Two of the most important computers in history were ENIAC and UNIVAC 1.
ENIAC stands for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer. ENIAC was so important because it was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer that used vacuum tubes instead of relays. It was invented by J. Presper Ecket Jr. and John William Mauchly in 1946. ENIAC was invented at the University of Pennsylvania where it's inventors were engineers. The early computer was designed for many uses, but mostly just the government used them. How was this computer made? With a lot of parts. ENIAC was built with 18,000 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 5 million soldered joints, and it used 160 kilowatts of power. If this sounds interesting you should also look at UNIVAC 1.
UNIVAC 1 was very similar to ENIAC because it was invented in 1951, just five years after ENIAC was invented, but it was a little more advanced than ENIAC. UNIVAC 1 was invented by Ecket and Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania too. Unlike ENIAC, UNIVAC 1 was made at a company called UNIVAC. It stood for UNIVersal Automatic Computer. UNIVAC 1 was very important to history because it was the first commercially available computer and the fist computer to be able to use letters and number equally well. Also unlike ENIAC, UNIVAC 1 was created for business and government use. Since computers continue to get smaller UNIVAC 1 only used 5,000 vacuum tubes. It was designed with conservative serial architecture and it used magnetic tape for input and output. Now that you know more about the past you will hopefully understand the present better. |
