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ENIAC stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. ENIAC was the 'First General Purpose Electronic Digital Computer'. ENIAC was a huge and complicated machine, it had 40 U-shaped panels placed along three walls. Each of the unit was about 2 feet wide by 2 feet deep by 8 feet high (0.6 metre by 0.6 metre by 2.4 metres). It was assembled at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering during World War II under the code name 'Project PX. It was used mainly for military and scientific research applications such as aeronautics, ballistics, meteorology, and nuclear weapons. ENIAC was invented and developed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert and their colleagues at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering (University of Pennsylvania).
ENIAC Facts
Size - The size of ENIAC was so huge that it covered 1,800 square feet of floor space. It was composed of:
ENIAC Weight - It weighed 30 tons.
Electric Consumption - It consumed 160,000 Watts of electrical power.
Cost - ENIAC cost the government $400,000.
Change in Original Design - ENIAC was not originally designed as an internally programmed computer. The program was set up manually by varying switches and cable connections. However, means for altering the program and repeating its iterative steps were built into the master programmer. For example, a skilled person with a desk calculator could compute a 60- second trajectory in about 20 hours. The analog differential analyser produced the same result in 15 minutes. ENIAC required 30 seconds, just half the time of the projectile's flight.
Varied Usage - Purpose of ENIAC wasn't limited to serve for defence purposes, ENIAC was also used for weather prediction, atomic-energy calculations, cosmic-ray studies, thermal ignition, random-number studies, wind-tunnel design and other scientific uses.
Usage of Words - It used a word of 10 decimal digits instead of binary ones like previous automated calculators / computers.
Performance - ENIAC could perform 5,000 additions, 357 multiplications or 38 divisions in a span of 1 second.
Original Motive - U.S. had built the the ENIAC machine to win the World War II but the war was over before it's potential could be realised.
First Task - Its first task was performing calculations for the construction of a hydrogen bomb. The input/output for this test was 1 million cards.
Retirement - ENIAC retired at 11:45 p.m., October 2, 1955.
ENIAC History
Computers before ENIAC, were more of electronic calculators rather than a 'True Computer'. This was because these were not programmable. First, such a computer was 'Atanasoff-Berry Computer' (ABC). J. V. Atanasoff, a professor of physics and mathematics at Iowa State, along with his assistant Clifford Berry, developed this machine in December, 1937. The machine could solve 29 simultaneous equations with 29 unknowns. 2 electronic machines which performed computing were based on Alan Turing's technique called 'Turingery'. One was known as 'Colossus' and the other 'German Z3'. The latter was designed by Konrad Zuse. The former was built by Tommy Flowers for the British military in 1943. It remained a secret for many years. Colossus was used for breaking codes used by the German army in World War II. Turing further developer the idea of Turing machine, a mathematical formalism according to which equations could be processed without human direction using symbols for math and logic instead of letters. Another machine Mark I Calculating Machine was developed by Howard Aiken and IBM in 1944. Mark I Calculating Machine used relays and electromagnetic components to replace mechanical components. In later development, this machine used vacuum tubes and solid state transistors (tiny electrical switches) to manipulate the binary numbers. These machines inspired the creation of ENIAC.
In the 1940's, during the World War II, America required an advanced weapon system to be at par with the world. In this context, preparation of firing and bombing tables for the Army was being conducted at Ballistic Research Laboratory of the Ordnance Department at Aberdeen. The experts there had a 'Analogue Calculating Device - Bush Differential Analyzer'. Though it aided computation but it had several severe limitations. The most severe amongst was the 'Mechanical Torque Amplifier'. It frequently failed toward the end of a long trajectory run with the loss of the preceding computation and resulting in delay owing to its repair. To overcome this fault, the Ordnance Department made a contract with the University of Pennsylvania. The department made the contract as 'Moore School of Electrical Engineering' of the University of Pennsylvania had a 'Bush Differential Analyzer' of somewhat larger capacity than the one installed at Aberdeen. Further developments led to the construction contract which was signed on June 5, 1943, between the two parties. The secretly planned venture was code named 'Project PX'. This project and it's subsequent outcome 'ENIAC' was conceived and designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania. They were accompanied by a team of design engineers which included Robert F. Shaw (function tables), Chuan Chu (divider/square-rooter), Thomas Kite Sharpless (master programmer), Arthur Burks (multiplier), Harry Huskey (reader/printer) and Jack Davis (accumulators).
In June 1944, ENIAC was placed in operation at the Moore School, component by component, beginning with the 'Cycling Unit' and an 'Accumulator'. By September 1945 'Initiating Unit' and 'Function Tables' were brought. In October 1945, the 'Divider' and 'Square-Root Unit', led to the final assembly during the fall of 1945. The calculating machine's designers created the 'Gate' (logical and element), 'Buffer' (logical or element) and used a modified 'Eccles-Jordan Flip-Flop' as a logical, high-speed storage-and-control device. The machine's 'Counters' and 'Accumulators', with more sophisticated innovations, were made up of combinations of these basic elements. ENIAC's individual panel performed different functions. 20 of these 'Modules' were 'Accumulators' which performed addition, subtraction and hold a 10 digit decimal number in memory. It achieved high speed through it's panels which sent and received numbers, saved the answer and triggered the next operation, without involving any moving part. Numbers were passed between these units across a number of 'General-Purpose Buses' or 'Trays', as they were called. The machine utilised '10 Position Ring Counters' to store digits; each digit used 36 vacuum tubes, 10 of which were the dual triodes making up the flip-flops of the ring counter. ENIAC could discriminate the sign of a number, compare quantities for equality, add, subtract, multiply, divide, and extract square roots. ENIAC stored a maximum of twenty 10-digit decimal numbers. Its accumulators combined the functions of an adding machine and storage unit. No central memory unit existed, per se. Storage was localized within the functioning units of the computer. It was possible to connect several accumulators to run simultaneously, so the peak speed of operation was potentially much higher due to parallel operation. It could trigger different operations that depended on the sign of a computed result. ENIAC was designed to make it 'As all-electronic as possible'. The only mechanical elements in the final product were actually external to the calculator itself. These were an IBM card reader for input, a card punch for output and the 1,500 associated relays. It used plug-boards for communicating instructions to the machine. ENIAC's completion was announced in February 14, 1946. The first test problem run was computations for the hydrogen bomb conducted by a mathematician, John von Neumann. It's other tasks were for military purposes, such as calculating ballistic firing tables and designing atomic weapons.
However, ENIAC had it's own share of disadvantages. It took days to rewire the machine for each new problem. Roughly 2000 of the computer's vacuum tubes were replaced each month by a team of 6 technicians. Since ENIAC was initially not a stored program machine, it had to be reprogrammed for each task. Although vacuum tube reliability caused frequent outages, vacuum tube failures were most likely during the warm-up and cool-down periods. To reduce the chances of tube failures, the ENIAC was kept online as much as possible. By only shutting the machine down infrequently, failures only occurred roughly every two days. During this time Eckert and Mauchly had started working on a simpler and more powerful machines EDVAC and ORDVAC. ENIAC's operating costs were far above these machines. As a result, after remaining in continuous operation, it was shut down on 11:45 p.m. on October 2, 1955.
Development in the Invention of ENIAC
In 1948, Doctor John Von Neumann, an Hungarian American mathematician made several modifications to the ENIAC. The ENIAC had performed arithmetic and transfer operations concurrently, which caused programming difficulties. Von Neumann suggested that switches control code selection so pluggable cable connections could remain fixed. He added a converter code to enable serial operation. It reduced the reprogramming time to hours instead of days.
In 1949, J Presper Eckert and John Mauchly launched their company BINAC (BINary Automatic) computer that used magnetic tape to store data.
In 1950, the Remington Rand Corporation bought the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation and changed the name to the Univac Division of Remington Rand. Their research resulted in the UNIVAC (UNIVersal Automatic Computer), an important forerunner of today's computers.
Early in 1952, a high-speed shifter was added, which improved the speed for shifting by a factor of 5.
In July 1953, a 100-word expansion core memory was added to the system, using binary coded decimal, excess-3 number representation. To support this expansion memory, ENIAC was equipped with a new Function Table selector, a memory address selector, pulse-shaping circuits, and 3 new orders were added to the programming mechanism.
In 1964, Eckert and Mauchly received US patent 3,120,606 for ENIAC. However, in 1973 the patent was declared as void because of variety of reasons. The main being, Mauchly's June 1941 examination of the Atanasoff–Berry Computer, prototyped in 1939 by John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry. In a federal court case Honeywell vs. Sperry Rand provided legal recognition to Atanasoff as the inventor of the 'First Electronic Digital Computer'.
Role of the Invention of ENIAC in the development of Human Life
