History of Computers :: essays research papers

tale of the ComputerThe ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first large-scale, computer. The ENIAC was built for the military to rate the paths of artillery shells. Later on it was employ to make calculation for thermonuclear weapons research, weather predictions, and wind tunnel design. The ENIAC was brought in to use inn February of 1946 and was used unit October 1955 (Encarta).The creators of the ENIAC were American physicist illusion W. Mauchly and American Electrical engineer John Persper Eckert, Jr. at Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Eckert and Mauchly demo the ENIAC less than three years after the Army commissioned its construction. In 1947 the ENIAC moved from the University of Pennsylvania to its permanent home at the Aberdeen Proving ground in Maryland. Only one system of its type was ever built, but operated unendingly until October 1955 (Encarta).The ENIAC was very different than modern day computer s, which use microprocessors composed of thousands or millions of transistors the ENIAC used vacuum tubes to process data. It had approximately 18,000 vacuum tubes, which were about the size of a small light bulb. The ENIAC was composed of 30 separate units with government agency supplies and cooling units all together the whole unit weighed more than 30 tons, and took up 1800 sq. ft. and consumed 175Kw of power.2The ENIAC could perform about 5000 calculations per second, more than 10,000 times slow that most modern day computers. The ENIAC took about 20 seconds to appear problems that took populace two to three days to do manually. Initially, scientists programmed and entered data into ENIAC by manually setting switches and rewiring the implement. Later a more efficient IBM punch-card reading implement was used to input data, while another IBM punch card machine was used to store data. When the ENIAC sinless a calculation, it would notify operators by spell on a sequence of lights or punching certain sequences of cards.The ENIAC was designed to calculate continuously all day and all night. However its circuitry and vast turn of vacuum tubes tended to burn out, the ENIAC was continuously put down to be serviced, which caused the ENIAC to be down one third of the that is could be working. As soon as Eckert and Mauchly completed the ENIACs design, the signed a contract to build a successor, which was called the EDVAC (Electronic decided Variable Automatic Computer), this more efficient design reduced the payoff of vacuum tubes down to only 4000.