ENIAC (nonfiction)

Cpl. Irwin Goldstein sets the switches on one of the ENIAC's function tables at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering. (U.S. Army photo).

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was amongst the earliest electronic general-purpose computers made.

It was Turing-complete, digital, and could solve "a large class of numerical problems" through reprogramming.

Although ENIAC was designed and primarily used to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory, its first programs included a study of the feasibility of the thermonuclear weapon.

ENIAC was formally dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania on February 15, 1946 and was heralded as a "Giant Brain" by the press. It had a speed on the order of one thousand (103) times faster than that of electro-mechanical machines; this computational power, coupled with general-purpose programmability, excited scientists and industrialists alike.

On October 2, 1955, ENIAC was retired. After disassembly, parts were shipped to the Smithsonian for display.

In the News

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  ENIAC ("Empty Noise Into Alien Communication") uses Gnomon algorithm techniques to visualize the Wow! signal.

Fiction cross-reference

• ENIAC (SETI)
• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles

Nonfiction cross-reference

• ENIAC Programmers Project (nonfiction)
• Turing completeness (nonfiction)

External links:

• ENIAC @ Wikipedia
• The ENIAC Programmers: how women invented modern programming and were then written out of the history books @ Boing Boing: see ENIAC Programmers Project (nonfiction)
• ENIAC Programmers Project