He was called Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (eniac) and went down in history as the first computer ever. It was officially presented for the first time 74 years ago, on February 16, 1946, To Moore School of Electrical Engineering, a former undergraduate school of the University of Pennsylvania.
To be sure, it wasn't the first computer absolutely, but the first of the "general purpose" type: that is, it was characterized by a certain versatility, suitable for various uses. Before him, three complete Turing computers had already seen the light of day, but their functionality was more limited.
The story of ENIAC begins during the Second World War, in 1943, when the United States government finances the creation of a machine capable of resolving ballistic calculation problems for the launch of artillery shells. The project is entrusted to two scientists – J. Mauchly and J. Eckert – who take 7.237 hours of work to complete it. The construction phase requires the use of 18 thermionic valves (the invention of the transistor is still a year away), which cause the ambient temperature to rise above 50 degrees. The result is a colossal computer, with a surface area of 180 square meters and a weight of approx 30 tons.
The final cost exceeds by about seven times that planned: an expense of 61.700 dollars was initially foreseen, but when the work is completed, the budget exceeds the peak of the 486mila dollars. Not only that: ENIAC uses such an amount of electricity that, when it is first put into operation, it causes a blackout in the west section of Philadelphia.
During its presentation 74 years ago, the computer was able to multiply the number 97.367 by itself five thousand times, all in less than a second.
Almost thirty years later came a twist: in 1973 a federal judge in Minnesota voided Mauchly and Eckert's patent, ruling that the ENIAC was derived from the computer that John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry had built in 1939. of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, also known by the acronym “Abc”.
