The First Computer

The first computer, ENIAC is short for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer. It was conceived and designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania. Supposedly 1000 times faster than any mechanical calculus machine it had a variety of uses (the US Army being the main sponsor of the project).

The construction was started in 1943 during the World War II at University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering under the codename ‘Project PX’. At 14 February 1946, after costing about 50.000 $ (about 6 million $ in 2008 if you adjust it for inflation) ENIAC was finished and passed to the US Army. For its time it was an incredibly fast computer, although some of its components might seem at least strange. It was built from 7.200 crystal diodes, 70.000 resistors, 1.500 relays, 10.000 capacitors and 17.468 vacuum tubes.

It had a weight of about 30 tons and a size of 2.6m x 0.9m x 26m, needed a space of about 63 square meters and consumed 150 KW of power. Because the vacuum tubes technology was not the most reliable, for most of its time the ENIAC would usually crash once every two days until 1948 when high reliability tubes became available. The computer could be programmed to perform complex calculations, but usually they would take weeks to write on paper and at least a few days to program the actual machine itself. There were 6 women that did most of the programming itself, all of them being included in the Women in Technology Hall of Fame.

One of its main flaws was that it didn’t have a memory, thus all the input and output was made on magnetic cards. Eckert and Mauchly, being aware of the downsides of the ENIAC started designing a new super computer that would be later called EDVAC, a computer both faster and simpler. From 1948 until its release in 1955 a number of improvements were made to the original ENIAC design.

These included an early read only mechanism that would allow the computer to store data, a high speed shifter that was added in 1952 which improved the speed of shifting by an almost 5 factor. In 1943 another upgrade that included a 100 word expansion memory was added. It used binary and decimal code and excess-3 number representation. Also a new Function Table selector was added to support all the new addictions.

On the 2nd of October 1955 it became obsolete and was donated to the University of Pennsylvania where some of the ENIAC panels still are on display.

In the end the question remains: Who made the first computer? Although it was their design, the University of Pennsylvania cannot take full credit when it comes to the development of the first computer. After a 6 year lasting World War II the US Army acknowledged the importance of information and logistics, thus investing a huge amount of manpower and money into the first fully electronic computer: the ENIAC. The US Army is more likely to be called the first computer supporters.

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