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What was 150 feet long, weighed over 30 tons, had 18,000 vacuum
tubes and could heat a room to 120 degrees? It was the Electronic
Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), the first general-purpose computing
device. ENIAC was first used in U.S. government project test runs
in 1945.
Although
it could be outperformed by a 1970's calculator, required 200
people to operate, took up to two days to program by plugging
80 feet of cable into switches, and did not have memory, it is
considered the prototype from which other modern computers evolved.
ENIAC
inventors, Dr. John W. Mauchly and John Presper Eckert, Jr., will
be honored posthumously in this year's class of patent holders
to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
ENIAC
was not the first computer, nor the first electronic computing
device. But, it was the first electronic device designed to carry
out general-purpose computation. It could add, subtract, multiply,
divide and extract square roots, as well as predict weather, calculate
atomic energy, study cosmic rays and thermal ignition, and random
number studies, wind tunnel design and other scientific uses.
ENIAC was 1,000 times faster than previous electromechanical calculators.
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ENIAC Data Translating Device
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