1946 - Technology

Technology

Electronic numerical integrator and computer (ENIAC) is the world's first automatic electronic digital computer and makes the Mark I electromechanical computer of 1944 obsolete. The massive 30-ton device unveiled February 14 at Philadelphia employs 18,000 radio tubes and large amounts of electric power (the city's lights dim whenever it is turned on), it operates on the principle that vacuum tubes can be turned on and off thousands of times faster than mechanical relays, and by using punched cards pioneered by the late Herman Hollerith in 1890 it can make some 7,500 calculations per second (to compute trajectories of artillery shells); although its tubes are not reliable and it functions only for brief periods, ENIAC begins a revolution in industrial technology. University of Pennsylvania electrical engineers J. (John) Presper Eckert Jr., now 27, and John William Mauchly, now 39, began work on ENIAC early in 1941 following a visit with University of Iowa physicist John Vincent Atanasoff, now 41, who had invented basic concepts of computer technology. Using volatile memory that is constantly refreshed, binary arithmetic, and a combination of not, and, or, and nor logic gates, Atanasoff produced a prototype machine as early as 1939 and by 1942 had a completed model—a noisy, desk-size monster whose spinning digital calculator could read a series of numbers into binary registers, operate on those numbers again and again, and then punch out an answer; the war interrupted his work, he moved to Maryland to work in ballistics research (the War Department needed computers to calculate artillery trajectories), and he never obtained a patent. Eckert and Mauchly supplied the War Department with a U-shaped, 30-ton, 1,800-square-foot digital computer comprised of 40 different units, including 20 accumulators, all connected by heavy black cables that could perform 5,000 addition cycles per second, calculate a trajectory in 30 seconds (an analog desk calculator required 20 hours), and do the work of 60,000 people working by hand (see 1948; transistor, 1947; Univac, 1951).

Bell Laboratories statistician John Tukey, 31, coins the term bit (short for binary digit) to describe the 1s and 0s that are basic to digital computer programs (see software, 1958).

Ford Motor Company engineer Delmar S. Harder, 54, coins the word automation for the system he has created to manufacture automobile engines. His completely automatic process produces a new engine every 14 minutes and is the first completely self-regulating system applied to manufacturing (see transportation [assembly line], 1913).