Word: eckert
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...simulation for the still untested hydrogen bomb. Every time a tube burned out, which happened twice a day at the start, a technician had to rummage among the tangle of wires to locate and replace the dead component. To prevent rodents from nibbling at ENIAC and destroying vital parts, Eckert recalled at the anniversary party, the scientists captured some mice, starved them for several days and then fed them bits of the insulating materials used in the machine. Any pieces the mice seemed to favor were removed from ENIAC and replaced with less tasty parts...
...last week McNulty (now the widowed Mrs. John Mauchly), Eckert and 500 computer enthusiasts gathered at a "black-tie optional and hackerwear essential" party at Boston's Computer Museum to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the dedication of the first all-electronic digital computer. On that day in 1946, ENIAC in 20 seconds performed a mathematical calculation that would otherwise have required 40 girl hours to complete. Newspapers headlined the performance. It "solves the unsolvable," reported the Philadelphia Inquirer. Indeed, many experts mark ENIAC's feat as the beginning of the modern computer...
...first digital computer both to store and to process information with vacuum tubes; as a result, it was able to perform calculations 1,000 times as fast as its electromechanical predecessors. "I was convinced that you could produce great speeds electronically if you put your mind to it," says Eckert. "ENIAC proved that this...
Anticipating the gung-ho spirit of their spiritual successors in Silicon Valley, the ENIAC team members worked with demonic intensity. "Eckert was completely devoted to the machine," recalls John Grist Brainerd, the project director. "He would work on it day and night, and worry, worry." Two cots were installed on the ground floor of the Moore School so that the exhausted computer scientists could rest near their cherished machine. "When it finally turned on, everyone was elated," recalls Kay Mauchly. "It seemed like every day was a happy...
Those happy days soon came to an end. A month after the ENIAC's public unveiling, Eckert and Mauchly resigned rather than turn their patent rights over to the university. Five years later they developed the first commercial computer, UNIVAC 1, but business reversals forced them to sell their fledgling computer company to Remington Rand. The final insult came in 1973. Seeking to invalidate Mauchly and Eckert's patent for "the" electronic computer, Honeywell convinced a federal judge that Mauchly had based his ideas for ENIAC on the work of a computer pioneer named John Atanasoff. The patent was dismissed...