ENIAC was unveiled to the public on February 14, 1946, at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering.
ENIAC or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator was the first large scale valve based computer, developed by J. Presper Eckert and J. W. Mauchly.
It weighs 30 tons and occupied 1,800 square feet of space. It has more than 17,468 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and 6,000 toggle switches.
Some 4,000 red neon tubes were on the front of the machine, showing the functioning of various parts of ENIAC.
The important aspect of ENIAC is the programming.
For five years from 1946 to 1951, the ENIAC was the only electronic computer, It was a thousand times faster than the electromechanically Bell machine.
As it names implies, the ENIAC performs not only numerical integration, but is capable of solving a wide range of problems that involve various numerical operations, as well as storing and retrieving intermediate result.
The computer was originally intended for use by the Ballistic Research Lab. in Aberdeen, Maryland, to calculate the trajectories of projectiles and bombs – World War II was still being fought during its design.
However, the computer was simply not ready before war’s end in May 1945.
What is ENIAC?
