ENIACA Secret War Initiative Becomes An Engineering Marvel
IXDS5503: Media History and TheoryLindsey Wilson College
Professor, Jason OcchipintiMay 1, 2015
By: Venus M. Popplewell
Government bureaucracy was tabled on December 7, 1941 when Japan
attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor and America officially entered
World War II. The government turned to the intellectual forces in the
mathematics and science departments at American universities to employ
the forefront concepts in engineering. Shipbuilding, aircraft production,
bomb and weapon development needed to be efficient and revolution-
ary to unsettle the Germans. Scientists were given a full portfolio of re-
sources and money to accomplish the objectives of the wartime effort.
The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, known as the
ENIAC, was the world’s first programmable, all electronic, general-pur-
pose digital computer. It was commissioned by Army Ordnance to com-
pute World War II ballistic firing tables. “The ENIAC ushered in a new
era of startling scientific innovation” (Weik, 1961). ENIAC was her-
alded in the press as a “giant brain” and could calculate 5000 opera-
tions per second, faster than any device yet invented. ENIAC was the
prototype from which most other modern computers evolved (Weik,
1961). However, the ENIAC is shrouded in controversy due to patent
disputes at the hand of its inventor.
Victory at any cost was the primary motivation for the explosion of engineering innovation during the 1940s.
ENIACA Secret War Initiative Becomes An Engineering Marvel
1
Conception and DevelopmentThe idea of a huge computing
machine was in the air long be-
fore the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
“In late 1939, Harvard professor
Howard Aiken was building the
Mark I, a giant calculator. At
Bletchley Park in England, cryp-
tographers would oversee the
construction of a special-purpose,
code-breaking machine called
Colossus” (Levy, no date).
Several years before Colossus in
the U.K., a German scientist
named, Konrad Zuse, built a
giant, programmable, computer
called the Z3 – it was destroyed
during WWII. In the late 1930s,
an Iowa State professor by the
name of John V. Atanasoff began
work on his own calculating ma-
chine. With the help of a gradu-
ate student named Clifford Berry,
they built “ABC” (Atanasoff-Berry
Computer). ABC was single pur-
pose, not totally electronic, and
slower than a rotary calculator. It
never completely worked as envi-
sioned (Martino, 2009).
The Army Ordnance Department
had the responsibility for the de-
sign, development, procurement,
storage and issue of all combat
material and munitions for the
Army. Upon the outbreak of the
war in Europe, one of the first
tasks of the Ordnance Depart-
ment was to seek improvement in
mechanical aids to computation
(Weik, 1961). It was known the
Moore School of Engineering at
the University of Pennsylvania
had a differential analyzer that
could calculate ballistic computa-
tions that was larger than any-
thing the Army had at its
disposal. “Therefore one of the
first steps taken was to award the
University of Pennsylvania with a
contract by the Ordnance Depart-
ment for the utilization of this de-
vice” (Weik, 1961).
Lieutenant Herman H. Goldstine,
a Reserve Officer of the Ord-
nance Department was assigned
to duty at the Moore School as a
supervisor of computational and
training activities. In the early
part of 1943, Goldstine and pro-
fessor J.G. Brainerd brought to
the Ordnance committee an out-
line of the technical concepts un-
derlying the development of a
fully electronic, digital computing
machine. The outline had been
prepared by professor Dr. John
W. Mauchly and a graduate stu-
dent named J. Presper Eckert. It
detailed the technical and mathe-
matical specifications of the
ENIAC (Weik, 1961).
Like others whose work required
tedious calculations, John
Mauchly wanted to invent a ma-
chine to do them for him. Ac-
cording to Isaacson (2014) in
late 1940, he confided in some
friends that he hoped to pull to-
gether enough information to
make a digital electronic com-
puter. “We are now considering
construction of an electrical com-
puting machine,” he wrote (p.
65). In December of that same
J. Presper Eckert Jr. Dr. John W. Mauchly
2
year, “Mauchly happened to
meet John Atanasoff, setting off a
series of events followed by years
of disputes over Mauchly’s
propensity to gather information
from different sources” (Isaacson,
2014, p. 65). In June 1941,
Mauchly visited Atanasoff’s home
in Iowa to inspect the ABC calcu-
lation machine he was develop-
ing. Atanasoff had developed a
partly operational machine that
could be constructed inexpen-
sively. Mauchly was impressed
but uninspired. “I thought his ma-
chine was very ingenious, but
since it was in part mechanical,
involving rotating commutators for
switching, it was not by any
means what I had in mind,”
Mauchly remembered (Isaacson,
2014, p. 67).
As Mauchly was preparing to
leave Iowa, he received news
that he had been accepted into
an electronics development
course at the University of Penn-
sylvania. During the summer of
1941, Mauchly got the chance to
work with the differential ana-
lyzer at the Moore School of Engi-
neering and wrote to Atanasoff,
“The question in my mind is this:
is there any objection, from your
point of view, to my building
some sort of computer which in-
corporates some of the features of
your machine?” (Isaacson, 2014,
p. 70). The ‘computer’ in which
Mauchly was referring, would
eventually become the ENIAC.
“The issue of what inspirations
Mauchly gleaned during his visit
with Atanasoff in Iowa” would
turn into a legal dispute that
would last for more than ten years
(p. 82).
J. Presper Eckert Jr. was the in-
structor of Mauchly’s electronics
course at the University of Penn-
sylvania. Eckert was a 24-year-
old engineering genius and
graduate assistant. He was de-
scribed as “undoubtedly the best
electronics engineer in the Moore
School” (Winegrad and Akera,
1996).
By the end of 1941, Mauchly
was teaching physics at Penn and
sharing his vision of a computing
machine with Eckert. Mauchly
convinced Eckert to join him in his
quest to develop a fully inte-
grated, all electronic computing
machine that could be applied to
any mathematical problem. On
June 5, 1943, the military com-
The ABC (Atanasoff-Berry Computer)
John Atanasoff Clifford Berry
3
mission on the new computer
began (Weik, 1961).
“The proposed work was to
last six months and cost
$61,700--a vast underestima-
tion, it would turn out, of both
time and money. ENIAC
wouldn't be tested internally
for two and a half years at a
final cost of $487,000. De-
spite the overruns, however, it
was an engineering marvel”
(Kanellos, 2006).
“The ENIAC contained 17,468
vacuum tubes, along with 70,000
resistors, 10,000 capacitors,
1,500 relays, 6,000 manual
switches and 5 million soldered
joints. It covered 1,800-square-
feet of floor space, weighed 30
tons and consumed 160 kilowatts
of electrical power” (Bellis, no
date). Numbers were “stored” in
electrons and not on paper tape
or punch cards as its predeces-
sors. According to Martino
(2009) the ENIAC worked at an
electronic speed of 5000 opera-
tions per second. It had no mov-
ing parts and most importantly,
the next operation could proceed
immediately without waiting for
paper tapes or human interven-
tion. Its first programs included a
study of the feasibility of the hy-
drogen bomb.
Programming and thePublic DemonstrationSix technicians were largely re-
sponsible for working the mathe-
matical equations and
programming functions of the ma-
chine. Jean Jennings, Marlyn
Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty
Snyder, Frances Bilas and Kay
McNulty were female mathemati-
cians recruited to run calculations
for the ENIAC. They were called
“computers” and their jobs ini-
tially entailed switching around,
by hand, the cables and switches
of the ENIAC. Because these jobs
were considered an extension of
clerical work, they were filled by
women, as was the practice of
the day. According to Isaacson
(2014), “at first the programming
seemed to be routine, perhaps
even menial. But what the women
of ENIAC soon showed, and the
men later came to understand,
The Women of ENIAC
4
was that the programming of a
computer could be as significant
as the design of its hardware.”
The war ended in August of
1945. The ENIAC wasn’t com-
pleted until November of that
same year. Because the ENIAC
was being used for atom bomb
calculations and other classified
tasks, it was kept secret until Feb-
ruary 15, 1946 when the Army
and Penn scheduled a gala un-
veiling for the public and press
(Isaacson, 2014). The unveiling
of the ENIAC made the front
page of the New York Times
under the headline ‘Electronic
Computer Flashes Answers, May
Speed Engineering’ (Isaacson,
2014). Using instructions written
by the female programmers, the
ENIAC demonstration impressed
onlookers by computing a set of
missile trajectory calculations
within 15 seconds – a task that
would have taken human ‘com-
puters’ several weeks to accom-
plish (Isaacson, 2014). The men
celebrated their success and were
lauded by the press. Neither the
Army, nor the University of Penn-
sylvania recognized the female
programmers. It would be
decades before their pioneering
contributions to the discipline of
computer programming and soft-
ware would be brought to public
awareness.
The Influence of theENIAC and the Patent DisputeAlthough the war was over, the
ENIAC was still put to work by
the military doing calculations for
weather predications, cosmic-ray
studies, thermal ignition, random-
number studies, wind tunnel de-
sign and continued work on the
design of the hydrogen bomb.
Acclaimed scientist and engineer
Dr. John Von Neumann, who was
instrumental in the Manhattan
Project, made several modifica-
tions to the ENIAC in 1948. He
added a converter code to en-
able serial operations. This hard-
ware alteration would improve
the programming difficulties
ENIAC would encounter when it
would run programs concurrently
(Bellis, no date).
“The ENIAC led the computer
field during the period 1949
through 1952 when it served
as the main computation work-
horse for the solution of the
scientific problems of the na-
tion. It surpassed all other ex-
J. Presper Eckert Jr. (front, left) and Dr. John Mauchly (middle) working in the ENIAC room with unidentified programmers.
5
isting computers put together
whenever it came to problems
involving a large number of
arithmetic operations. It was
the major instrument for the
computation of all ballistic ta-
bles for the U.S. Army and Air
Force” (Weik, 1961).
The ENIAC embodied almost all
the components and concepts of
today’s high-speed, electronic digi-
tal computers. Its designers con-
ceived what has now become
standard circuitry. Historians ac-
knowledge that other computers
came earlier – the Z3, Colossus
and controversially, the Atanasoff-
Berry (ABC) Computer. But ENIAC
arguably accomplished something
more important. “It sparked the
imagination of scientists and indus-
trialists” (Kanellos, 2006).
Regrettably, the dispute over the
ENIAC patent soured the memo-
ries of many people associated
with the ENIAC project and other
efforts. Patents were a fickle topic
during those days with many in-
ventors scrambling to legitimize
their ideas. Eckert and Mauchly
applied for a patent in 1947 for
their work on ENIAC. The patent
system is a slow process and it
wasn’t granted until 1964. By that
time, the patent rights had been
sold to Sperry Rand Corporation.
Due to pressure by large compa-
nies to enforce licensing fees, a
legal investigation began into the
concept development of the
ENIAC. The mission was to upend
the Eckert-Mauchly patent by
showing that their ideas were not
original (Isaacson, 2014, p. 82).
The issue went to trial in 1971.
Mauchly proved ineffective as a
witness for the ENIAC defense,
pleading poor memory. By con-
trast, Atanasoff was very convinc-
ing – with confidence and
documentation he described how
he had conceived and built the
ABC (Isaacson, 2014, p. 82). The
trial lasted nine months. The
Atanasoff-Berry Computer was
judged to be “prior art” by the
court in 1973, thereby rendering
invalid the ENIAC patent as filed
by Eckert and Mauchly” (Wine-
grad and Akera, 1996). Accord-
ing to Isaacson (2014) “the case
did not determine, even legally,
who should get what proportion of
the credit for the invention of the
modern computer” (p. 82). It sim-
ply gave Atanasoff credit on the
basis of technicalities.
“Atanasoff may have won a
point in court, but he went
back to teaching and we went
on to build the first real elec-
tronic programmable comput-
ers,” Eckert later pointed out
(Isaacson, 2014, p. 85).
When the historic contributions of
the ENIAC are considered, it may
be less important that it is classi-
fied as the world’s “first” all elec-
tronic, general-purpose and fully
programmable computer. What
may be more important is what the
patent dispute revealed – a culture
of collaboration in innovation, fos-
tered by John Mauchly. From the
Female programmers of the ENIAC
6
beginning, his plan was to pull to-
gether the ingenious ideas of his
colleagues to develop a new inno-
vation of his own. The influence of
the Mauchly’s approach and ulti-
mately the ENIAC, can be found
at the heart of almost every major
innovation of the digital revolution.
Life altering inventions like the per-
sonal computer, the microchip, the
transistor and the Internet began
as creative work, ultimately draw-
ing from many sources to become
the indispensable tools we use
today. Isaacson (2014) qualifies
this ideology by saying, “Only in
storybooks do inventions come like
a thunderbolt, or a light bulb pop-
ping out of the head of a lone in-
dividual in a basement or garret
or garage” (p. 85).
ENIAC's design pointed boldly to
the future, incorporating concepts
and innovations that went well be-
yond those developed by earlier
researchers and inventors. The ma-
chine was eventually transferred to
Aberdeen Proving Ground in
Maryland on July 29, 1947. It
was in continuous operation at Ab-
erdeen until 11:45 p.m. on Octo-
ber 2, 1955 when a lightening
strike shut the machine down for-
ever. For a decade, ENIAC may
have run more calculations than
all mankind had done up to that
point.
ENIAC was dismantled piece-by-
piece and at the encouragement
of John Von Neumann, parts of
the machine are preserved at the
Smithsonian Institution in Washing-
ton, D.C. (Weik, 1961). Today,
only about 10 panels of the total
40 from the ENIAC still exist.
Eckert and Mauchly eventually left
the University of Pennsylvania to
start EMCC (Eckert-Mauchly Com-
puter Company). The objective of
the company was to design, build
and market commercial comput-
ers. Their first true commercial
computer was called the UNIVAC
(for UNIversal Automatic Com-
puter). Ultimately, 46 UNIVAC
machines were built and delivered
to the ARMY, Navy and Air Force.
The fundamental design of the
UNIVAC was largely attributed to
the revolutionary technological
contributions of the ENIAC – of
which, there was only one.
Dr. John Mauchly with programmer, Jean Jennings
7
ENIACA Secret War Initiative Becomes An Engineering Marvel
8
Bibliography
Bellis, M. (no date) Ever Read the History of the ENIAC Computer?. Available at: http://inventors.about.com/od/estartinventions/a/Eniac.htm (Accessed: 1 May 2015)
Isaacson, W. (2014) The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital
Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster Issacson, W. (2014) ‘The Women of ENIAC’, FORTUNE.COM (October), pp. 160–165 Kanellos, M. (2006) ENIAC: First computer makes history. Available at: http://www.zdnet.com/article/eniac-
first-computer-makes-history/ (Accessed: 1 May 2015) Levy, S. (no date) The Brief History of the ENIAC Computer. Available at:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-brief-history-of-the-eniac-computer-3889120/?no-ist (Accessed: 1 May 2015)
Martino, R. L. (2009) Innovation and Economic Growth: Lessons from the Story of ENIAC. Available at:
http://www.fpri.org/articles/2009/04/innovation-and-economic-growth-lessons-story-eniac (Accessed: 1 May 2015)
Weik, M. H. (1961) The ENIAC Story. Available at: http://ftp.arl.mil/mike/comphist/eniac-story.html
(Accessed: 30 April 2015) Ordnance Ballistic Research Laboratories Winegrad, D. and Akera, A. (1996) ENIAC’s 50th Anniversary: The Birth of the Information Age -- A Short
History of the Second American Revolution. Available at: http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/v42/n18/eniac.html (Accessed: 1 May 2015)
!
Photography Compliments:
http://www.computerhistory.org -- (pp. 4, 5, 6, 7)
http://www.history-computer.com -- (p. 2)
http://www.maximumpc.com -- (p. 4, The Women of ENIAC)
http://pilgrimgram.com -- (cover photo)
http://teaching.msa.maryland.gov -- (p. 1, WWII image)
!!!
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