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! ;)

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.

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.

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.