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How the World's First Computer Was Rescued From the Scrap Heap
anavictoriasaavedra sends this quote from Wired:
"Eccentric billionaires are tough to impress, so their minions must always think big when handed vague assignments. Ross Perot's staffers did just that in 2006, when their boss declared that he wanted to decorate his Plano, Texas, headquarters with relics from computing history. Aware that a few measly Apple I's and Altair 880's wouldn't be enough to satisfy a former presidential candidate, Perot's people decided to acquire a more singular prize: a big chunk of ENIAC, the "Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer." The ENIAC was a 27-ton, 1,800-square-foot bundle of vacuum tubes and diodes that was arguably the world's first true computer. The hardware that Perot's team diligently unearthed and lovingly refurbished is now accessible to the general public for the first time, back at the same Army base where it almost rotted into oblivion.
Ross Perot is awesome! Damn shame that Clinton got elected.
I don't want to do a sig now
...it wasn't the first computer.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
not the world's first.
ENIAC wasn't the first electronic programmable computer. Colossus was. It was used for code breaking in WW2. Colossus Mark 1 was up and running by December 1943, and Mark 2 (using shift registers to increase speed) was up and running by June 1944. The only reason people think of ENIAC instead of Colossus, was that Colossus's existence was kept secret up until the 1970s. By that time ENIAC got all the publicity.
Gleason realized early on that he couldn’t make his portion of ENIAC run actual calculations—such an endeavor would require all 40 panels
I wonder if Gleason of other preservationists have considered building functional replicas of the missing panels. Doing so would be the first step is bringing the relics to life again as a functioning computer.
Of course, that would not be the end of the project:
, not to mention thousands of new components and technical know-how that had long been forgotten.
But perhaps a workable project to restore ENIAC to working order could inspire the re-discovery of such knowledge. Often of technical knowledge thought to be lost is not really lost, just misplaced. Somebody knows or knows who knows but they need to be inspired to come forward or follow up on their hunch.
That giant sucking sound coming from the south was interfering with my concentration.
#DeleteChrome
Nice try at snobbery but it doesn't need to be infinite to be turing complete. And like an infinite number of monkey bashing on keyboards might eventually write "Hamlet", a truly infinite computer might contain the solution to the halting problem, thus making itself not turing complete any more. So there.
Binary (not decimal like the ENIAC), floating point unit, touring complete, programmable via tape. Nothing came close for years.
So essentially ENIAC is lost.
What's left is only a quarter of the original machine that's been turned into some light show. The other 3/4 of the panels are owned by other people or are gone entirely. While I'm not saying it wasn't worth doing or that it wasn't hard work, it's not what I would call "refurbished".
It's like digging up a skeleton and having someone rig up a motion detector to play recorded phrases and move the jaw as people walk by it.
Unfortunately there seems to be a period of time where things are just old and past their usefulness, - their historical significance takes more time for people to appreciate. I understand that a true restoration would be hugely impractical, but it would be cool.
Can you play Crysis on it?
Sure. Bring a laptop.
The first American computer.
So what you mean is the BIGGER computer? :D
ENIAC is merely the first _electronic_ computer. The Zuse Z1 was the first programmable computer, and it was built on private funds, by Zuse himself.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I had a chance to bid on an ENIAC at a Government auction, Looking at it, while it would be cool to have and show off, my entire 3 bedroom ranch house with an extension wasn't big enough to store it in; had to pass for obvious reasons.
I did ask about it, the high bid was $300 but refused as the precious metals were worth more than that.
But I did have a chance :}
Or you can get ENIAC on a chip:
http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~jan/eniacproj.html
much less space and easier on the electric bill too.
George H W Bush (aka Bush41) tossed that moniker in Reagan's direction in the primaries in the 1980 election cycle. Reagan was the conservative and Bush was the establishment guy, and the establishment Republicans were doing everything they could possibly do to stop Reagan (which led to the famous mike-cutting incident which can be seen on You Tube). When Reagan won the GOP nomination, the establishment wanted him to put former president Ford on the ticket... and since he had been President a VP slot was not what they wanted; they told Reagan that he should take Ford as his "co-president". Reagan was not dumb enugh to fall for that and instead put Bush (the establishment's 2nd choice) on the ticket as VP to unify the party - after which only Democrats went on using the "voodoo economics" phrase.
Ross Perot's famous phrase was "giant sucking sound" which was what he said the American middle class would hear, relative to jobs wages and benefits, if the establishment Republicans (represented by Bush41 in the 1992 race) and/or the establishment Democrats (backing Clinton in 1992) got their way and rewarded Wall Street bankers by passing NAFTA. Perot was a smart but un-artful guy deploying something we used to call "common sense" and basic economics and was, of course, ultimately proved correct.
I was never a big fan of his, but he WAS a genuinely patriotic guy who spent a lot of time and money trying to bring any American POWs home and similar causes AND he was a computer guy long before Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (though of a very different sort naturally since he was pre-microcomputer.
Perot may have failed to get elected, but he set a very high standard for any would-be third-party presidential candidate to even match.
Oh, and relative to the "restoration" - it was apparently not up to museum standards BUT even reputable museums have done similar things with other artifacts like famous rare aircraft. It's best when people do this stuff if they at least keep the parts and document everything so somebody later can re-do it better. Certainly whatever his employees did, it was FAR better than what the government had done for decades.
Now we can see it in colors... Did IBM name "Deep Blue" after that?
ENIAC was the first digital ELECTRONIC computer. There had been relay monsters built before it.
Everyone who went to school before 1996 was taught that ENIAC was the world's first GP computer.
It depends where you went to school. I was taught that EDSAC was the first fully programmable computer. Earlier devices (including ENIAC) had to be physically re-configured to run each different program using cables and switches, rather than just loading a new program into the same memory that is used for data.
Even if we had known about Colossus at that time (and it is possible that some of my teachers did...) it would not have qualified as a stored-program computer.
Next you'll be claiming that the US didn't single-handedly win both world wars!
We did pretty much single-handedly stop the Chimera invasion in 1949 though.
Perot didn't rescue anything. They just found a few panels and wired them up with blinky lights, Hollywood style.
Here's a list of the ENIAC parts and their locations (from Wikipedia):
The School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania (where the ENIAC was built in 1943 and operated until 1947) has four of the original forty panels and one of the three function tables of ENIAC (on loan from the Smithsonian).
The Smithsonian has five panels in the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
The Science Museum in London has a receiver unit on display.
The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California has three panels and a function table on display (on loan from the Smithsonian).
The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor has four panels, salvaged by Arthur Burks.
The U.S. Army Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, where ENIAC was used, has one of the function tables.
The Perot Group in Plano, Texas has also seven panels and detailed history and explanation of ENIAC functions using text, graphics, photographs and interactive touch screen.
The U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY has one of the data entry terminals from the ENIAC.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
There was a war on. Then we had to build bigger bombs to beat the Rooshins in the nucular race.