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| Washington Evening Star, 14-February-1946 |
ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was a general-purpose computer that was digital, programmable and fully electronic. It may have been the first device to meet all those criteria. It was not a complete modern computer because it was programmed at least in part by configuring cables and switches boards. A group of women, called operators, did all the programming. It took weeks to enter and then debug complex problems.
30-Ton Electronic Calculator
Uses Ancient Abacus Principle
By The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 15.—By combining the centuries-old abacus
with the latest in electronics, the Army came up today with a 30-ton
monster it calls “the world’s fastest calculating machine.”
It cost $400,000, including research and development work, but future models can be built “much
more cheaply,” the Army said.
Known as the “eniac”—for “electronic numerical integrator and computer”—it was designed and
constructed for the Army by scientists of the University of Pennsylvania’s
Moore School of Electrical Engineering. It will be formally dedicated tonight.
Military and university engineers said the contraption, which virtually fills a large-size room, can solve in
hours problems that “would take years” on any other machine.
It can compute in one second the sum of a five-digit number added to itself 5,000 times. It subtracts,
divides, multiplies, extracts square roots and does complex equations. The machine originally was
intended to furnish faster means of computing complicated problems in ballistics, the mathematics of
weapons.
But the scientists said it might assist weather forecasters, industrial designers,' construction engineers, astronomers, medical
research scientists and atomic physicists.
The machine was invented by Dr. J. W. Mauchly and J. P. Eckert, Jr. While it operates entirely by electronics and contains no moving
mechanical parts it employs the basic principle of the "abacus”—a counting board still in use by some
Chinese laundrymen in this country.
The “abacus” utilizes beadlike counters strung on parallel rods or wires. The “eniac” has thousands of tiny neon light bulbs, arranged
in rows of 10 like the beads of an abacus.
When punched cards containing holes corresponding to arithmetical numbers are fed into the "eniac” the light bulbs flash on and off in
proper combinations.
Fast-moving electrons, fed at the rate of 5,000 a second, activate the machine and an arrangement of electrical circuits determines
whether a problem in addition, subtraction, division, multiplication or square rooting is to be done. Answers to problems pop out of the machine
on other punched cards.
