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Interview with One of ENIACs Inventors

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the dave-you-like-your-eniac-better-than-me-don't-you dept.

deeptrace writes "On the 60th anniversary of the ENIAC an old family friend of 'Pres' Eckert transcribed some interviews recorded before his death. Very interesting reading. They dispel a few myths, such as the lights didn't really dim when they turned it on, and the military officers did not salute ENIAC."

1 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Re:ARRRR, MATEY! by Dzimas · · Score: 5, Informative
    In the interview, Eckert seems to imply that Atanasoff wasn't really worthy of receiving a patent because he had little more than test-bench ideas, wheras Mauchly and Eckert took their concepts and produced a machine that did cutting-edge scientific work for a decade. In a way, this points out many of the flaws with modern technology patents -- RIM would not be in the situation it is currently facing if the NTP lawyers were required to produce a working prototype of a wireless email system.

    The reason that everyone lauds ENIAC is that it was the first *meaningful* public application of a "pluggable/programmable" computer. Of course, a few folks at Bletchley Park knew that Tommy Flowers had built a tube-based computer in 1943-1944 to crack the German Lorenz codes. The British went on to build ten of them. And, incidentally, it used a parallel architecture.