John Presper Eckert and ENIAC Computer

Science & Technology Dateline: April 9

John Presper Eckert, Jr., co-inventor of the first general-purpose electronic digital computer (ENIAC)

John Adam Presper "Pres" Eckert Jr. (born April 9, 1919, Philadephia, Pennsylvania – died June 3, 1995, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania) was an American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. With John Mauchly, he invented the first general-purpose electronic digital computer (ENIAC) and presented the first course in computing topics (the Moore School Lectures, founded the first commercial computer company, the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation, and designed the first commercial computer in the United States, the UNIVAC, incorporating Eckert's invention of the mercury delay line memory.

Invention of the ENIAC

Dr. John Mauchly, chairman of the physics department of nearby Ursinus College that time, was a student in the summer electronics course. The following fall, he secured a teaching position at the Moore School. Mauchly proposed for building an electronic digital computer using vacuum tubes, many times faster and more accurate than the differential analyzer for computing ballistics tables for artillery.

His proposal caught the interest of Lt. Herman Goldstine, the Moore School's Army liaison. On  April 9, 1943, it was formally presented in a meeting to director Colonel Leslie Simon, and others in the group. A contract was awarded for Moore School's construction of the proposed computing machine, which would be named ENIAC. Eckert was made the project's chief engineer.  In late 1945, ENIAC was completed, and in February, 1946, it was unveiled to the public.

Legacy of Inventor J. Presper Eckert and the ENIAC Computer

As a pioneer of the computer, Eckert established the beginning of the modern age of computing. With John Mauchly, at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, they collaborated on the design and construction of ENIAC,  an electronic computing machine on a large scale. ENIAC's initials mean Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, thus changing the history of the computing world.

Prior Eckert, the making of the ENIAC was the culmination of earlier efforts, ideas from electro-mechanical computing machines, and translated them into electronic terms. Eckert, in setting up his plans and the program, proposed to replace three different kinds of memory, function tables or read-only memory, and other interconnecting cables with their associated switches. The three kinds of memory was replaced by a single erasable high speed memory.

Together, Eckert and Mauchly continued to improve their computers , including UNIVAC I, which became one of the first computers to be sold commercially in 1951.

Eckert himself had more than 85 patents for his electronic inventions. He retired in 1989.



Sources:

• Chambers  Biographical Dictionary, Ninth Edition. London:  Chambers Harrap Publishers, 2011.


• Hall of Fame / Inventor Profile


• National Science Foundation - The President's National Medal of Science: Recipient Details


• Wilkes, Maurice V.  "A Tribute to Presper Eckert".  Communications of the ACM; Sep95, Vol. 38 Issue 9, p20-22, 3p.  Note:  This article pays tribute to J. Presper Eckert, co-inventor of the first electronic digital computer in 1946, who died on June 3, 1995, aged 76.

Photo Credit:

J. Presper Eckert, "Minds Behind ENIAC".  http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/birth-of-the-computer/4/80