ENIAC

The first functioning electronic computer consisted of 40 panels with almost 18,000 vacuum tubes. J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly were commissioned to construct a vacuum-tube computer by the US Army in 1943. ENIAC, which was 1,000 times faster than other calculating machines, was developed by the young scientists at the Moore School of Electronics in Philadelphia. It required just eight hours to perform calculations that had previously taken an entire year. The high processing capacity was needed by the US Army to calculate artillery firing tables. Mauchly wanted to use ENIAC?s speed to produce more accurate weather forecasts, which is why its inventors built a "universal machine". Photo: Jan Braun, HNF