Technical description of ENIAC

"Replacing a bad tube meant checking among ENIAC's 19,000 possibilities." (U.S. Army photo, from archives of the ARL Technical Library, courtesy of Mike Muuss; caption from Martin H. Weik, "The ENIAC Story").

Two women wiring the right side of the ENIAC with a new program (U.S. Army photo, from archives of the ARL Technical Library, courtesy of Mike Muuss).

The Jonh Atanasov controversy

There is actually little doubt that Mauchly was inspired by Atanasoff's work. In 1941 Atanasoff knew more about basic elements of electronic computation than Mauchly and openly shared this knowledge. The ABC, with its several hundred vacuum tubes, represented one of the most complicated electronic circuits at the time, and Mauchly, with his then very limited experience, would have been impressed by its design. Still, the ABC had been designed as a special purpose computer designed only to solve large systems of linear equations. Certain aspects of its design also precluded the ABC from computing at truly electronic speeds. Upon arriving at the Moore School, Mauchly gained access to many other sources of ideas not the least of which was the concept of ganged adding machines proposed by the faculty member Irven Travis. The ENIAC was, in other words, a combination of many different design ideas. Mauchly may have continued to draw ideas from Atanasoff's further reflections on electronic computing, but it was ultimately Mauchly who, working with Eckert, designed the first general- purpose electronic computer. Whether Mauchly gave credit to Atanasoff's contributions remains a separate historical question.

Judge Lawson Decision local copy

John Vincent Atanasoff was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President George Bush in a Ceremony at the White House on November 13, 1990.

John von Neumann

Alan Turing