ENIAC is announced

14th February 1946
ENIAC is announced

On February 14, 1946 John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert publicly announce the ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania.

The ENIAC, or "Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer", was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer.

The press release described ENIAC as:

"A new machine that is expected to revolutionize the mathematics of engineering and change many of our industrial design methods"

The ENIAC calculated 5,000 operations per second, occupied over 1,000 square feet of space, weighed 30 tons, and used 18,000 vacuum tubes. It was around 1,000 times faster than other machines of the time.

Related information:

Image:

  • Cpl. Irwin Goldstein (foreground) sets the switches on one of the ENIAC's function tables at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering
    Credit: U.S. Army Photo, public domain.


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