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What Are You Celebrating ENIAC Day With??

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TomHill

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What Are You Celebrating ENIAC Day With??

by TomHill » Thu Feb 15, 2024 4:16 pm

Today is ENIAC Day. It celebrates the first operation of ENIAC at the Univ of Pennsylvania, the World’s first electronic computer in 1946. By MacAuley and Eckert. I was not there, but at age 3, had already mastered the LL3 scale on my K&E slide rule, which I had already linked to the InterNet.
Do a Google on ENIAC and read some of its history. The iPhone you hold in your hand is orders of magnitude more powerful than ENIAC.
Since the ENIAC was so oafish & clunky compared to the iPhone, I’ll celebrate with a collection of PetiteSirahs.
Tom
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Paul Winalski

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Re: What Are You Celebrating ENIAC Day With??

by Paul Winalski » Fri Feb 16, 2024 2:15 pm

Konrad Zuse had built programmable computers earlier, but ENIAC was the first fully electronic one. Zuse's Z3 and Z4 were electromechanical. Eckert and Mauchly went on to found the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company (EMCC) which built and marketed the UNIVAC general-purpose computer. UNIVAC featured in Edward R. Murrow's election night coverage of the 1952 presidential election, It was running a program to predict the election results. There was a lot of TV time with shots of UNIVAC, especially of the spinning magnetic tape drives. This program is what made the general public aware of electronic computers and the tape drive was the iconic computer image for decades afterwards.

-Paul W.

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