ENIAC Developed

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), unveiled in February 1946, was the prototype from which modern computers evolved. Developed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania, ENIAC is commonly called the first general-purpose electronic and digital computer. Laying the foundation for modern computing, ENIAC demonstrated that high-speed digital computing was possible with vacuum tubes. Considered “the first digital computer, [it] weighed over thirty tons, consumed 200 kilowatts of electrical power, and contained around 19,000 vacuum tubes that got very hot very fast, and as a result constantly burned out, making it very unreliable.” Commissioned in 1943, ENIAC was financed by the United States Army, Ordnance Corps during WWII to calculate artillery firing tables. Thus, the history of computing coincides with the military and warfare, which will continue for the several decades. It would not be until the late 1970s that computers would lose the air of mystery and fear that largely surrounded them with the advent of personal computers and video games.

Famously it was six women who programmed it, known as the ENIAC Six: Kathleen McNulty, Jean Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Frances Bilas and Ruth Lichterman. They set up the trajectory calculation shown at the February 1946 unveiling despite not even being introduced at the event.