ENIAC: What is the future of preserving Philadelphia’s super computer legacy? [Video]

Engineering students at the University of Pennsylvania walk by the ENIAC. Photo by Sarah Schu for Technically Philly

The following is a report done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods Program, the capstone class for the Temple Journalism Department.

In a small corner of the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering, marked by a small paper sign, sits Philadelphia’s portion of the remains of the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, or the ENIAC, what many say is the world’s first general use electronic computer.

A small panel of what used to be a massive 30-ton machine rests off in that corner in the Moore Building while engineering students sit a few feet away, browsing Facebook, chatting and eating lunch. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., which technically has ownership of all of the ENIAC, has a majority of the remaining pieces of the super computer, but much of it has either been destroyed or otherwise lost.

Last Tuesday, Feb. 15, marked 65 years since John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert debuted the ENIAC in Philadelphia at Penn’s Moore Building in 1946, an event that Bill Mauchly, a Video Architect at Cisco Systems and son of John Mauchly, said in an interview with Technically Philly marked a massive shift in technology’s history. Learn 10 things you need to know about the ENIAC.

“It was like if today you could walk, and tomorrow you could fly at 5000 miles per hour,” explained Mauchly.

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ENIAC: 10 things you should know about the original modern super computer 65 years later

Photo courtesy of the Penn Library

Sixty five years ago today, the first newspaper accounts of the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer hit newsstands.

From the Feb. 15, 1946 New York Times, a page one headline reads: ‘Electronic Computer Flashes Answers, May Speed Engineering’ and its true power is being said to have introduced the modern computer.

Below, we share 10 things about the ENIAC that you really ought to know.

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‘Top Secret Rosies’ documentary tells story of women computers in WWII

Doris Blumberg Polsky used to be a computer.

She was 18 years old and graduating with her twin sister Shirley from Girls’ High in May 1942. They were both bright and studious and looking for a next step, so naturally their principal suggested they join a secret ballistics research lab then forming at the University of Pennsylvania.

Called ‘human computers,’ the hundreds of women across the country who were tasked with complex ballistics mathematics — at ages as early as 18 — are part of another of the often forgotten stories of women affecting the World War II outcome for the United States. In this case, with math and science and technology in West Philadelphia.

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Event Highlights: August 16 – 22, 2010

We’re almost though August, Philadelphia, so be sure to get in those last minute runs to the shore. Just save your trips for Tuesday or Thursday as those are the lone empty days on our events calendar.

This week is full of bar room meetups as both the Build Guild and Philly.rb plan on chatting over brews. Though If you’d like to stretch a bit, head on over to University City to watch a documentary about the women involved in the ENIAC, the world’s first computer developed at Penn.

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