Interview with One of ENIACs Inventors

deeptrace writes "On the 60th anniversary of the ENIAC an old family friend of 'Pres' Eckert transcribed some interviews recorded before his death. Very interesting reading. They dispel a few myths, such as the lights didn't really dim when they turned it on, and the military officers did not salute ENIAC."

ARRRR, MATEY!

[Omikr0n]

It's just a darn shame they stole all that technology, eh? Although Eckert disputes it at the end of the interview, the court found that: "...John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry had constructed the first electronic digital computer at Iowa State College in the 1939 - 1942 period. He had also ruled that John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, who had for more than twenty-five years been feted, trumpeted, and honored as the co-inventors of the first electronic digital computer, were not entitled to the patent upon which that honor was based. Furthermore, Judge Larson had ruled that Mauchly had pirated Atanasoff's ideas, and for more than thirty years had palmed those ideas off on the world as the product of his own genius." Full Q&A can be found here: http://www.scl.ameslab.gov/ABC/Trial.html [ameslab.gov] Court documents can be found here: http://www.cs.iastate.edu/jva/court-papers/index.s html [iastate.edu]

Bletchley Park

[Burb]

Or for that matter, the perennial controversy over whether honours for first digital computer should go to the British working at Bletchley Park on the Enigma decoders. I don't have a bias here (well, not much), but you need to remember that there were a several teams working on electronic digital computing around the world, and many of them were top-secret projects.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Bletchley Park

[Hurricane78]

Yeah! The guys at Microsoft Encarta did know this for years and released it often enough!

Ignorant America

[lightyear4]

I was born and live in the US, read world news, am routinely disgusted with the actions of my government, and yet I knew ENIAC was far from the first digital computer. Yet, Americans are not ignorant through and through, you know. The difference between myself and the bulk of my compatriots? I read, I avoid the american news networks and print media for international news, and steer clear of that myopic belief that the US = the world. There's still hope.

Re:Bletchley Park

[Brain_Recall]

The parent is of course refering to Colossus, which electronically replicated the Lorenze machine. (Lorenze machines worked on a similar mechanical-encryption principle as Enigma's, except they were larger, staionary machines intended for base-to-base encryption.) By the end of WWII there were ten Colossi in operation decrypting large spools of paper-tape recordings.

However, even if they may be the first true-digital computers, they were kept secret far after the war, so thier potential influence is moot.

ht [wikipedia.org]

Re:Bletchley Park

[ch-chuck]

Well, another contender for the 1st crown is the Konrad Zuse Z3 [tu-berlin.de], recognition being largely obscured by fact of being on the losing side of the war.

Re:Bletchley Park

[Hurricane78]

As far as i know Z was the third one from Mr. Zuse. So i think Z1 was the first one? At least that's what i learned. Right?

But i still think there may besomething before the Z1

Re:Bletchley Park

[asdfgl]

The Z3 was Turing-complete. Even though noone knew about it at the time, that's the important thing. As for the Z1 and Z2 I know nothing, but again, this is Slashdot, what do you expect?

Re:Bletchley Park / Colossus

[pipingguy]

The parent is of course refering to Colossus

From IMDB (Colossus: The Forbin Project, 1970): [imdb.com] "Trivia: Though the writers could not have known it, the first useful electronic "supercomputer" was also called "Colossus". The Colossus Mk2 was used by the British to decipher German radio transmissions in WWII, and was kept a secret until 1974."

Good movie, look it up.

Who invented the first computer?

[D4C5CE]

Zuse, during the late 1930s, could not know of parallel developments occurring in the English-speaking parts of the world (then at war), which he did "beat" by a couple of years, and reportly learned of Babbage only at the patent office, after "re-inventing" many of the 19th-century concepts himself.

Babbage+Lovelace probably come closest to being the inventors of IT, and were recognised as such in particular by Turing, but they never saw the actual machine running in their lifetimes. At any rate, there ar

Important concepts introduced by ENIAC?

[reversible physicist]

In the interview, Eckert mentions two concepts, still important in modern computers, which first appeared in the ENIAC. He says, "The idea of a subroutine was original with ENIAC." He also says, "The idea of using internal memory was also original with ENIAC." In fact, Ada Byron (who became the Countess Lady Lovelace) is usually credited with inventing the subroutine. She wrote programs for Babbage's Analytical Engine, which was never completed. The Analytical Engine design also had internal memory. T

Re:Important concepts introduced by ENIAC?

[D4C5CE]

19th century engineering wasn't really up to building the Analytical Engine. Babbage famously said, late in his life, that he would gladly give up the rest of his time if he could spend just three days 500 years in the future. Of course a man who was really out of this time was Leonardo DaVinci, who sketched a 13 digit cogwheel digital adder in the 15th century.

Its price and proportions would have been staggering, but much like by the IBM-sponsored collection of Leonardo's machines at Clos Luce [amboise-valdeloire.com], the myth that it wouldn't have been feasible has now actually been dispelled for the case of Babbage as well by building a working engine from the original designs to the tolerances of their time [sciencemuseum.org.uk] - these are the relevant excerpts from the project documentation:

The most widely accepted reason for this failure is that Victorian mechanical engineering were not sufficiently developed to produce parts with sufficient precision.
(...)
By previous standards these engines were monumental in conception, size and complexity.
(...)
Babbage failed to complete the construction of any of his engines. His failures were not failures of principle but of practical accomplishment. However, the legend of his work if not its technical detail remained part of the folklore amongst those who pursued the ideal of automated calculation after his death.
(...)
The advantage of using the method of differences is that it eliminates the need for multiplication and division in the calculation of a particular class of mathematical functions called polynomials. The Difference Engine only used addition which is easier to mechanise than multiplication and division.

Manufacturing parts for his engines stretched the standards of engineering practice of the time. The intricate shapes required special jigs and tools and the Engines' mechanisms demanded hundreds of near-identical precision parts. Babbage conceived his Engine designs at a time when production techniques were in transition between craft traditions and mass-production and there was not yet the means of producing repeated parts automatically.
(...)
Babbage conducted an extensive survey of manufacturing techniques and practice by visiting manufactures and craft workshops in England and on the Continent. He concluded that the precision and intricacy required for the construction of his Engine were beyond the capabilities of the technology of the day. This study, conducted during the 1820s, formed the basis of his influential book entitled On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, published in 1832.
(...)
Babbage benefited from substantial government funding - £17,500. But work on the Engine was halted in 1833 when Clement downed tools following an unresolved dispute over compensation for moving his workshop four miles to new premises near Babbage's house.
(...)
The reasons for his failure continue to exercise historians. Factors cited include Babbage's allegedly difficult personality, unconvincing progress, disputes with his engineer, Joseph Clement, political instability and the eventual withdrawal of government funding, though the view most often repeated in histories of computing is that Babbage's failure was due to limitations in Victorian machine tool technology.

To explore the thesis that the limitation of Victorian engineering was a contributory factor in Babbage's failure to complete any of his machines the Science Museum set about constructing Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2 in 1985. Before the engine could be constructed the original design drawings were redrawn and expanded to provide the engineering detail needed for modern manufacture.
(...)
Modern techniques were used in the manufacture of repeat parts but care was taken to restrict limits of precisi

Re:Bletchley Park

[msbsod]

The honor of the first stored-program digitial computer should probably go to Konrad Zuse for his Z3 machine. It was electro-mechanical, but has been proven to be Turing complete.

Indeed. The whole discussion about about "electronic" vs. "electro-mechanical" serves only one purpose, namely to give all credit to the ENIAC team and no credit to Konrad Zuse. It really does not matter whether a computer is based on relays, tubes, TTL transistors or field effect transistors. In all those implementations we find a timed gate controlling a current, the basic idea of a binary operation. Besides, all those components are typically found in an electronics catalog [mouser.com] these days.

There is actually a good reason to use relays instead of tubes. Tubes had a very short lifetime. One bad tube can ruin your day. Having to deal with 18,000 tubes is a nightmare.

ENIAC was a great team effort. However, Konrad Zuse not only built the first electronic computer, Z1, he did it alone at age of 28 without support by any university, company and government. Konrad Zuse was a true genius and he deserves the credit for building the first electronic computer.

Re:Bletchley Park

[eserteric]

The Turing bombs were electromechanical machines.

Re:Bletchley Park

[Vanders]

The Bombes wern't computers. The Colosus were. You should also note that the physical design of the machine doesn't matter all that much; all pre-tube machines (Most from that era) were electro-mechanical devices because they used relays as switching units.

did you ever hear of Konrad Zuse?

[lophophore]

You need to look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuse [wikipedia.org]

Before you make your rash statements about the Colossus being first.

Re:did you ever hear of Konrad Zuse?

[gizmonic]

It's wiki. Give me 5 minutes and you'll be wrong. :)

Konrad Zuse's Z3 was the first!

[gururise]

Its time to stop the myth of Eniac being the first electronic programmmable computer. It is well established and generally accepted in the scientific and historic community that Konrad Zuse (from Germany) developed the worlds first electronic programmable computer, the Z3 in 1941 in Germany.

In 1998, it was even proven that his Z3 computer was Turing Complete.

Another good link is here [about.com]

Re:Bletchley Park- Abacus

[EvilBudMan]

The abacus was first. About 500BCE, I'm guessing, maybe older.

http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/intro.html [ryerson.ca]

http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/history.html [ryerson.ca]

Sure, but the graphics on an abacus suck!

[Richard Steiner]

I hate those big wooden/metal/ivory pixels sliding around on wires, and all you can manage to create is a single desktop icon before you run out of them.

Re:Bletchley Park

[ForemastJack]

Honors over the "first" of anything are usually controversial -- and it's only going to get worse. Historically, there have been many convergences of technological development. This makes sense, if you think about it. Inventors, developers, thinkers are all products of the state of the art at the time they are working. Robert Heinlein, in (I think) The Door into Summer put it something like, "When it time to railroad, people start railroading." That's obviously a little deterministic, but it still true

Re:Bletchley Park

[chthon]

This strengthens my beliefs that there is no such that as an invention, there are only designs.

Re:Bletchley Park

[chthon]

This strengthens my beliefs that there is no such thing as an invention, there are only designs.

Turin

[nogginthenog]

He's the daddy!

Re:ARRRR, MATEY!

[Voltageaav]

RTFA, "While there are controversies about who invented what, there is universal agreement that the ENIAC was the watershed project that showed electronic computing was possible."

Ahh, maybe not

[Ancient_Hacker]

>ENIAC was the watershed project that showed electronic computing was possible."

Um, guess it depends on what you mean by "computing".

Years before the ENIAC was running, IBM was SELLING big ugly boxes that could add, subtract, and multiply, all electronically:

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_194 3.html [ibm.com]

Fenynman used these at Los Alamos in 1944 to compute critical massses of Plutonium.

And these were programmable, to an extent, with plugboards, which incidentally was more flexible tha

Re:Ahh, maybe not

[Voltageaav]

Sorry, It's the first large-scale, electronic, digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eniac [wikipedia.org] There were many programable computers that were programable far before ENIAC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_ hardware [wikipedia.org]

Re:Ahh, maybe not

[bw-sf]

Wikipedia is useful, but it's not a source. You might as well link to another /. post to prove a point.

Re:Ahh, maybe not

[jacksonj04]

Wikipedia is a peer-reviewed encyclopedia based on independantly verifiable sources. If it's in Wikipedia, it will usually have its source cited elsewhere.

Re:Ahh, maybe not

[iamlucky13]

On the other hand, while IBM's boxes could add and multiply, ENIAC could, according to Pres, solve differential equations. That doesn't settle anything, but it is an impressive step up.

Re:Ahh, maybe not

[Ancient_Hacker]

Solving differential equations numerically means basically a lot of multiplying and adding. So the IBM machines could and DID evaluate differential equations and integrals. A bit more slowly than ENIAC, but still doing the job.

Re:ARRRR, MATEY!

[Dzimas]

In the interview, Eckert seems to imply that Atanasoff wasn't really worthy of receiving a patent because he had little more than test-bench ideas, wheras Mauchly and Eckert took their concepts and produced a machine that did cutting-edge scientific work for a decade. In a way, this points out many of the flaws with modern technology patents -- RIM would not be in the situation it is currently facing if the NTP lawyers were required to produce a working prototype of a wireless email system.

The reason that everyone lauds ENIAC is that it was the first *meaningful* public application of a "pluggable/programmable" computer. Of course, a few folks at Bletchley Park knew that Tommy Flowers had built a tube-based computer in 1943-1944 to crack the German Lorenz codes. The British went on to build ten of them. And, incidentally, it used a parallel architecture.

Re:ARRRR, MATEY!

[LWATCDR]

"It's just a darn shame they stole all that technology, eh?"
1. No one person invented the computer.
2. Eniac worked while Atanasoff's system didn't
3. Was Eniac inspired by Atansoff's work? Probably. Was it a copy? No.

ABC works....wtf

[Electrawn]

Considering when I attended Iowa State a group of engineers rebuilt a replica of the ABC and put it on tour around Iowa and the Smithsonian, I'd say it worked pretty well.

The drum from the original is under plexiglass in the Computer Science center.

Not the point

[RealProgrammer]

Putting together a machine like that is an amazing feat. Using other people's ideas is the hallmark of great engineers. Taking credit for other people's ideas is the hallmark of great losers.

As TFA says, whether you think of Eckert and Mauchly as the first to build a computer or not, ENIAC is the "watershed event". A lot of people in the U.S. think of Henry Ford as the inventor of the automobile, even though if you press them they probably remember that he was not, by many years and an ocean.

Dan Bricklin, inventor of the electronic spreadsheet, was sued by Lotus Corp. for violating the 'look and feel' of their 1-2-3 product with his Visicalc. Never mind that their entire product was based on his beautiful idea, he got sued out of business for copying their menu structure.

What the courts decide and what actually happened are often not entirely in sync.

Re:Not the point

[Nutria]

Dan Bricklin, inventor of the electronic spreadsheet, was sued by Lotus Corp. for violating the 'look and feel' of their 1-2-3 product with his Visicalc.

VisiCalc was released in 1979, 1-2-3 on January 26, 1983.

Re:Not the point

[spungebob]

IIRC, it was Borland that got sued over their Quatro Pro spreadsheet. The issue wasn't about the "look and feel" in general, it was about Borland creating a "compatibility mode" feature which - when enabled - duplicated the Lotus command structure (keystrokes and menu tree).

Last I heard Lotus had won the case but got reversed on appeal. It was supposed to go to the SCOTUS but I don't recall if it did or not.

Sooo,

[IAAP]

FTFA: By picking the right gear ratio you should get the right constants in the equation.

So, if you popped the clutch, your constants may jump in value?

Ok, Ok, I'm leaving!

Article Text - Page 1 of 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Q&A by Alexander Randall 5th

FEBRUARY 14, 2006 (COMPUTERWORLD) - J. Presper Eckert

There are two epochs in computer history: Before ENIAC and After ENIAC. The first practical, all-electronic computer was unveiled on Feb. 14, 1946, at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electronics. While there are controversies about who invented what, there is universal agreement that the ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator) was the watershed project that showed electronic computing was pos

Passing the mouse test...

[the_demiurge]

What's the zaniest thing you did while developing ENIAC?

The mouse cage was pretty funny. We knew mice would eat the insulation off the wires, so we got samples of all the wires that were available and put them in a cage with a bunch of mice to see which insulation they did not like. We only used wire that passed the mouse test.

This should be taken to heart by forward-thinking engineers everywhere.

Re:Passing the mouse test...

[rewinn]

So ... ENIAC was the first computer using a mouse?

----

(See ENIAC VR Simulator [anl.gov] ... also using a mouse)

Re:Passing the mouse test...

[the_demiurge]

So ... ENIAC was the first computer using a mouse?

I think it would be more accurate to say it was built with the help of mice, but in the use of the computer they tried to avoid mice interaction whenever possible.

Re:Passing the mouse test...

[rewinn]

>I think it would be more accurate to say it was built with the help of mice

... insert "Hitchiker's Guide To the Galaxy" [wikipedia.org] reference here

Re:Passing the mouse test...

[belmolis]

AT&T did extensive testing of this sort for telephone components. I don't know when they started doing, but when I was at Bell Labs in 1982-83, there was a fenced off section of the grounds, kind of like a family garden, except instead of vegetables it contained telephone components, exposed to the elements. They apparently did this at other sites too.

Re:Passing the mouse test...

[up2ng]

You know for a bunch of "smart" guys they couldn't figure out how to use a mousetrap? or get a cat maybe.
Wait, then they would need a dog to get rid of the cat........ "One cat exterminator...whooosh" forget it and the 10 cent motel rooms.

Re:Passing the mouse test...

[Lehk228]

but the gorilla you need to chase off the bear which eats the dog will break A LOT of tubes

Re:Passing the mouse test...

[iamlucky13]

This is one of those stories like the origin of the term "computer bug." According to what I've read, the term did not actually originate with actual problems related to bugs (as the common myth goes), but there was a case with an electromechanical computer where a moth got caught in a relay that formed part of the logic circuit. When the engineers found it, they reported it as the first actual instance of debugging a computer program.

Image of the first computer bug

[D4C5CE]

Indeed... [wikipedia.org]

Computing on a cold winter's day

[Billosaur]

You said the largest tube gadget in 1943 was the Nova Chord electronic organ. What did ENIAC use?

ENIAC had 18,000 vacuum tubes. The tubes were off the shelf; we got whatever the distributor could supply in lots of a thousand. We used 10 tube types, but could have done it with four tube types; we just couldn't get enough of them. We decided that our tube filaments would last a lot longer if we kept them below their proper voltage. Not too high or too low. A lot of the circuits were off the shelf, but I

Hardware hacks?

[Rob T Firefly]

I'm looking to overclock my ENIAC. Any tips?

Also, does anyone have a copy of Gentoo on punch cards I can borrow?

"laced wires" Gentoo

[theurge14]

I found a ISO link to download it.
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/KSCAWtwine. html [roadsideamerica.com]

I don't see a torrent anywhere.

Re:Hardware hacks?

[cciRRus]

I can't wait for the leaked version of osxeniac-10.4.5.iso to be out on the eDonkey network.

Re:Hardware hacks?

[geobeck]

I'm looking to overclock my ENIAC. Any tips?

Yeah: You might want to put an extra cooling fan on that. You can find one here [nisco.net].

Re:Hardware hacks?

[staticdragon]

or better yet, these [bigassfans.com].

Re:Hardware hacks?

[geobeck]

I went to the linked site, and have now stabbed an ice pick in both eyes.

Whaddaya mean? They hired the best web designer they could find... on 5 minutes' notice and virtually no budget. I hear he said "Woohoo!" when they told him they'd pay him in donuts.

Re:Hardware hacks?

[sasdrtx]

I'd line up about 18 tons of air conditioning power. And plan on running only when it's 40F outside.

military officers did not salute ENIAC

[Anonymous Coward]

General: This is the ENIAC 3000. It launches missiles automatically, and it has three distinct varieties of orders.
        [presses a button]
ENIAC: Men, take that hill.
        War is hell.
        Don't shoot till you see the whites of their eyes.
Colonel 1: Man, that thing's great!
Colonel 2: Don't salute the machine!

American History Revision

[Ed Almos]

Have your moment of glory, then remember that the first true programmable computer was invented in Manchester, England (the Manchester University Mark 1 A.K.A. 'The Baby'). ENIAC had to be reprogrammed by moving countless cables around, in the words of one of the operators "each time we changed the software we had to almost completely rebuild the machine". The Manchester University machine stored both its program and data in memory using special cathode ray tubes.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_ [wikipedia.org]

Re:American History Revision

[diegocgteleline.es]

I will never understand this stupid "america vs europe" fight. I'm spanish and I've always seen americans as europeans. Hell, america founding fathers were european and all the native culture was sent (literally) to hell. America is just europa expanded to another place, there's no reason to fight "america vs europa".

Re:American History Revision

[gak001]

I don't really feel that there is an "America vs. Europe" fight. Perhaps it is a bit of friendly rivalry - or like trying to out-perform your parents.

Re:American History Revision

[jonnythan]

ENIAC was ... commissioned on May 17, 1943. It was unveiled on February 14, 1946 at the University of Pennsylvania

The Manchester Mark I was one of the earliest electronic computers, built at the University of Manchester in England, in 1949.

So, uh, what's the story? ENIAC clearly came before the Mark 1 by at least 3 years.... and the ENIAC was programmable, even if it meant moving plugs around. So in terms of programmable computers, ENIAC was clearly first. It might not have been the first to store programs

Re:American History Revision

[petermgreen]

it really all comes down to how you define computer (a bit like first aeroplane and the like come down to exactly how you define an aeroplane)

Where do you draw the line between assembling units into a special purpose machine and a computer with a program?

Re:American History Revision

[Anonymous Coward]

The Manchester `Baby' was officially the `Small scale experimental computer', not the Mark 1. The Mark 1 was the second computer built at Manchester. It was based on the `Baby', but was a lot more sophisticated - the Mk 1 had a magnetic drum store, for example. Not file store, but for virtual memory. Yep, the first practical programmable electronic digital computer had something like virtual memory. More here: http://www.computer50.org/ [computer50.org]

Revision? No.

[Kadin2048]

I don't think your post makes sense. The Manchester Mark I was constructed post-ENIAC. Even though it might have been in development before, so it could count as a parallel discovery, it wasn't first by anyone's account.

The first Turing-complete machine actually constructed (to the best of both my and Wikipedia's knowledge) was the Z3, built by Konrad Zuse in 1941, in Germany. Nazi Germany. It was blown up in 1944, so it probably can't really be counted as the progenitor of modern computing; however, if you

A little bit too prideful, don't you think?

[Spy der Mann]

Someday I'll write a book on who really invented the computer. It wasn't Atanasoff or Von Neumann. We did it.

I really think that J. Presper Eckert (the ENIAC inventor ) and Von Neumann both deserve credit. Eckert said it himself in the interview:

Was ENIAC programmable?

Yes and no. We programmed the machine by plugging wires in from place to place. That's not hard-wired; it's not software; it's not memory. It's pluggable programming. And we had switches to set the functions.

However Von Neumann did a lot of theoretical work on algorithms (he is cited by Knuth on the merge sort algorithm) and cellular automata.

Certainly Von Neumann was ahead of his time, he was already thinking in general-purpose algorithms, while the ENIAC only worked to solve differential equations.

I'm not trying to discredit anybody, but IMHO Eckert should have chose the wrong wording when claiming to be *THE* inventor of the computer.

Errata

[Spy der Mann]

should have chose the wrong wording -> should NOT have chosen. :-/

First guy dumped for being a geek

[leroybrown]

During the summer of 2004, my girlfriend at the time had a job taking care of an old guy at his beach house on Long Beach Island, NJ. The old guy grew up in Philly society back in the 30's and 40's and was part of the Doan family, owners of a prominent Chevrolet dealership. I was living at the house too and got to talking to the guy one day and told him I was involved with computers. Then he starts telling me all about how his wife (who had died recently) had dated a guy named Pres Eckert who had invented "some computer". I told him it was the ENIAC and pressed him for details. He told me his wife had dumped Pres because he was always taking her to see the machine and would make her sit around waiting for him to fix some problems before they went on dates. So, this could probably be the first instance of a guy being dumped for being a computer geek.

Re:First guy dumped for being a geek

[theurge14]

He might have also been the first guy to go on a date inside a computer.

Re:First guy dumped for being a geek

[freeweed]

And very likely, last.

Re:First guy dumped for being a geek

[theurge14]

I'm pretty sure this tradition continues... [com.com] (yikes)

Re:First guy dumped for being a geek

[Anonymous Coward]

Summer 2004? Please if the guy is alive go revisit him and tape (audio only or audio-visual) him telling his story and if possible find someone to back it up (could be hard). If he's passed away perhaps he's told the story to friends/kids/others.

I know it's trivia but it's still valuable and an excellent story. If you do some backgrounding and perhaps find more information it might write up as a good story (but please don't exaggerate/misuse it). I'm sure you could get some money out of it doing the followi

The size of the ENIAC

[theurge14]

We built ENIAC in a room that was 30 feet by 50 feet, at the Moore School in West Philadelphia on the first floor.

And on the second floor, we have a room 10 feet by 15 feet where we built the ENIAC Mini, which of course since it doesn't have a teletype, punch card reader or mouse, is more affordable.

Re:The size of the ENIAC

[splutty]

Actually, the second floor was a sauna. Cost effective, too.

Man did I go to the wrong school.

[IDontAgreeWithYou]

FTFA:

Randall, former head of the Boston Computer Exchange and the East West Education Development Foundation, currently teaches communication at the University of the Virgin Islands.

Instead I spent 4 years in Pittsburgh!!!

Re:Man did I go to the wrong school.

[diegocgteleline.es]

Zoofilic is already weird enought, why people now wants "geofilia"? What is next, pr0n pictures of islands with huge mountains?

Ballistics Missle Research?

[Nathan Cassano]

Looking back at ENIAC we can now say that the first version of Scorched Earth was born.

Lamest Myths Ever

[AlterTick]

They dispel a few myths, such as the lights didn't really dim when they turned it on, and the military officers did not salute ENIAC.

Hoestly, I'm amazed they even felt the need to dispel such myths. Anyone who believed either is an idiot. Well, OK, I suppose maybe people could be excused for not having any sense of how electricity works, or how the difference in scale between a room-sized computer and the entire electrical grid of Philadelphia; But the saluting thing? Come on. Even the basest fool could q

Re:Lamest Myths Ever

[AlterTick]

Not the entire state of Philadelphia, just the three phase main to the university.

From TFA:

There's a story that ENIAC dimmed the lights in Philadelphia when it was in use.

And last I checked Philadelphia was a city. The state is Pennsylvania.

Re:Lamest Myths Ever

[GungaDan]

Saluting is more akin to doffing one's hat than a handshake.

Re:Lamest Myths Ever

[AlterTick]

Saluting is more akin to doffing one's hat than a handshake.

True, but the hypothetical idiots to which I was referring would probably not be familiar with cap-doffing, what with popular "hat culture" being reduced to a few slack-jaws wearing sideways baseball caps all the time-- indoors, outdoors, when being introduced to ladies, at funerals, etc. Point is, they're all salutory gestures and even the foolest of fools knows those are for people, not machines.

First program run: direct knowledge

[192939495969798999]

I have direct knowledge of the first major program they ran with the ENIAC, because my dad was there when they did it. It was a program to calculate the first 1000 digits of Pi... and it worked too. They had a process by which you had to review any functions that were going into the computer before you put them in... if only we still did that. Expensive but extremely effective at reducing software bugs in code... the only time the machine was down was for tubes and hardware.

Re:First program run: I dont think so!

[Ancient_Hacker]

>It was a program to calculate the first 1000 digits of Pi.

Seems Unlikely

The ENIAC had only 20 registers, holding 10 decimal digits each. Kinda hard to generate 1000 digits with only 200 digits of storage. There are algorithms that generate sequential digits of Pi, but I doubt if they were well known at that time.

>They had a process by which you had to review any functions that were going into the computer before you put them in...

Well, of course, because it took a lot of time and work to rew

Re:First program run: direct knowledge

[Zero__Kelvin]

"They had a process by which you had to review any functions that were going into the computer before you put them in... if only we still did that.

Yes ... if only we had some kind of modern equivalent of that convention... we could call it something cleverly outlandish, like perhaps, a code review . Ahh ... but never mind ... it's a crazy idea that would never work ;-)

Eniac was a team effort

[christurkel]

The Eniac was a team effort; my grandfather was in the team that helped solve the math of the beast; not just computation but also thing like making sure the Eniac didn't need the power of a small city to work.
When he died, we found some of his notes about the Eniac in old notebook which we donated to the Smithsonian.

Re:Eniac was a team effort

[gizmonic]

When he died, we found some of his notes about the Eniac in old notebook which we donated to the Smithsonian.

Holy crap? No eBay? No book? No thought of monetary reward? Someone actually did something selfless for the betterment of everyone?

Seriously, though, thanks man. I for one, definitely appreciate it.

The first piece of software

[StoatBringer]

Interestingly enough, the first piece of software proposed for the ENIAC has yet to be finished.
Apparently the Duke Nukem Forever team are finding backwards-compatibility with the old ENIAC hardware a bit tricky.

Aw, I thought that this was going to be...

[TWX]

...a real interview, with answered questions and everything.

C'mon CmdrTaco! Don't you have that ouija-board Apache kernel module working right yet?

Re:His views on who was the first...

[wcrowe]

Oh, right. Next thing you'll say is Al Gore didn't invent the internet.

Re:His views on who was the first...

[AdmiralWeirdbeard]

whatever, the internet can go hang.
I'm more impressed with his work protecting the space-time continueum.

Re:His views on who was the first...

[ajs318]

The assertion that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb is also quite popular in Newcastle [wikipedia.org], because Joseph Swan [wikipedia.org] was a Wearsider [wikipedia.org].