Interview with One of ENIACs Inventors

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."

Comments

ARRRR, MATEY!

[Omikr0n]

It's just a darn shame they stole all that technology, eh? Although Eckert disputes it at the end of the interview, the court found that: "...John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry had constructed the first electronic digital computer at Iowa State College in the 1939 - 1942 period. He had also ruled that John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, who had for more than twenty-five years been feted, trumpeted, and honored as the co-inventors of the first electronic digital computer, were not entitled to the patent upon which that honor was based. Furthermore, Judge Larson had ruled that Mauchly had pirated Atanasoff's ideas, and for more than thirty years had palmed those ideas off on the world as the product of his own genius." Full Q&A can be found here: http://www.scl.ameslab.gov/ABC/Trial.html Court documents can be found here: http://www.cs.iastate.edu/jva/court-papers/index.s html

Re:ARRRR, MATEY!

[Voltageaav]

RTFA, "While there are controversies about who invented what, there is universal agreement that the ENIAC was the watershed project that showed electronic computing was possible."

Re:ARRRR, MATEY!

[Dzimas]

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.

Re:ARRRR, MATEY!

[LWATCDR]

"It's just a darn shame they stole all that technology, eh?"
1. No one person invented the computer.
2. Eniac worked while Atanasoff's system didn't
3. Was Eniac inspired by Atansoff's work? Probably. Was it a copy? No.

Bletchley Park

[Burb]

Or for that matter, the perennial controversy over whether honours for first digital computer should go to the British working at Bletchley Park on the Enigma decoders. I don't have a bias here (well, not much), but you need to remember that there were a several teams working on electronic digital computing around the world, and many of them were top-secret projects.

Re:Bletchley Park

[lisaparratt]

Didn't you get the memo? An invention doesn't count until someone in the US does it! ;)

Re:Bletchley Park

[Vanders]

The Bombes wern't computers. The Colosus were. You should also note that the physical design of the machine doesn't matter all that much; all pre-tube machines (Most from that era) were electro-mechanical devices because they used relays as switching units.

Re:Bletchley Park

[msbsod]

The honor of the first stored-program digitial computer should probably go to Konrad Zuse for his Z3 machine. It was electro-mechanical, but has been proven to be Turing complete.

Indeed. The whole discussion about about "electronic" vs. "electro-mechanical" serves only one purpose, namely to give all credit to the ENIAC team and no credit to Konrad Zuse. It really does not matter whether a computer is based on relays, tubes, TTL transistors or field effect transistors. In all those implementations we find a timed gate controlling a current, the basic idea of a binary operation. Besides, all those components are typically found in an electronics catalog these days.

There is actually a good reason to use relays instead of tubes. Tubes had a very short lifetime. One bad tube can ruin your day. Having to deal with 18,000 tubes is a nightmare.

ENIAC was a great team effort. However, Konrad Zuse not only built the first electronic computer, Z1, he did it alone at age of 28 without support by any university, company and government. Konrad Zuse was a true genius and he deserves the credit for building the first electronic computer.

Sooo,

[IAAP]

FTFA: By picking the right gear ratio you should get the right constants in the equation.

So, if you popped the clutch, your constants may jump in value?

Ok, Ok, I'm leaving!

Passing the mouse test...

[the_demiurge]

What's the zaniest thing you did while developing ENIAC?

The mouse cage was pretty funny. We knew mice would eat the insulation off the wires, so we got samples of all the wires that were available and put them in a cage with a bunch of mice to see which insulation they did not like. We only used wire that passed the mouse test.

This should be taken to heart by forward-thinking engineers everywhere.

Re:Passing the mouse test...

[rewinn]

>I think it would be more accurate to say it was built with the help of mice

... insert "Hitchiker's Guide To the Galaxy" reference here

A little bit too prideful, don't you think?

[Spy der Mann]

Someday I'll write a book on who really invented the computer. It wasn't Atanasoff or Von Neumann. We did it.

I really think that J. Presper Eckert (the ENIAC inventor ) and Von Neumann both deserve credit. Eckert said it himself in the interview:

Was ENIAC programmable?

Yes and no. We programmed the machine by plugging wires in from place to place. That's not hard-wired; it's not software; it's not memory. It's pluggable programming. And we had switches to set the functions.

However Von Neumann did a lot of theoretical work on algorithms (he is cited by Knuth on the merge sort algorithm) and cellular automata.

Certainly Von Neumann was ahead of his time, he was already thinking in general-purpose algorithms, while the ENIAC only worked to solve differential equations.

I'm not trying to discredit anybody, but IMHO Eckert should have chose the wrong wording when claiming to be *THE* inventor of the computer.

Not the point

[RealProgrammer]

Putting together a machine like that is an amazing feat. Using other people's ideas is the hallmark of great engineers. Taking credit for other people's ideas is the hallmark of great losers.

As TFA says, whether you think of Eckert and Mauchly as the first to build a computer or not, ENIAC is the "watershed event". A lot of people in the U.S. think of Henry Ford as the inventor of the automobile, even though if you press them they probably remember that he was not, by many years and an ocean.

Dan Bricklin, inventor of the electronic spreadsheet, was sued by Lotus Corp. for violating the 'look and feel' of their 1-2-3 product with his Visicalc. Never mind that their entire product was based on his beautiful idea, he got sued out of business for copying their menu structure.

What the courts decide and what actually happened are often not entirely in sync.

First guy dumped for being a geek

[leroybrown]

During the summer of 2004, my girlfriend at the time had a job taking care of an old guy at his beach house on Long Beach Island, NJ. The old guy grew up in Philly society back in the 30's and 40's and was part of the Doan family, owners of a prominent Chevrolet dealership. I was living at the house too and got to talking to the guy one day and told him I was involved with computers. Then he starts telling me all about how his wife (who had died recently) had dated a guy named Pres Eckert who had invented "some computer". I told him it was the ENIAC and pressed him for details. He told me his wife had dumped Pres because he was always taking her to see the machine and would make her sit around waiting for him to fix some problems before they went on dates. So, this could probably be the first instance of a guy being dumped for being a computer geek.

The size of the ENIAC

[theurge14]

We built ENIAC in a room that was 30 feet by 50 feet, at the Moore School in West Philadelphia on the first floor.

And on the second floor, we have a room 10 feet by 15 feet where we built the ENIAC Mini, which of course since it doesn't have a teletype, punch card reader or mouse, is more affordable.

did you ever hear of Konrad Zuse?

[lophophore]

You need to look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuse

Before you make your rash statements about the Colossus being first.

First program run: direct knowledge

[192939495969798999]

I have direct knowledge of the first major program they ran with the ENIAC, because my dad was there when they did it. It was a program to calculate the first 1000 digits of Pi... and it worked too. They had a process by which you had to review any functions that were going into the computer before you put them in... if only we still did that. Expensive but extremely effective at reducing software bugs in code... the only time the machine was down was for tubes and hardware.

Eniac was a team effort

[christurkel]

The Eniac was a team effort; my grandfather was in the team that helped solve the math of the beast; not just computation but also thing like making sure the Eniac didn't need the power of a small city to work.
When he died, we found some of his notes about the Eniac in old notebook which we donated to the Smithsonian.

Re:Ahh, maybe not

[iamlucky13]

On the other hand, while IBM's boxes could add and multiply, ENIAC could, according to Pres, solve differential equations. That doesn't settle anything, but it is an impressive step up.

Re:Important concepts introduced by ENIAC?

[D4C5CE]

19th century engineering wasn't really up to building the Analytical Engine. Babbage famously said, late in his life, that he would gladly give up the rest of his time if he could spend just three days 500 years in the future. Of course a man who was really out of this time was Leonardo DaVinci, who sketched a 13 digit cogwheel digital adder in the 15th century.

Its price and proportions would have been staggering, but much like by the IBM-sponsored collection of Leonardo's machines at Clos Luce, the myth that it wouldn't have been feasible has now actually been dispelled for the case of Babbage as well by building a working engine from the original designs to the tolerances of their time - these are the relevant excerpts from the project documentation:

The most widely accepted reason for this failure is that Victorian mechanical engineering were not sufficiently developed to produce parts with sufficient precision.
(...)
By previous standards these engines were monumental in conception, size and complexity.
(...)
Babbage failed to complete the construction of any of his engines. His failures were not failures of principle but of practical accomplishment. However, the legend of his work if not its technical detail remained part of the folklore amongst those who pursued the ideal of automated calculation after his death.
(...)
The advantage of using the method of differences is that it eliminates the need for multiplication and division in the calculation of a particular class of mathematical functions called polynomials. The Difference Engine only used addition which is easier to mechanise than multiplication and division.

Manufacturing parts for his engines stretched the standards of engineering practice of the time. The intricate shapes required special jigs and tools and the Engines' mechanisms demanded hundreds of near-identical precision parts. Babbage conceived his Engine designs at a time when production techniques were in transition between craft traditions and mass-production and there was not yet the means of producing repeated parts automatically.
(...)
Babbage conducted an extensive survey of manufacturing techniques and practice by visiting manufactures and craft workshops in England and on the Continent. He concluded that the precision and intricacy required for the construction of his Engine were beyond the capabilities of the technology of the day. This study, conducted during the 1820s, formed the basis of his influential book entitled On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, published in 1832.
(...)
Babbage benefited from substantial government funding - £17,500. But work on the Engine was halted in 1833 when Clement downed tools following an unresolved dispute over compensation for moving his workshop four miles to new premises near Babbage's house.
(...)
The reasons for his failure continue to exercise historians. Factors cited include Babbage's allegedly difficult personality, unconvincing progress, disputes with his engineer, Joseph Clement, political instability and the eventual withdrawal of government funding, though the view most often repeated in histories of computing is that Babbage's failure was due to limitations in Victorian machine tool technology.

To explore the thesis that the limitation of Victorian engineering was a contributory factor in Babbage's failure to complete any of his machines the Science Museum set about constructing Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2 in 1985. Before the engine could be constructed the original design drawings were redrawn and expanded to provide the engineering detail needed for modern manufacture.
(...)
Modern techniques were used in the manufacture of repeat parts but care was taken to restrict limits of precisi

Konrad Zuse's Z3 was the first!

[gururise]

Its time to stop the myth of Eniac being the first electronic programmmable computer. It is well established and generally accepted in the scientific and historic community that Konrad Zuse (from Germany) developed the worlds first electronic programmable computer, the Z3 in 1941 in Germany.

In 1998, it was even proven that his Z3 computer was Turing Complete.

Another good link is here