ENIAC stood for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer and was the first electronic digital computer. It was created by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert in 1945. It was Turing-complete and was capable of solving a wide variety of numerical problems. Although other computers had similar features, ENIAC had the complete package.
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, was the first all-purpose digital computer. It was developed by electrical engineer John Presper Eckert and physicist J. Presper Eckert during World War II. It was completed in November 1945.
The ENIAC, which stood for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, was a machine that could solve 5,000 addition problems in one second. This was faster than any machine created up to that point. However, it took almost half a million dollars to build and was a massive undertaking. It also required over 200,000 person-hours of labor.
ENIAC was the world’s first general-purpose electronic digital computer
The ENIAC was the world’s first computer, and it made it possible to do complex calculations at an astounding speed. Initially built by six women, the ENIAC’s six programmers included a maths graduate, a physics professor, and a professor of electrical engineering. The women’s contribution to the design of the ENIAC was immense.
The ENIAC was the first computer to have a graphical display. This was an essential breakthrough for computing in the 1940s. It was also the first computer to have programmable memory. This meant that the computer could be programmed to perform various functions without the need to read data. This is how modern computers work.
The ENIAC cost more than $500,000 to build and consisted of twenty autonomous units. Each accumulator was a ten-digit adding machine, and each accumulator had a divider-square rooter. The multiplier employed a resistor matrix to perform one-digit multiplications and had additional circuitry to multiply successive digits drawn from two accumulators.
John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert built it.
To create the ENIAC, two men had to work around the clock seven days a week. They had to make sure it was finished in time for the war. They even had to share meals with an army captain who was the liaison between the research team and the military sponsors. The research team had a limited budget and could only hire the most junior staff from the University of Pennsylvania. In the end, Eckert’s team built an 8-foot-tall, 80-foot-long machine.
The ENIAC was a one-of-a-kind machine and has never been matched. However, despite its revolutionary design, ENIAC had several shortcomings, notably that it could not store a program. Eckert and Mauchly, therefore, began working on a new design, later known as EDVAC, to solve these problems. The pair described a mercury delay line memory unit that would hold the data and program.
It used vacuum tubes.
The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was the first computer that used vacuum tubes. The ENIAC was a machine with over 18,000 vacuum tubes, over 70,000 resistors, capacitors, relays, 6,000 manual switches, and hundreds of thousands of soldered joints. The machine was enormous, taking up about 1800 square feet of floor space and consuming more than 160 kilowatts of electrical power. While the ENIAC didn’t work perfectly at first, it did eventually set the standard for future computers.
Vacuum tubes were used in almost every computer until the 1950s. The tube was shaped like a human thumb and worked by heating the filament inside to red, which released electrons. Other elements in the tube controlled the flow of electrons to a positive plate.
It was programmable
The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) was the first programmable electronic digital computer. The ENIAC was initially designed to calculate the firing tables for artillery. Its invention changed many fields and saved many lives. The machine was a great help to the United States Air Force and improved airplane design and missile technology.
Eniac was publicly unveiled in Philadelphia on February 14, 1946. The following year, Eckert delivered a lecture explaining the computer’s capabilities. He also proposed replacing three different types of memory with one. He then invented a mercury delay-line memory, which was a crucial step in developing the stored-program computer. The ENIAC was subsequently converted into an elementary stored-program computer in 1947.
A call for “computers” was issued by the Army in 1945. The Army, which had begun developing computers for military use, enlisted several women to help with the project. Some of these women studied mathematics, while others studied journalism or engineering. The programmers had to adjust switches and cables to make them work manually. It took days to set up a single calculation. Some programs required weeks or months to implement.
