An Exhibition in the... by shiran_d
An Exhibition in the Department of Special Collections Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania.
The year 1996 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the ENIAC computer, the first large-scale general-purpose electronic computer. Built at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering, ENIAC is an acronym for 'Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer,' but its birth lay in World War II as a classified military project known only as Project PX. The ENIAC is important historically, because it laid the foundations for the modern electronic computing industry. More than any other machine, the ENIAC demonstrated that high-speed digital computing was possible using the then-available vacuum tube technology.
My cusin is one of the a lectures of this Universtiy. I was previladged to be a visitor to the exibition room where the ENIAC housed.
The world greates mordern invention. I than to the masters for making our life simpler. Open for disscusions please write if you feel I am wrong in stating these words.
God bless our world and lets all live with love and peace. Human kind is the greates of all creations.Reading the making of the world's first computer.
ENIAC, the Electrical Numerical Integrator and Computer, was not the first computer developed, but it opened the door for everything that would follow.
Weighing in at just over 30 tons with 18,000 vacuum tubes, 1500 relays and hundreds of thousands of resistors, capacitors and inductors it was the first multipurpose computer. Within a decade commercial uses of computers were introduced and it was largely due to the pioneering accomplishments of ENIAC.
John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert would have made Charles Babbage proud with their invention of the ENIAC. Babbage had envisioned a device that could do multiple types of calculations. Other computers of the time all had specific functions.
For example, the British computer Colossus was designed specifically to crack the NAZI codes during the war. But ENIAC could be programmed to perform different functions. It was also fast. It could add 5,000 numbers or do 14 ten digit multiplications in a second. While this is slow by modern standards it was incredible for the 1940s.