<
computer> (ENIAC) The first
electronic digital computer and
an ancestor of most computers in use today. ENIAC was
developed by Dr.
John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert during
World War II at the Moore School of the {University of
Pennsylvania}.
In 1940 Dr.
John Vincent Atanasoff attended a lecture by
Mauchly
and subsequently agreed to show him his binary
calculator, the
Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC), which was
partially built between 1937-1942. Mauchly used ideas from
the ABC in the design of ENIAC, which was started in June 1943
and released publicly in 1946.
ENIAC was not the first digital
computer,
Konrad Zuse's
Z3
was released in 1941. Though, like the ABC, the Z3 was
electromechanical rather than
electronic, it was freely
programmable via paper tape whereas ENIAC was only
programmable by manual rewiring or switches. Z3 used binary
representation like modern computers whereas ENIAC used
decimal like mechanical calculators.
ENIAC was underwritten
and its development overseen by
Lieutenant Herman Goldstine of the U.S. Army Ballistic
Research Laboratory (BRL). While the prime motivation for
constructing the machine was to automate the wartime
production of firing
and bombing tables, the very first
program run on ENIAC was a highly classified computation
for Los Alamos. Later applications included weather
prediction, cosmic ray studies, wind tunnel design,
petroleum exploration,
and optics.
ENIAC had 20
registers made entirely from
vacuum tubes.
It had no other no memory as we currently understand it. The
machine performed an addition in 200
microseconds, a
multiplication in about three
milliseconds,
and a division
in about 30 milliseconds.
John von Neumann, a world-renowned mathematician serving on
the BRL Scientific Advisory Committee, soon joined the
developers of ENIAC
and made some critical contributions.
While Mauchly, Eckert
and the Penn team continued on the
technological problems, he, Goldstine,
and others took up the
logical problems.
In 1947, while working on the design for the successor
machine, EDVAC, von Neumann realized that ENIAC's lack of a
central control unit could be overcome to obtain a rudimentary
stored program
computer (see the Clippinger reference below).
Modifications were undertaken that eventually led to an
instruction set of 92 "orders".
Von Neumann also proposed
the
fetch-execute cycle.
[
R. F. Clippinger, "A Logical Coding System Applied to the
ENIAC", Ballistic Research Laboratory Report No. 673, Aberdeen
Proving Ground, MD, September 1948.
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computermike/comphist/48eniac-coding">http://ftp.arl.mil/Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computermike/comphist/48eniac-coding].
[H. H. Goldstine, "The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann",
Princeton University Press, 1972].
[K. Kempf, "Electronic Computers within the Ordnance Corps",
Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, 1961.
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computermike/comphist/61ordnance">http://ftp.arl.mil/Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computermike/comphist/61ordnance].
[M. H. Weik, "The ENIAC Story", J. American Ordnance Assoc.,
1961. Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computermike/comphist/eniac-story.html">http://ftp.arl.mil/Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computermike/comphist/eniac-story.html].
[How "general purpose" was ENIAC, compared to Zuse's Z3?]
(2003-10-01)