When the ENIAC electronic computer was completed in 1945 at the University of Pennsylvania, it utterly transformed ideas about what computers could be capable of. Developed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly over 3 years, this pioneering achievement broke through existing limitations in mechanical calculation technology.
Weighing an astonishing 30 tons and occupying a large room, this ambitious project not only computed numeric problems over 1,000 times faster than previous electro-mechanical machines. But its versatile electronic architecture demonstrated for the first time the feasibility of an all-purpose, programmable computer solving complex equations across disciplines like physics, weather science, aeronautics and more.
ENIAC‘s incredible speed and flexibility made front-page news that dazzled the public imagination about computing‘s future potential in postwar society. And this groundbreaking project established fundamental concepts like vacuum tubes for processing, parallel computing modules, and digital accumulation registers that evolved into central processors powering modern computers.
So let‘s dive into the untold story around this special machine at the genesis of today‘s digital world…
History Behind the ENIAC Project
Mathematician John Mauchly first envisioned an electronic computing device after seeing early 1930s analyzer machines at the American Academy of Sciences. In 1940 he wrote a proposal for using vacuum tube counting circuits to create a vastly faster calculating machine.
The U.S. military was investing heavily in computing technology during World War II for the daunting project of producing artillery firing tables to target weapons accurately. After seeing a demo of Mauchly‘s ideas, the Army‘s Ballistics Research Laboratory (BRL) secured funding for his concept as a potential breakthrough to replace tedious manual calculation methods.
Table 1: Key Details on the ENIAC Project
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Developers | J. Presper Eckert & John Mauchly |
| Location | Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania |
| Timeline | Funded in 1943 Completed in late 1945 * Unveiled in Feb 1946 |
| Dimensions | 30 tons weight 1700 sq ft size |
| Components | 18,000 vacuum tubes 70,000 resistors * 5 million solder points |
| Compute Speed | 5000 additions/sub per second 1000x faster than electro-mechanical machines |
| Funding | * $500,000 from military (Over $6 million today) |
Mauchly recruited brilliant 24-year old engineer J. Presper Eckert to lead development of the machine as Chief Engineer. Laboring over 12-hour days in a small room at Penn, their team spent a year meticulously designing blueprints for the project they dubbed "Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer", or ENIAC.
You might be wondering – why was the military so interested in funding such an unprecedented computing initiative?
Image: "Computer operators" with ENIAC, circa 1946 [Public Domain]
At the time, producing a single artillery firing table required nearly a month of tedious numerical analysis by humans. So-called "computers" – mostly women using desk calculators – worked out long differential equations to trace projectile trajectories under varied conditions.
ThisSinglesource manual number crunching severely limited development of advanced new artillery targeting systems essential for the war effort. The Army recognized ENIAC‘s proposed electronic architecture could accelerate the speed, scale and complexity of ballistics computations to an unimaginable level compared to human capabilities.
Construction formally began in early 1944. But over nearly 2 years of intense work, Eckert and Mauchly overcame many daunting engineering obstacles erecting this unprecedented computer system from scratch…
ENIAC‘s Pioneering Technical Architecture
To appreciate ENIAC‘s massive leap, you must understand what computing technology of the 1940s entailed…
