John MauchlyENIAC computer

Aras Bilgen

John William Mauchly

• Born on 30 August 1907 in Cincinnati, Ohio

• Brought up in a scientist communitydue to his father's job

• Undergraduate as EE in John Hopkins,then physics PhD

• Married in 1930• Started teaching physics in Ursinus College in 1940• Went to Upenn to learn more about electronics• The mind behind the idea of a general purpose computer• Died January 9, 1980 in Ambler, Pennsylvania

Interests

• Tennis, walk in the woods, Edgar Allan Poe stories

• Used a jet propelled skateboard to demonstrate Newton's principles in the class

• Keeps daily notes and even records his sleep

• Felt that "engineering was mundane", and enrolled directly in PhD in physics

• Statistics and cryptography

• Attempts to develop analog electronic instruments suitable for specific lines of research

ENIAC: Definition

• Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer

• Known as Project PX in the military circles

• 2.5 meters high, 30.5 meters wide, 0.9 meter deep

• Weighs 30 tons

• 17,468 electronic vacuum

tubes, 70,000 registers

in thirty different units

• Programmed by wiring these thirty units in sequence

• 5,000 additions and 300 multiplications per second

ENIAC: Importance

• ENIAC is the first general purpose computing device• It laid the foundations for the modern electronic

computing industry as we know it today• Demonstrated that high-speed, reliable digital

computing was possible using the vacuum tubes• Integrated components to come up with an

architecture to do general computing• Reliable computer that has less need to tend than

its counterparts of the time

ENIAC: History

• Built in Moore School of Engineering, Upenn– Started as an effort of Mauchly due to the fact that he does

not have enough resources for his meteorological studies– Driven by his two year undergraduate experience, he took

a summer course on electronics in Upenn and he is later appointed

• 1942: first ideas of ENIAC– He envisioned a true general calculator, rather than just a

trajectory table processor• April 1943: Project PX starts, Army supports with

$500.000– However, due to his academic duties, he is titled only as a

"consultant" to the project• February 14, 1946: ENIAC is announced publicly

Relevant people to ENIAC

• John Presper Eckert– Lab assistant in the summer electronics course

– Very close friends with him

– Implementer of the physical architecture and circuitry

– In other words, he made the machine

• Lt. Herman Goldstine– The military contact for the project

• John Atasanoff and Clifford Berry

• John Von Neumann

The other two computer guys• Atasanoff and Berry

– John Vincent Atasanoff, in Iowa State university, built an electronic computer with his grad student Clifford Berry

– Summer 1941: Mauchly visits Atasanoff to look at the machine• This visit is similar to Steve Jobs' visit to PARC• They both saw that the things in their minds were doable

– Atasanoff's ABC is a linear equation solver, still a specialized machine

• Von Neumann– A mathematician from Princeton, who was interested in the EDVAC,

the stored program version of ENIAC– First one to produce a report outlining the details of EDVAC, thus the

first one to present the idea to the scientific world– His studies influenced the work at Los Alamos on nuclear weapons – Today, he is known as the father of the de facto architecture for

computers

After ENIAC• 1946: Eckert and Mauchly left Upenn due to patent issues, and

founded Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation• They started to work on BINAC, later UNIVAC, the next version

of ENIAC– 2.25 MHz, serial computation, strong input output, significantly

faster than ENIAC– US Census Bureau bought the first machine, 45 produced later

• Remington Rand bought the company in 1950• He was not able to bring up his project as an independent

product– It was a war project at the beginning– Remington Rand (now Unisys) was a corporate place, marketing

and development teams took over• But he saw the need of consultancy for digital computing and

founded Mauchly Associates in 1959.

Did he do it?

• Did he do it? A question asked for any invention…• Back at that time, the inventors

were attributed with the ideas• The implementation mattered,

and the theory was neglected• People thought that new ideas

came from implementations,not previous ideas or theories

• So, Mauchly was not attributed as the inventor, but had to share it with his colleague, Eckert.

Conclusion

• Mauchly still remains one of the known inventors of ENIAC.

• He primarily built the idea, and Eckert primarily built the machine.

• They undoubtedly built upon others ideas, just the same was as their ideas were later built upon.

• Mauchly also saw the application area of his computer, and pursued the opportunity by setting up a consultancy firm.

• He was a successful inventor, for he knew to hold on to his idea and brought it to life.

References

• http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/rbm/mauchly/jwmintro.html• http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/

Mauchly.html• http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa060298.htm• http://www.wired.com/news/roadtrip/0,2640,61070-2,00.html• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC• http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/mauchly-eckert.html• http://www.ieee-virtual-museum.org/collection/people.php?

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