John Mauchley (1907 - 1980)

J. Presper Eckert (1919 - 1995)

In 1946, John Mauchley and J. Presper Eckert developed the ENIAC computer. ENIAC stands for Electrical Numerical Integrater And Calculator.

The idea behind creating the ENIAC was to create a better and faster calculating machine using vacuum tubes. It was also based solely on the works of John Atanasoff . The computer was a technical success as it could perform 5,000 additions, 357 multiplications, or 38 divisions in one second, which was 1,000 times faster than any other to date.

The ENIAC was funded by the U.S. military. They needed it to write out artillery-firing tables to help with World War II. It took Mauchley and Eckert 1 year to design the ENIAC, then it took an additional 1 ½ years and $500,000 of the taxpayer's money to build it. By the time it was finished, the war was already over.

It just keeps growing and growing and growing...

Now, if you thought the Mark I was big, the ENIAC dwarfs it in size. The ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, 6,000 manual switches and 5 million soldered joints.

The total size of the ENIAC covered 1,800 square feet and weighed 30 tons.

When it was powered on, the ENIAC would cause the city of Philadelphia to brownout.