KB) Summary Detail of the back of a panel of ENIAC, showing vacuum tubes. ...

In 1954, the longest continuous period of operation without a failure was 116 hours (close to five days). This failure rate was remarkably low, and stands as a tribute to the precise engineering of ENIAC.
Year 1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Programmability

The six women who did most of the programming of ENIAC by manipulating its switches and cables were inducted in 1997 into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame [1]. As they were called by each other in 1946, they were Kay McNulty, Betty Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas and Ruth Lichterman. Kathleen Kay McNulty Mauchly Antonelli (February 12, 1921 – April 20, 2006) was one of the seven original programmers for the ENIAC computer. ... Jean Bartik (b. ... Betty Holberton is one of the original ENIAC crew. ... Marlyn Meltzer was one of the original programmers for the ENIAC computer. ... Two women operating the ENIACs main control panel. ... Ruth Teitelbaum (– 1986) was one of the original programmers for the ENIAC computer. ...

Eckert and Mauchly took the experience they gained and founded the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, producing their first computer, BINAC, in 1949 before being acquired by Remington Rand in 1950 and renamed as their UNIVAC division. The Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) was founded by J. Presper Eckert and John William Mauchly, and was incorporated on December 22, 1947. ... BINAC, the Binary Automatic Computer, was an early electronic computer designed for Northrop Aircraft Company by the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1949. ... Year 1949 (MCMXLIX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... A Remington Rand branded typewriter Remington Rand was an early American computer manufacturer, best known as the original maker of the UNIVAC I, and now part of Unisys. ... Year 1950 (MCML) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... UNIVAC serves as the catch-all name for the American manufacturers of the lines of mainframe computers by that name, which through mergers and acquisitions underwent numerous name changes. ...

ENIAC was a one-of-a-kind design and was never repeated. The freeze on design in 1943 meant that the computer had a number of shortcomings which were not included in the design, notably the inability to store a program. John von Neumann, who was consulting for the Moore School on the EDVAC (the ENIAC's successor computer for the BRL) and sat in on the Moore School meetings at which the stored program concept was elaborated, wrote up an incomplete set of notes (First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC) intended to be used as an internal memorandum describing, elaborating, and couching in formal logical language the ideas developed in the meetings. Herman Goldstine distributed copies of the First Draft to a number of government and educational institutions, spurring widespread interest in the construction of a new generation of electronic computing machines, including EDSAC and SEAC. For other persons named John Neumann, see John Neumann (disambiguation). ... The EDVAC as installed in Building 328 at the Ballistics Research Laboratory. ... The First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC (or First Draft) was an incomplete 101-page document written by John von Neumann and distributed on June 30, 1945 by Herman Goldstine, security officer on the classified ENIAC project. ... EDSAC EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) was an early British computer (one of the first computers to be created). ... SEAC (Standards Electronic/Eastern Automatic Computer) was a first-generation electronic computer, built in 1950 by the U.S. National Bureau of Standards (NBS) and was initially called the National Bureau of Standards Interim Computer, because it was a small-scale computer designed to be built quickly and put into...

A number of improvements were also made to ENIAC from 1948, including a primitive read-only stored programming mechanism [2] using the Function Tables as program ROM, an idea included in the ENIAC patent and proposed independently by Dr. Richard Clippinger of the BRL. Dick Clippinger consulted with John von Neumann on what instruction set to implement. Clippinger had thought of a 3-address architecture while von Neumann proposed a 1-address architecture because it was simpler to implement. Three digits of one accumulator (6) were used as the program counter, another accumulator (15) was used as the main accumulator, a third accumulator (8) was used as the address pointer for reading data from the function tables, and most of the other accumulators (1-5, 7, 9-14, 17-19) were used for data memory. The programming of the stored program for ENIAC was done by Betty Jennings, Dick Clippinger and Adele Goldstine. It was first demonstrated as a stored-program computer on September 16, 1948, running a program by Adele Goldstine for John von Neumann. This modification reduced the speed of ENIAC by a factor of six and eliminated the ability of parallel computation, but as it also reduced the reprogramming time to hours instead of days, it was considered well worth the loss of performance. Also analysis had shown that due to differences between the electronic speed of computation and the electromechanical speed of input/output, almost any practical real world problem was completely I/O bound even without making use of the original machine's parallelism and most would still be I/O bound even after the speed reduction from this modification. Early in 1952, a high speed shifter was added, which improved the speed for shifting by a factor of five. In July 1953, a 100-word expansion core memory was added to the system, using binary coded decimal, excess-3 number representation. To support this expansion memory, the ENIAC was equipped with a new Function Table selector, a memory address selector, pulse-shaping circuits, and three new orders were added to the programming mechanism. Year 1948 (MCMXLVIII) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display the 1948 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Read-only memory (usually known by its acronym, ROM) is a class of storage media used in computers and other electronic devices. ... is the 259th day of the year (260th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1948 (MCMXLVIII) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display the 1948 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Adele Goldstine (?-1964) wrote the complete technical description for the first digital computer, ENIAC. She went to University of Pennsylvania, and was married to Herman Goldstine. ... In computer science, IO bound refers to a condition in which the time it takes to complete a computation is determined principally by the period of time spent waiting for Input/output operations to be completed. ... Year 1952 (MCMLII) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... January 7 - President Harry S. Truman announces the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb. ... A 16×16 cm area core memory plane of 128×128 bits, i. ... Binary-coded decimal (BCD) is a numeral system used in computing and in electronics systems. ... Excess-3 binary coded decimal (XS-3) is a numeral system used in some old computers. ...

Comparison with other early computers

Main article: History of computing hardware

Mechanical and electrical computing machines have been around since the 19th century, but the 1930s and 40s are considered the beginning of the modern computer era. Computing hardware has been an important component of the process of calculation and computer data storage since it became useful for numerical values to be processed and shared. ...

• The American Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) (shown working in December 1939) was the first electronic digital computer. It implemented binary computation with vacuum tubes but was not general purpose, being limited to solving systems of linear equations. It also did not exploit electronic computing speeds, being limited by a rotating capacitor drum memory and an input-output system that was intended to write intermediate results to paper cards.
• The German Z3 (shown working in May 1941) was designed by Konrad Zuse. It was the first general-purpose digital computer, but it was electromechanical, rather than electronic, as it used relays for all functions. Like the ABC, it computed logically using binary math. Unlike the ABC, it was Turing-complete and fully programmable by punched tape.
• The British Colossus computer (shown working in 1943) was designed by Tommy Flowers. Colossus was digital, all-electronic, and could be reprogrammed by rewiring, but was not fully general purpose as it was not Turing-complete.
• Howard Aiken's 1944 Harvard Mark I was programmed by punched tape and used relays.

The ABC, ENIAC and Colossus all used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes). ENIAC's registers performed decimal arithmetic, rather than binary arithmetic like the Z3 or the Atanasoff-Berry Computer. Atanasoff–Berry Computer replica at 1st floor of Durham Center, Iowa State University The Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) was the first electronic digital computing device. ... In electronics, a vacuum tube (American English) or (thermionic) valve (British English) is a device generally used to amplify a signal. ... See Capacitor (component) for a discussion of specific types. ... Konrad Zuses Z3 was the first working programmable, fully automatic machine, whose attributes, with the addition of conditional branching, have often been the ones used as criteria in defining a computer. ... Statue in Bad Hersfeld Konrad Zuse (June 22, 1910 Berlin - December 18, 1995 Hünfeld) was a German engineer and computer pioneer. ... Automotive style miniature relay A relay is an electrical switch that opens and closes under the control of another electrical circuit. ... In computability theory a programming language or any other logical system is called Turing-complete if it has a computational power equivalent to a universal Turing machine. ... A Colossus Mark II computer. ... Thomas (Tommy) Harold Flowers, MBE (22 December 1905 – 28 October 1998) was a British engineer. ... Harvard Mark I / IBM ASCC, left side. ... Portion of the Harvard-IBM Mark 1, left side. ... The binary numeral system, or base-2 number system, is a numeral system that represents numeric values using two symbols, usually 0 and 1. ... This article is about the engineering discipline. ... A computer program is a collection of instructions that describe a task, or set of tasks, to be carried out by a computer. ... For the usage of this term in Turing reductions, see Turing complete set. ... Statue in Bad Hersfeld Konrad Zuse (June 22, 1910 Berlin - December 18, 1995 Hünfeld) was a German engineer and computer pioneer. ... Konrad Zuses Z3 was the first working programmable, fully automatic machine, whose attributes, with the addition of conditional branching, have often been the ones used as criteria in defining a computer. ... Film stock is the term for photographic film on which films are recorded. ... Konrad Zuses Z3 was the first working programmable, fully automatic machine, whose attributes, with the addition of conditional branching, have often been the ones used as criteria in defining a computer. ... Atanasoff–Berry Computer replica at 1st floor of Durham Center, Iowa State University The Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) was the first electronic digital computing device. ... A Colossus Mark II computer. ... Portion of the Harvard-IBM Mark 1, left side. ... Konrad Zuses Z3 was the first working programmable, fully automatic machine, whose attributes, with the addition of conditional branching, have often been the ones used as criteria in defining a computer. ... Read-only memory (usually known by its acronym, ROM) is a class of storage media used in computers and other electronic devices. ... Structure of a vacuum tube diode Structure of a vacuum tube triode In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube, or (outside North America) thermionic valve or just valve, is a device used to amplify, switch or modify a signal by controlling the movement of electrons in an evacuated space. ...

Until 1948, ENIAC required rewiring to reprogram, like the Colossus. The idea of the stored-program computer with combined memory for program and data was conceived during the development of the ENIAC, but it was not implemented at that time because World War II priorities required the machine to be completed quickly, and it was realized that 20 storage locations for memory and programs would be much too small.

Public knowledge

Sign outside the University of Pennsylvania

The Z3 and Colossus were developed independent of ENIAC and the ABC during World War II. The Z3 was destroyed by Allied bombing of Berlin in 1944. The Colossus machines were part of the UK's war effort, and were destroyed in 1945 to maintain secrecy. Their existence only became generally known in the 1970s, though knowledge of their capabilities remained among their UK staff and invited Americans. The ABC was dismantled by Iowa State University, after John Atanasoff was called to Washington, D.C. to do physics research for the U.S. Navy. ENIAC, by contrast, was put through its paces for the press in 1946, "and captured the world's imagination".^[4] Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 450 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (1944 × 2592 pixel, file size: 658 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Taken on the sidewalk outside the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the Univ. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 450 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (1944 × 2592 pixel, file size: 658 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Taken on the sidewalk outside the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the Univ. ... Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Iowa State University of Science and Technology (ISU) is a public land-grant and space-grant university located in Ames, Iowa, USA. Until 1959 it was known as Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. ... John Vincent Atanasoff (October 4, 1903-June 15, 1995) was a prominent American computer engineer of Bulgarian and Irish origin. ... For other uses, see Washington, D.C. (disambiguation). ...

Older histories of computing may therefore not be comprehensive in their coverage and analysis of this period.

Patent

Main article: Honeywell v. Sperry Rand

For a variety of reasons (including Mauchly's June 1941 examination of the Atanasoff–Berry Computer, prototyped in 1939 by John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry), the patent for the ENIAC, granted in 1964, was voided by the 1973 decision of the landmark federal court case Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, putting the invention of the electronic digital computer in the public domain and providing legal recognition to Atanasoff as the inventor of the electronic digital computer. Honeywell, Inc. ... Atanasoff–Berry Computer replica at 1st floor of Durham Center, Iowa State University The Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) was the first electronic digital computing device. ... John Vincent Atanasoff (October 4, 1903-June 15, 1995) was a prominent American computer engineer of Bulgarian and Irish origin. ... Clifford E. Berry (April 19, 1918 – October 30, 1963) helped John Vincent Atanasoff create the first digital electronic computers in 1939 — the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC). ... Honeywell, Inc. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...

Parts on display

Four ENIAC panels and one of its three function tables, on display at the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania

The School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania has four of the original forty panels and one of the three function tables of the ENIAC. The Smithsonian has five panels in the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California has a single panel on display. The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor has four panels, salvaged by Arthur Burks. The U.S. Army Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, where ENIAC was used, has one of the function tables. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (2592x1952, 1790 KB) Summary Two pieces of ENIAC currently on display in the Moore School of Engineering and Applied Science, in room 100 of the Moore building. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (2592x1952, 1790 KB) Summary Two pieces of ENIAC currently on display in the Moore School of Engineering and Applied Science, in room 100 of the Moore building. ... This article is about the private Ivy League university in Philadelphia. ... This article is about the private Ivy League university in Philadelphia. ... The Smithsonian Institution Building or Castle on the National Mall serves as the Institutions headquarters. ... The National Museum of American History is a museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution and located in Washington, D.C., on the National Mall. ... The Computer History Museum in Mountain View. ... The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (U of M, UM or simply Michigan) is a coeducational public research university in the state of Michigan, and one of the foremost universities in the United States. ... Arthur Walter Burks (born October 13, 1915 in Duluth, Minnesota) is an American mathematician who in the 1940s as a senior engineer on the project contributed to the design of the ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. ... The U.S. Army Ordnance Museum is a museum located at Aberdeen Proving Ground, in Aberdeen, Maryland. ... Aberdeen Proving Ground is a United States Army facility located at Aberdeen, Maryland (in Harford county). ... Official language(s) None (English, de facto) Capital Annapolis Largest city Baltimore Largest metro area Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area Area  Ranked 42nd  - Total 12,407 sq mi (32,133 km²)  - Width 101 miles (145 km)  - Length 249 miles (400 km)  - % water 21  - Latitude 37° 53′ N to 39° 43′ N...

As of 2004, a chip of silicon measuring 0.02 inches (0.5 mm) square holds the same capacity as the ENIAC, which occupied a large room. 2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

See also

• History of computing
• Other early computers:
  • Atanasoff–Berry Computer
  • Colossus computer
  • CSIRAC
  • Harvard Mark I
  • Manchester Mark I
  • IBM SSEC
  • Z3

The history of computing is longer than the history of computing hardware and modern computing technology and includes the history of methods intended for pen and paper or for chalk and slate, with or without the aid of tables. ... Atanasoff–Berry Computer replica at 1st floor of Durham Center, Iowa State University The Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) was the first electronic digital computing device. ... A Colossus Mark II computer. ... CSIRAC (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Automatic Computer), originally known as CSIR Mk I, was Australias first digital computer, and the fifth stored program computer in the world and presently the oldest intact (albeit inoperable) digital computer in the world. ... Portion of the Harvard-IBM Mark 1, left side. ... Manchester Mark 1 was the worlds first stored program computer, which made its first successful run of a program on 21st June 1948 The Manchester Mark I was one of the earliest electronic computers, built at the University of Manchester in England, in 1949. ... The IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC), also called Poppa, was an electomechanical computer built by IBM, finished in January 1948. ... Konrad Zuses Z3 was the first working programmable, fully automatic machine, whose attributes, with the addition of conditional branching, have often been the ones used as criteria in defining a computer. ...

References

Herman Heine Goldstine (September 13, 1913 – June 16, 2004) was one of the original developers of ENIAC. He worked closely with John von Neumann. ... Maurice V. Wilkes Maurice Vincent Wilkes (born June 26, 1913 in Dudley, Staffordshire, England) is a British computer scientist, credited with several important developments in computing. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ... is the 163rd day of the year (164th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Herman Heine Goldstine (September 13, 1913 – June 16, 2004) was one of the original developers of ENIAC. He worked closely with John von Neumann. ... Adele Goldstine (?-1964) wrote the complete technical description for the first digital computer, ENIAC. She went to University of Pennsylvania, and was married to Herman Goldstine. ... Eckert and Mauchly examine a printout of ENIAC results in a newsreel from February 1946. ... Eckert and Mauchly examine a printout of ENIAC results in a newsreel from February 1946. ... Academic Press (London, New York and San Diego) was an academic book publisher that is now part of Elsevier. ... Los Alamos National Laboratory, aerial view from 1995. ... Arthur Walter Burks (born October 13, 1915 in Duluth, Minnesota) is an American mathematician who in the 1940s as a senior engineer on the project contributed to the design of the ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. ... Alice Rowe Burks (b. ... Eckert and Mauchly examine a printout of ENIAC results in a newsreel from February 1946. ... Eckert and Mauchly examine a printout of ENIAC results in a newsreel from February 1946. ...

Further reading

Joseph Henry Joseph Henry (December 17, 1797 – May 13, 1878) was a Scottish-American scientist who served as the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. ... Herman Lukoff, a computer pioneer, was born on May 2, 1923, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ...

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

ENIAC

• Mike Muuss: Collected ENIAC documents
• ENIAC chapter in Karl Kempf, Electronic Computers Within The Ordnance Corps, November 1961
• The ENIAC Story, Martin H. Weik, Ordnance Ballistic Research Laboratories, 1961
• ENIAC museum at the University of Pennsylvania
• The women of ENIAC
• ENIAC—monster and marvel 60th anniversary news story
• Interview with Eckert Transcript of a video interview with Eckert by David Allison for the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution on February 2, 1988. An in-depth, technical discussion on the ENIAC, including the thought process behind the design.
• Q&A: A lost interview with ENIAC co-inventor J. Presper Eckert
• ENIAC specifications from Ballistic Research Laboratories Report No. 971 December 1955, (A Survey of Domestic Electronic Digital Computing Systems)
• U.S. Patent 3,120,606  issued in 1964 for ENIAC (TIFF images), also PDF version (18,305 kB, 207 pages)
• How the ENIAC took a Square Root
• ENIAC simulator
• Programming example for the modulo function by Matthieu-P. Schapranow based on the simulation of Till Zoppke (en)
• ENIAC-on-a-Chip
• Programming the ENIAC

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