I'd like to see the looks on their faces when shown a modern smartphone that blows the socks of ENIAC. With all due respect, it was a great machine. And what an achievement.
in 1946 scientists thought that in 2020 we will have robots, flying cars, time travels, colonies on other planets, and space wars. If they see that actually, we have only smartphones I believe they would be very very disappointed
I remember being told at school about ENIAC, I guess about 1964-ish. 18,000 tubes (valves) would mean a lot of heat. What brilliant electronic engineers.
@@alizaidanthamyeez740 The problem is that the Colluses wasn't digital, wasn't fully reprogrammable/general purpose and wasn't Turing capable like the ENIAC. The ENIAC was a far more advanced as was the true beginning of the computer age
One thing I read elsewhere was that big number display, with all the lights, was added for the benefit of the reporters writing about the ENIAC. Beyond that, it served no function. This reminds me of something that happened in my company's data centre. A TV crew was in there and thought the computer didn't look like it was doing anything, so the techs ran some diagnostics, to cause activity on the tape stands, so that it looked busy. 🙂
Hi James, exactly so! The big number display was for public relations (may have been ping-pong balls with numbers painted on). Your story of the tech using diagnostic routines to look busy is great! Computers need to look "busy"... : )
ENIAC was the first general-purpose, Turing-complete, high-speed, digital electronic computer. In 1976, when I was a senior at Penn, there was a room on the first floor that was used for storage. Room 101 as I recall. One day in the spring, a friend told me there were some odd things in there that had just been delivered. So we investigated... It was ENIAC, or part of it. I knew it right away from the pictures, and having read the papers in the Moore School library. There were a couple of racks, various modules, etc. It was built in modular fashion so that if a problem was detected a module would be replaced rather than trying to fix it in place. There were a lot of modules! The tubes and parts were exceedingly ordinary - it had been designed to use what was available during the war. I could have easily walked off with a module or two, but didn't - that would have been wrong. They must have kept the parts and gotten more, because in 1996, for the 50th anniversary, they got some of it back together and working well enough to add two numbers. Last time I was there, it was on display in the lobby of the Moore School. ENIAC was a decimal machine, not binary, but in pretty much all other respects it is a classic Von Nuemann computer, with I/O, CPU, memory, etc. It was programmed in machine language - by a team of women who invented the needed methods as they went along. By modern standards ENIAC was mind-bogglingly slow and stupid - but by the standards of the time, it was orders of magnitude faster and smarter than anything anyone had imagined before. ENIAC would do in seconds what the fastest machines before would do in days. And, ENIAC was general purpose - it could do any calculation or similar problem that could be broken down into a series of logical steps. Every digital computer and related device you use today is a direct descendant of ENIAC. www.seas.upenn.edu/about-seas/eniac/ ftp.arl.mil/mike/comphist/eniac-story.html
Hi @JugSouthgate, thank you very much for your comments. Excellent observations. Especially the ones about the modular design of the ENIAC, and the fact that it used readily available tubes and components during wartime shortages. ENIAC was quite an acievement for the time, and sparked (through Eckert and Mauchly) the growth of much of the early U.S. computer field, with the UNIVAC line and the growth of commercial computing as well as military and educational applications. Thanks for the info! - Victor, at CHAP
One detail- it wasn’t a vonNeumann machine. It didn’t have stored instructions. It didn’t have addressable memory. Programming was done with patch cords and switch settings. The only memory was a few arithmetic accumulators. Today we just assume all computers have code and data in RAM. Not always so.
Awesome job, enjoyed the heck out of it. Still wrapping my mind around 18000 tubes....the heat generated, the power requirements, I imagine they must have had one or more full time persons just for tube testing!
Hi Scott, yes, its an amazing total # of tubes. I believe they eventually required "computer grade" tubes, which had higher reliability than the ordinary radio tubes. Also, at some point, they had tube pre-heaters, that tested the tubes before they went into full production, so the failure rate was lower during daily operation than it might have otherwise been. But yes, I bet they had some staff that just kept track of vacuum tubes and replaced them daily, as needed. An interesting "job description" to say the least! Thanks for watching!
The Brilliant work of Eckert and Mauchly was based on the original design of Dr. Atanasoff and his First Electronic Computer named Atanasoff Berry Computer, Although both denied their work to be of any relation to Dr. Atanasoff, he raised a lawsuit and proved his patent in a long fight because of a letter Dr. Mauchly wrote - which he completely forgot about in the court - asking him to use some of his ideas in a commercial computer. still ENIAC is known to history to be invented by Eckert and Mauchly Work, everybody forgot about Dr. Atanasoff. both ways thanks for providing this rare footage.
Thanks, good comment. Also worthy to note that Eckert and Mauchly went on to create BINAC, and UNIVAC, and founded the first US Computer Company, eventually bought by Remington Rand. Atanasoff had great ideas, but I think Eckert and Mauchly put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into expanding his work and growing the computer industry in America. Must have been interesting times to live through. - Thanks again!
indeed any contribution in terms of research and development is quite respected and should be awarded, but without neglecting others support and help throughout the way. why would both deny their work being related to Dr. Atanasoff :) both ways it's been more than 70 years already and we should be grateful to whomever supported the R&D in the computing World. your comment is much appreciated and thanks again for the video :)
While history shows that E & M borrowed some ideas from Atanasoff, their design contains also items you could say are borrowed from others than Atanasoff. Nobody had synthesized anything capable of as much variable programmable capability as ENIAC ever before. Atanasoff definitely deserves much credit, and was given his due in a way, when his work was used as a basis for invalidating E&M's most important patents. But this should not be used to argue that ENIAC was not important. It was undeniably the most important electronic computer in history. The ABC and Zeuss's similar electromechanical Z-1, were important but not fully electronic, digital, and not having a general purpose ALU.
Warp thank you very much for your comment, no body argued about the importance of ENIAC , its mainly about rejecting the help of others or having the courage to admit it, The denial on Atanasoff assistance for both inventors leading to a long lawsuit shows that something was indeed wrong, there is an episode on TH-cam on this matter, it has all the details. Thanks again :)
A judge made a decision about a patent, but it is not a historic fact that one machine was "based" on another in any appreciable way. The letter exists, the question was asked, but that does not prove action was taken. Many historians have argued that the machines are fundamentally different in almost every aspect, but one: they both used tubes. The court case was about corporate money, not a scholarly study of computer science ideas.
Trouble is it was wrong. The first electronic, programmable, digital computer was Colossus from 1944, it was just kept secret though ENIAC's designers certainly knew of it.
@@WaukWarrior360 Not entirely accurate. The Colossus was fully electronic and digital using binary. Everything about it was digital. It had mechanical parts in regard to the paper tape reel mechanisms, but nothing was analog about it. It was however limited in its programmability as it was not Turing complete. It was mostly what we would refer to as fixed program or having discrete logic, with only the ability to change the variables in the program, not the program itself. And even then it wasn't the first at that. The Atanasoff-Berry computer was operational in 1942, one year before the Colossus (first version built 1943) and was fully electronic and digital using binary. It was again not Turing complete, and often loses against the Colossus in the title for "first computer" because it was less practical and more a proof of concept for the notion of electronic digital computers being many times faster in mathematical calculations than any mechanical machine in existence at the time. The first true Turing complete computer was really the Zuse Z3 from 1941. It was digital and even used binary logic, but was electromechanical rather than electronic, using relays instead of vacuum tubes. Today it is generally regarded as the first computer because our modern criteria for a computer is that it has to be Turing complete, and as such to be fully programmable and to in theory be able to compute everything that is computable. There was another "first computer" contender and it was the Harvard Mark I from 1944. It was absolutely massive in size, even compared to the rather big Colossus, and was very fast despite being electromechanical rather than electronic. It was almost Turing complete, as it lacked conditional branching, a vital component of Turing completeness, but was quite versatile in its computational capabilities. The ENIAC gets the title of first fully electronic, digital and Turing complete computer, but it used decimal instead of binary. For the first electronic, digital, Turing Complete and binary computer we have the Manchester Baby from 1948, which was also the first to be compliant to the Von Neumann architecture, the basis of all modern computers.
Hi @elimalinsky7069, good points here. It is a broad area of expertise and knowledge, and it helps to know a little about the various machines of the early days. Lots of nuances to consider, and so many of the early machine type contributed greatly to the overall growth of the industry. Thanks for sharing this perspective with our viewers and subscribers. This topic often creates much discussion from a variety of different perspectives. Much appreciated. ~ Victor, CHAP
My brain hurts, just thinking about how far reaching and how super smart these men and women were who developed and ran these computers. Just think where the world would be if we were stuck using computers based on switches and relays as had been before this computer was invented.
@@thanasisathanasi4965 At the end of the day, all your current computer or phone is doing is acting as a really fast calculator. It's the "programmable" aspect of computers that give them their true power and flexibility.
Well, the real progress is that nowdays the computer can be a tiny device actually mounted on the gun, calculating angle and such in real time, and can also link to a locally placed weather sensor to correct for things like wind direction and velocity, all in real time. Heck, a desired target could be set on a map based on GPS coordinates and it will do the rest itself. In ENIAC's day, it would be given data on the projectile velocity and so on, and calculate a series of tables that would be printed, duplicated and distributed to forces in the field so they knew the exact angle to fix their mortar at to fire the shell at a target "x" metres away.
I’m confused. I thought the German Z1 by Konrad Zuse was the first in 1941, then the British Colossus Mk1 in 1943. It seems to depend on what is the generally accepted standard for a computer and/or where you come from. 🤔
Hi @davidholmes2283, Thank you for your question and feedback! If it helps clarify at all, the ENIAC was the first large scale, programmable, general purpose electronic digital computer in the U.S. Konrad Zuse's machines were built in Germany and not widely known until years after the war. British computers and codebreakers were top secrete until many years after the war.
Great to see the old film restored - thank you. 9:19 It would be nice to see Australia's first computer (CSIR Mk1 later known as CSIRAC) from 1949, inserted in the list of Earliest Computers.
I don't see how 12 hours vs. 30 seconds makes sense if the computer, for that 30 second operation, needed weeks of programming on paper, and then several hours of wiring by half a dozen people. Each type of operation needs new programming and rewiring. So it would have needed to do an awful lot of operations of the same type for it to be actually faster.
Here's why it was an enormous jump: 1) Once the programming was written and proved to be correct, it could be used again and again. 2) Once the wiring was designed, checked and documented, it could be repeated later in a short time. 3) Once a particular calculation was set up, different input numbers could be run in short order. For example, imagine setting up ENIAC to calculate the aiming of a particular artillery piece to hit a target 1000 yards away. That might takes weeks of programming and hours of wiring and checking. But, once it was set up and correctly working, calculating the aiming for other distances would take seconds. An entire aiming table that would have taken weeks or months to do by hand was done in a few hours.
Hi Tevin, thank you very much for the kind words. Much appreciated. Glad you enjoyed this video. May I suggest also the UNIVAC Basic System Components video as one you might enjoy too. ~ Victor, at CHAP th-cam.com/video/ZU-IVshCAss/w-d-xo.html
For all you software programmers & de-buggers... There was a glitch in the performance of this machine, and the gals were instructed to see what was wrong. They found an insect in among the vacuum tubes ...and they DE-BUGGED IT ! (true story)
It seems that the story refers to the Harvard Mark II computer (not the ENIAC). Here's a referenc that gives some background. Its is a story that has become somewhat of a legend. Yes, it was Grace Hopper who made the report. ~ Thanks!, ~ CHAP www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/5927/Grace-Hopper-recorded-the-first-actual-computer-bug/
The first computer called the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC), was developed during World War II by John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering. It was completed in 1945 and was primarily used for calculating artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory. The ENIAC was a large, room-sized machine that used vacuum tubes for circuitry and was not programmable. It was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer.
From a full room size computer, to smartphone size powerful processing power, I hope I can see quantum computer which right now also a full room size in IBM and D-Wave lab, can fit a desktop size within 30 years from now.
Very interesting! It would be great to identify the six women who were instrumental to the running of this invention as there seems to be a lot of footage of them already.
Yes, Just released: A New Book on ENIAC’s programmers! “Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World's First Modern Computer” by Kathy Kleiman Link: www.amazon.com/Proving-Ground-Untold-Programmed-Computer/dp/1538718286
Thanks to the skill of Lester J. Hemming piloting the Omega Boost, today we exist. If the infected ENIAC vacuum tube had not been changed in time, we would be under AlphaCore's dominance.
The first electronic computer was designed and built by Tommy Flowers at Bletchley Park in the uk. The computer Flowers built came on line just before D Day 1944. It was designed to turn into ‘plain text’ the output from Hitler’s ‘secret writer’, coded teleprinter as used by the Nazi High Command. Perhaps if people were to read up on Tommy Flowers and Bill Tutt, may help. Turings machine was electro mechanical.
Flower's "Colossus", while pioneering electronic calculation and digital logic, was not a universal computer but a special purpose machine. It was built to crack the Lorenz cipher and did that exceedingly well, but it could not be used for anything else. Likewise, the "bombe" Turing and his team used to crack Enigma was a special purpose machine that had little to do with his work on computability. But even before the war, Turing had defined mathematically what "computation" meant and what it could and could not do, he used a theoretical model now known as "Turing Machine", which was no physical machine at all. It is in fact unlikely that at the time anyone, including him, considered to actually build such a thing.
Hi @Sophie-zu7zi, Great question! There are quite a few differences. Comparing the two machines would take more space than we have here, however, here is a little info. German scientist and inventor Konrad Zuse created the Z3 electromechanical computer from 1938 to 1941. It was programmable and electromechanical, using relays. It was a small scale machine but very innovative. The ENIAC (1944-1946) was a large fast (for its time) vacuum tube based electronic computer. It was not easily programmable, but capable of large calculations for which it was designed. Both machines have fascinating histories. ENIAC inventors spawned the BINAC, UNIVAC I, UNIVAC II and other machines, which have an interesting history as well. Thanks for the interesting question.~ VK
Were vacuum tubes were also used like a transistor to form different types of gates for decision making? Or vacuum tubes were part of a setup like transistor which were then used to create gates?
Hi Kannan, thanks for your question. Tubes could perform a variety of functions. Perhaps this short video may better answer your question. Thank you for watching: th-cam.com/video/WnNm_uJYWhA/w-d-xo.html
Hi CHAP, Thanks for the magnificent piece. I was wondering how we can obtain permission to use some of the historic footage here in a BBC World Service project which is on Nanotechnology. Thanks!
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Thanks a lot for the prompt reply and kindly permitting us to use the piece. We will credit the used section to CHAP YT channel. Regards
PLEASE JOIN US in Preserving Computer History with a small contribution to our channel. www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=LCNS584PPN28E Your contribution greatly helps us continue to bring you educational, historical, vintage computing topics. Thank you! ~ Computer History Archives Project
Great video! I would like to use short sequences of the video for an open science elearning module. Do you own the rights to the video or is it public domain?
Hi Goede, thank you for your note. This film compilation has been restored by us and custom narration added to it. If you want to use short portions of this in an e-learning module, I am ok with that as long as you credit "Courtesy of Computer History Archives Project" as the source, and give a link to our TH-cam Channel if possible. Thank you for asking! Good luck with your project. ~ CHAP
Hi elwrongo, Good question. Actually, the UK machines designed and built during WWII at Bletchley Park (by Alan Turing and others) were top secret and designs were not known to Eckert and Mauchly during the ENIAC build (1943-1945). The Turing machine was designed for code breaking, the ENIAC was designed for ballistics calculations and other math work. ~ Thanks! Victor, at CHAP
Little did they know that the entire human race will be destroyed by a computer it created and it's already started, how exciting to see technology advance this far, can't wait to see what happens in the future how fun!
I remember having one of those installed on the corner of town for adding two single digit numbers together. I don't do math. 0+4? Only the ENIAC mainframe knows.
I can imagine back then when the advertised new computers...maybe a newer and more improved one. better and smaller then that ENIAC. "Can you believe this new computer only takes up ONE room now oppose to the once before two rooms!!" "just one room folks! we are coming a long way...." who would of thought computer would one day fit in someones pocket and be as powerful as 1000s upon 1000s of ENIACs but together! They need an ENIAC emulator for smart phones! they probably wouldnt of though that was possible either! A computer with in a computer....O.O
Computers on your apple watch (on your wrist - like a dick tracy radio) - I'm sure it blows their minds, those who are still around who helped develop these computers.
that baffles me, how did they develop this, i thought the first computer would be pretty primitive but that had HUGE functions if it can predict weather... where did all the ideas come from
John Mauchly wanted a better way to predict the weather. He knew that if weather data from various points was analyzed, more accurate predictions could be made - and he knew how to do it. Trouble was, with existing methods, the calculations took so long that the resulting "predictions" would be useless. So he set about looking for a way to calculate faster.....
Hi Ryan, the term "mainframe" was not commonly used back when the ENIAC was built. ENIAC CPU was called "the box" and was so large, several people could walk inside of it. On later computers, the main CPU enclosure was later called a "main frame." By the mid 1950's the term mainframe was used to distinguish large high-end computers from less powerful machines, such as Mini-computers. So, the ENIAC would surely have been a "mainframe" just like the UK Colossus machine, but the term was just not popular back then. Great question. Thanks very much! ~ Victor, CHAP
Hi Aprender, it is fine to use part of this in teaching or learning. If you can provide a link back to its source, that would be appreciated. Good luck with your project! ~ Victor, at CHAP
While not a perfect comparison, the machine ran as a 5kHz clock, each cycle allowing a store, load or add/subtract. About 500,000 of these would be ROUGHLY equivalent to a single core 2.5GHz processor. Each extra core would be about another half million of these.
Hi Drew, thanks for your question. As various ENIAC articles and references will say, it was used for highly complex mathematical computations, including military ballistic trajectory calculations, atomic research scientific calculations, and other related tasks that would have otherwise taken months to perform manually using only the electronic adding machines of that time.
Wikipedia: "Using an inverse tangent (arctan) infinite series, a team led by George Reitwiesner and John von Neumann that same year achieved 2,037 digits with a calculation that took 70 hours of computer time on the ENIAC computer." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi#Computer_era_and_iterative_algorithms
The court case in the 1970's proving the inventor's had used ideas from the Atanasof- Berry machine (ABC) is why we have smartphones laptops and game machines. Otherwise Sperry Rand would have ruled the computing world.
Well, there's a lot more history to that decision. Not everyone agreed with the judge's ruling. It is not clear that the Atanasof machine ever fully worked. In any case, the law suit created a vast amount of court records which are now a part of early computer history. Here is an interesting summary at the Hagley Museum site. invention.si.edu/honeywell-vs-sperry-rand-records-1935-1973
The first digital electronic computer was actually invented by John V. Atanasoff. The ENIAC patent was invalidated in 1973 because it was shown that Mauchly had derived the ENIAC design from the Atanasoff-Berry computer. Before ENIAC, Mauchly had visited Atanasoff's lab at Iowa State, and had access to Atanasoff's machine and design documents.
Hi Brian, there are several books on ENIAC, and numerous web articles. Here is one often quoted: "ENIAC The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer," By Scott McCartney. Perhaps that one helps. (Sorry for the delay in replying. Didn't see this comment until today. )~ Thanks!
Google Translate says: "I don't want to run the ENIAC computer directly because my computer will eventually learn to operate the ENIAC computer. " (interesting)
An inspiring video for students of Computer Science
Hi Edward, thank you for the positive feedback! ~ Victor, at CHAP
Show this to mine Annually
MAJIC
I'd like to see the looks on their faces when shown a modern smartphone that blows the socks of ENIAC. With all due respect, it was a great machine. And what an achievement.
Matt Nielsen then show them some terminator 2 scenes... trying to convince them its real life
@@jaymorpheus11 LMAO Then showing them some WipeOut games and convincing them it's a Real Life Driving game.
in 1946 scientists thought that in 2020 we will have robots, flying cars, time travels, colonies on other planets, and space wars. If they see that actually, we have only smartphones I believe they would be very very disappointed
No need to wait till the 21st century to have a pocket device that blow the socks off ENIAC, programmable calculators did that in the 1970s.
Totally...agree, see my comments...
I remember being told at school about ENIAC, I guess about 1964-ish.
18,000 tubes (valves) would mean a lot of heat. What brilliant electronic engineers.
In absence of semiconductor, they didn't have much tools and components on their hands
Another computer that uses tubes, the colossus mark 1 used them in a much more reliable way. I would recommend watching some stuff on it
@@alizaidanthamyeez740 The problem is that the Colluses wasn't digital, wasn't fully reprogrammable/general purpose and wasn't Turing capable like the ENIAC. The ENIAC was a far more advanced as was the true beginning of the computer age
One thing I read elsewhere was that big number display, with all the lights, was added for the benefit of the reporters writing about the ENIAC. Beyond that, it served no function. This reminds me of something that happened in my company's data centre. A TV crew was in there and thought the computer didn't look like it was doing anything, so the techs ran some diagnostics, to cause activity on the tape stands, so that it looked busy. 🙂
Hi James, exactly so! The big number display was for public relations (may have been ping-pong balls with numbers painted on). Your story of the tech using diagnostic routines to look busy is great! Computers need to look "busy"... : )
somethings never change, when i need to look busy i start debugging code from 5 years ago!!
Jesus loves ya 😊
ENIAC was the first general-purpose, Turing-complete, high-speed, digital electronic computer.
In 1976, when I was a senior at Penn, there was a room on the first floor that was used for storage. Room 101 as I recall. One day in the spring, a friend told me there were some odd things in there that had just been delivered. So we investigated...
It was ENIAC, or part of it. I knew it right away from the pictures, and having read the papers in the Moore School library. There were a couple of racks, various modules, etc.
It was built in modular fashion so that if a problem was detected a module would be replaced rather than trying to fix it in place. There were a lot of modules!
The tubes and parts were exceedingly ordinary - it had been designed to use what was available during the war. I could have easily walked off with a module or two, but didn't - that would have been wrong.
They must have kept the parts and gotten more, because in 1996, for the 50th anniversary, they got some of it back together and working well enough to add two numbers. Last time I was there, it was on display in the lobby of the Moore School.
ENIAC was a decimal machine, not binary, but in pretty much all other respects it is a classic Von Nuemann computer, with I/O, CPU, memory, etc. It was programmed in machine language - by a team of women who invented the needed methods as they went along.
By modern standards ENIAC was mind-bogglingly slow and stupid - but by the standards of the time, it was orders of magnitude faster and smarter than anything anyone had imagined before. ENIAC would do in seconds what the fastest machines before would do in days. And, ENIAC was general purpose - it could do any calculation or similar problem that could be broken down into a series of logical steps.
Every digital computer and related device you use today is a direct descendant of ENIAC.
www.seas.upenn.edu/about-seas/eniac/
ftp.arl.mil/mike/comphist/eniac-story.html
Hi @JugSouthgate, thank you very much for your comments. Excellent observations. Especially the ones about the modular design of the ENIAC, and the fact that it used readily available tubes and components during wartime shortages. ENIAC was quite an acievement for the time, and sparked (through Eckert and Mauchly) the growth of much of the early U.S. computer field, with the UNIVAC line and the growth of commercial computing as well as military and educational applications. Thanks for the info! - Victor, at CHAP
One detail- it wasn’t a vonNeumann machine. It didn’t have stored instructions. It didn’t have addressable memory. Programming was done with patch cords and switch settings. The only memory was a few arithmetic accumulators. Today we just assume all computers have code and data in RAM. Not always so.
Wonderful restoration. 3:03 What a beautiful smile she has.
SIMP. lol
Explotada y no reconocida
Looks like some species of a bingo machine.
The ENIAC could perform about 5000 additions or 50 multiplications in one second. The clock speed was 100kHz.
Awesome job, enjoyed the heck out of it. Still wrapping my mind around 18000 tubes....the heat generated, the power requirements, I imagine they must have had one or more full time persons just for tube testing!
Hi Scott, yes, its an amazing total # of tubes. I believe they eventually required "computer grade" tubes, which had higher reliability than the ordinary radio tubes. Also, at some point, they had tube pre-heaters, that tested the tubes before they went into full production, so the failure rate was lower during daily operation than it might have otherwise been. But yes, I bet they had some staff that just kept track of vacuum tubes and replaced them daily, as needed. An interesting "job description" to say the least! Thanks for watching!
It was an analogue numerical computer but a true electronic machine. The way it was programmed was determined by the way it was patched.
It was not analogue.... Where did you see that?
So ENIAC's legacy is.. EMCC Inc. -> Remington Rand -> SPERRY -> Burroughs -> UniSys Corporation... which still operates to this day...
The Brilliant work of Eckert and Mauchly was based on the original design of Dr. Atanasoff and his First Electronic Computer named Atanasoff Berry Computer, Although both denied their work to be of any relation to Dr. Atanasoff, he raised a lawsuit and proved his patent in a long fight because of a letter Dr. Mauchly wrote - which he completely forgot about in the court - asking him to use some of his ideas in a commercial computer. still ENIAC is known to history to be invented by Eckert and Mauchly Work, everybody forgot about Dr. Atanasoff. both ways thanks for providing this rare footage.
Thanks, good comment. Also worthy to note that Eckert and Mauchly went on to create BINAC, and UNIVAC, and founded the first US Computer Company, eventually bought by Remington Rand. Atanasoff had great ideas, but I think Eckert and Mauchly put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into expanding his work and growing the computer industry in America. Must have been interesting times to live through. - Thanks again!
indeed any contribution in terms of research and development is quite respected and should be awarded, but without neglecting others support and help throughout the way. why would both deny their work being related to Dr. Atanasoff :) both ways it's been more than 70 years already and we should be grateful to whomever supported the R&D in the computing World. your comment is much appreciated and thanks again for the video :)
While history shows that E & M borrowed some ideas from Atanasoff, their design contains also items you could say are borrowed from others than Atanasoff. Nobody had synthesized anything capable of as much variable programmable capability as ENIAC ever before. Atanasoff definitely deserves much credit, and was given his due in a way, when his work was used as a basis for invalidating E&M's most important patents. But this should not be used to argue that ENIAC was not important. It was undeniably the most important electronic computer in history. The ABC and Zeuss's similar electromechanical Z-1, were important but not fully electronic, digital, and not having a general purpose ALU.
Warp thank you very much for your comment, no body argued about the importance of ENIAC , its mainly about rejecting the help of others or having the courage to admit it, The denial on Atanasoff assistance for both inventors leading to a long lawsuit shows that something was indeed wrong, there is an episode on TH-cam on this matter, it has all the details. Thanks again :)
A judge made a decision about a patent, but it is not a historic fact that one machine was "based" on another in any appreciable way. The letter exists, the question was asked, but that does not prove action was taken. Many historians have argued that the machines are fundamentally different in almost every aspect, but one: they both used tubes. The court case was about corporate money, not a scholarly study of computer science ideas.
Trouble is it was wrong. The first electronic, programmable, digital computer was Colossus from 1944, it was just kept secret though ENIAC's designers certainly knew of it.
It's tricky. Colossus was not, according to the Wikipedia article, a general purpose computer. It was not fully Turing Complete, though ENIAC was.
The colossus also was not a digital computer, it was an electronic analog computer
@@WaukWarrior360 Not entirely accurate. The Colossus was fully electronic and digital using binary. Everything about it was digital. It had mechanical parts in regard to the paper tape reel mechanisms, but nothing was analog about it. It was however limited in its programmability as it was not Turing complete. It was mostly what we would refer to as fixed program or having discrete logic, with only the ability to change the variables in the program, not the program itself. And even then it wasn't the first at that. The Atanasoff-Berry computer was operational in 1942, one year before the Colossus (first version built 1943) and was fully electronic and digital using binary. It was again not Turing complete, and often loses against the Colossus in the title for "first computer" because it was less practical and more a proof of concept for the notion of electronic digital computers being many times faster in mathematical calculations than any mechanical machine in existence at the time.
The first true Turing complete computer was really the Zuse Z3 from 1941. It was digital and even used binary logic, but was electromechanical rather than electronic, using relays instead of vacuum tubes. Today it is generally regarded as the first computer because our modern criteria for a computer is that it has to be Turing complete, and as such to be fully programmable and to in theory be able to compute everything that is computable.
There was another "first computer" contender and it was the Harvard Mark I from 1944. It was absolutely massive in size, even compared to the rather big Colossus, and was very fast despite being electromechanical rather than electronic. It was almost Turing complete, as it lacked conditional branching, a vital component of Turing completeness, but was quite versatile in its computational capabilities.
The ENIAC gets the title of first fully electronic, digital and Turing complete computer, but it used decimal instead of binary. For the first electronic, digital, Turing Complete and binary computer we have the Manchester Baby from 1948, which was also the first to be compliant to the Von Neumann architecture, the basis of all modern computers.
Hi @elimalinsky7069, good points here. It is a broad area of expertise and knowledge, and it helps to know a little about the various machines of the early days. Lots of nuances to consider, and so many of the early machine type contributed greatly to the overall growth of the industry. Thanks for sharing this perspective with our viewers and subscribers. This topic often creates much discussion from a variety of different perspectives. Much appreciated. ~ Victor, CHAP
My brain hurts, just thinking about how far reaching and how super smart these men and women were who developed and ran these computers. Just think where the world would be if we were stuck using computers based on switches and relays as had been before this computer was invented.
ENIAC could give balistics readouts in 30 seconds, my computer can probably do it in 3/300th of a second. Its amazing how far and fast we have come
Yes, indeed!
It simply was a calculator?
@@thanasisathanasi4965 At the end of the day, all your current computer or phone is doing is acting as a really fast calculator. It's the "programmable" aspect of computers that give them their true power and flexibility.
Well, the real progress is that nowdays the computer can be a tiny device actually mounted on the gun, calculating angle and such in real time, and can also link to a locally placed weather sensor to correct for things like wind direction and velocity, all in real time. Heck, a desired target could be set on a map based on GPS coordinates and it will do the rest itself.
In ENIAC's day, it would be given data on the projectile velocity and so on, and calculate a series of tables that would be printed, duplicated and distributed to forces in the field so they knew the exact angle to fix their mortar at to fire the shell at a target "x" metres away.
And small
I’m confused. I thought the German Z1 by Konrad Zuse was the first in 1941, then the British Colossus Mk1 in 1943. It seems to depend on what is the generally accepted standard for a computer and/or where you come from. 🤔
Hi @davidholmes2283, Thank you for your question and feedback! If it helps clarify at all, the ENIAC was the first large scale, programmable, general purpose electronic digital computer in the U.S. Konrad Zuse's machines were built in Germany and not widely known until years after the war. British computers and codebreakers were top secrete until many years after the war.
Great to see the old film restored - thank you.
9:19 It would be nice to see Australia's first computer (CSIR Mk1 later known as CSIRAC) from 1949, inserted in the list of Earliest Computers.
Hi Head Pox, a very good point. The CSIR Mk 1 should be on the list. We take note of that for the future. Thanks!
I don't see how 12 hours vs. 30 seconds makes sense if the computer, for that 30 second operation, needed weeks of programming on paper, and then several hours of wiring by half a dozen people. Each type of operation needs new programming and rewiring. So it would have needed to do an awful lot of operations of the same type for it to be actually faster.
Here's why it was an enormous jump:
1) Once the programming was written and proved to be correct, it could be used again and again.
2) Once the wiring was designed, checked and documented, it could be repeated later in a short time.
3) Once a particular calculation was set up, different input numbers could be run in short order.
For example, imagine setting up ENIAC to calculate the aiming of a particular artillery piece to hit a target 1000 yards away. That might takes weeks of programming and hours of wiring and checking.
But, once it was set up and correctly working, calculating the aiming for other distances would take seconds. An entire aiming table that would have taken weeks or months to do by hand was done in a few hours.
Very informative and very well put together. Amazing ❤️ Thank you
Hi Tevin, thank you very much for the kind words. Much appreciated. Glad you enjoyed this video. May I suggest also the UNIVAC Basic System Components video as one you might enjoy too. ~ Victor, at CHAP
th-cam.com/video/ZU-IVshCAss/w-d-xo.html
For all you software programmers & de-buggers...
There was a glitch in the performance of this machine, and the gals were instructed to see what was wrong.
They found an insect in among the vacuum tubes
...and they DE-BUGGED IT !
(true story)
LMAO!
Nope. That story is from the Harvard Mark 1, an relay-based machine.
@@JugSouthgate was it Grace Hopper who taped the bug to the report?
@@hoperobertson930 Yes
It seems that the story refers to the Harvard Mark II computer (not the ENIAC). Here's a referenc that gives some background. Its is a story that has become somewhat of a legend. Yes, it was Grace Hopper who made the report. ~ Thanks!, ~ CHAP
www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/5927/Grace-Hopper-recorded-the-first-actual-computer-bug/
now THIS is what youtube is supposed to be
Thanks for all your great work!
You are quite welcome!
The first computer called the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC), was developed during World War II by John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering. It was completed in 1945 and was primarily used for calculating artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory. The ENIAC was a large, room-sized machine that used vacuum tubes for circuitry and was not programmable. It was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer.
It was programmed via the wiring plug-boards and switches.
Very good. Thanks for sharing this
Hi @carvalhoribeiro, thank you for the feedback! Glad you enjoyed it. ~ VK
tbh its more modern and powerful then I thought, 18k transistor in 1946 sounds pretty good.
Transistor was not developed until 1948. I think you meant vacuum tubes or valves.
Great informative, Computer History Archives Project.
Aadesh, thank you! ~ Victor, CHAP
People before 1970 and 80 had a another type of mind I ispires me to become a inventor
From a full room size computer, to smartphone size powerful processing power, I hope I can see quantum computer which right now also a full room size in IBM and D-Wave lab, can fit a desktop size within 30 years from now.
Strap on your seatbelt... it might be in 10 years!
Very interesting! It would be great to identify the six women who were instrumental to the running of this invention as there seems to be a lot of footage of them already.
Yes, Just released: A New Book on ENIAC’s programmers! “Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World's First Modern Computer” by Kathy Kleiman Link:
www.amazon.com/Proving-Ground-Untold-Programmed-Computer/dp/1538718286
Thanks to the skill of Lester J. Hemming piloting the Omega Boost, today we exist. If the infected ENIAC vacuum tube had not been changed in time, we would be under AlphaCore's dominance.
Some kind of game??
Yep. Some kind of *great* game...
@@netwalker-1 REBOOT
“Games That Pushed the Limits of the ENIAC”
Omega Boost, you're all set. Carry out the mission carefully...
The first electronic computer was designed and built by Tommy Flowers at Bletchley Park in the uk.
The computer Flowers built came on line just before D Day 1944.
It was designed to turn into ‘plain text’ the output from Hitler’s ‘secret writer’, coded teleprinter as used by the Nazi High Command.
Perhaps if people were to read up on Tommy Flowers and Bill Tutt, may help.
Turings machine was electro mechanical.
Actually we now know it came online a bit earlier than that - probable more than a year earlier. Some of this is still secret to this day!
Flower's "Colossus", while pioneering electronic calculation and digital logic, was not a universal computer but a special purpose machine. It was built to crack the Lorenz cipher and did that exceedingly well, but it could not be used for anything else. Likewise, the "bombe" Turing and his team used to crack Enigma was a special purpose machine that had little to do with his work on computability. But even before the war, Turing had defined mathematically what "computation" meant and what it could and could not do, he used a theoretical model now known as "Turing Machine", which was no physical machine at all. It is in fact unlikely that at the time anyone, including him, considered to actually build such a thing.
Apparently these weren't allowed in classroom for SAT exams.
Just mind blowing!!!
Thank you for such precious information it helped me a lot.
Thanks again ...
Hi Ashok jha, You are very welcome 😊. ~ Victor, at CHAP
It can run thousands of calculations in a second.
I worked for Unisys inn the 90s. Amazing job
Hi Jason, glad you found our channel. Thanks for watching. I bet Unisys was a fascinating place to work as well! ~ Victor, at CHAP
this was very interesting! but how exactly does the the eniac compare to the z3?
Hi @Sophie-zu7zi, Great question! There are quite a few differences. Comparing the two machines would take more space than we have here, however, here is a little info. German scientist and inventor Konrad Zuse created the Z3 electromechanical computer from 1938 to 1941. It was programmable and electromechanical, using relays. It was a small scale machine but very innovative.
The ENIAC (1944-1946) was a large fast (for its time) vacuum tube based electronic computer. It was not easily programmable, but capable of large calculations for which it was designed. Both machines have fascinating histories. ENIAC inventors spawned the BINAC, UNIVAC I, UNIVAC II and other machines, which have an interesting history as well. Thanks for the interesting question.~ VK
Were vacuum tubes were also used like a transistor to form different types of gates for decision making? Or vacuum tubes were part of a setup like transistor which were then used to create gates?
Hi Kannan, thanks for your question. Tubes could perform a variety of functions. Perhaps this short video may better answer your question. Thank you for watching: th-cam.com/video/WnNm_uJYWhA/w-d-xo.html
They also invented the Tablet Computer ( 6:57 )
Hi CHAP, Thanks for the magnificent piece. I was wondering how we can obtain permission to use some of the historic footage here in a BBC World Service project which is on Nanotechnology. Thanks!
Hi Amir, thank you for the welcome feedback. If you use a clip of the video, please mention our YT site as well. Thank you! ~ VK
@@ComputerHistoryArchivesProject Thanks a lot for the prompt reply and kindly permitting us to use the piece. We will credit the used section to CHAP YT channel. Regards
Pretty sure the creators of the ENIAC pronounced it with a short e, like eNIAC (Eh-NIAK, not EE-NIAK). Source: Proving Ground by Kleiman
Hi Samuel, good point.
PLEASE JOIN US in Preserving Computer History with a small contribution to our channel. www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=LCNS584PPN28E
Your contribution greatly helps us continue to bring you educational, historical, vintage computing topics. Thank you! ~ Computer History Archives Project
Today is ENIC 76 years anniversary.
Gracias por tu exposición
Would be nice to see nixie tubes for the output instead.
I remember my father told me about the first computer, wonder when g he still remembers
Wow. Ran for almost a decade straight.
Loved this!
Great video! I would like to use short sequences of the video for an open science elearning module. Do you own the rights to the video or is it public domain?
Hi Goede, thank you for your note. This film compilation has been restored by us and custom narration added to it. If you want to use short portions of this in an e-learning module, I am ok with that as long as you credit "Courtesy of Computer History Archives Project" as the source, and give a link to our TH-cam Channel if possible. Thank you for asking! Good luck with your project. ~ CHAP
Marvelous! Thank you so much. We will credit you as a source.
was this based on the British machine designed by Alan Turing? (the code breaking bomb machine)
Hi elwrongo, Good question. Actually, the UK machines designed and built during WWII at Bletchley Park (by Alan Turing and others) were top secret and designs were not known to Eckert and Mauchly during the ENIAC build (1943-1945). The Turing machine was designed for code breaking, the ENIAC was designed for ballistics calculations and other math work. ~ Thanks! Victor, at CHAP
Little did they know that the entire human race will be destroyed by a computer it created and it's already started, how exciting to see technology advance this far, can't wait to see what happens in the future how fun!
In 2010 Unisys spun off its payment systems division. The name of the new company? Burroughs.
I remember having one of those installed on the corner of town for adding two single digit numbers together. I don't do math. 0+4? Only the ENIAC mainframe knows.
Imagine the job of replacing burned out or defective vacuum tubes?
I can imagine back then when the advertised new computers...maybe a newer and more improved one. better and smaller then that ENIAC. "Can you believe this new computer only takes up ONE room now oppose to the once before two rooms!!" "just one room folks! we are coming a long way...." who would of thought computer would one day fit in someones pocket and be as powerful as 1000s upon 1000s of ENIACs but together! They need an ENIAC emulator for smart phones! they probably wouldnt of though that was possible either! A computer with in a computer....O.O
Yeah I've got a C64 emulator on my phone. Press of a key and I've got a Commodore on my mobile!!!!
Computers on your apple watch (on your wrist - like a dick tracy radio) - I'm sure it blows their minds, those who are still around who helped develop these computers.
that baffles me, how did they develop this, i thought the first computer would be pretty primitive but that had HUGE functions if it can predict weather... where did all the ideas come from
They were brainiacs.
John Mauchly wanted a better way to predict the weather. He knew that if weather data from various points was analyzed, more accurate predictions could be made - and he knew how to do it.
Trouble was, with existing methods, the calculations took so long that the resulting "predictions" would be useless. So he set about looking for a way to calculate faster.....
What is it considered a mainframe computer?
Hi Ryan, the term "mainframe" was not commonly used back when the ENIAC was built. ENIAC CPU was called "the box" and was so large, several people could walk inside of it. On later computers, the main CPU enclosure was later called a "main frame." By the mid 1950's the term mainframe was used to distinguish large high-end computers from less powerful machines, such as Mini-computers. So, the ENIAC would surely have been a "mainframe" just like the UK Colossus machine, but the term was just not popular back then. Great question. Thanks very much! ~ Victor, CHAP
Verifying computations with an abacus at 6:59
Now i wanna know the space of it and the ram space
It filled up a large room and had zero RAM.
If this was the school laptop
no storage just input process and output ?
That is amazing for a big computer.
Hi Charlotte, yes, quite amazing! And, I understand that the room got very, very hot due to all the vacuum tubes!
Can I use this video footage as part of a lesson I am going to create on technology?
Hi Aprender, it is fine to use part of this in teaching or learning. If you can provide a link back to its source, that would be appreciated. Good luck with your project! ~ Victor, at CHAP
The First digital Computer was invented by Konrad Zuse. Konrad Zuse's Computer was the first computer that works with the binary system.
Enix was after this computer, one of the two companies that merged to form Square Enix.
great ! bow to those geniuses
Great informative
Khawza, Thanks very much! ~ Victor at CHAP
How many Eniacs would it take to meet the power of today's average PC?
While not a perfect comparison, the machine ran as a 5kHz clock, each cycle allowing a store, load or add/subtract. About 500,000 of these would be ROUGHLY equivalent to a single core 2.5GHz processor. Each extra core would be about another half million of these.
Sounds like the guy who narrates how it's made
You think your computer is heavy. Well, try lugging around a 30 ton ENIAC. lmao!
This is a bulgarian-american computer
John Atanasov is bulgarian but borned in america.
pretty funny how a computer thats like >1000 times smaller than this can outplay it
Because of over 75 years of development!
And today my thermometer has more computing power lol.
Everything that machine could do-a single computer chip can now do.
Calculator
what does it compute?
Hi Drew, thanks for your question. As various ENIAC articles and references will say, it was used for highly complex mathematical computations, including military ballistic trajectory calculations, atomic research scientific calculations, and other related tasks that would have otherwise taken months to perform manually using only the electronic adding machines of that time.
4:55
Wikipedia: "Using an inverse tangent (arctan) infinite series, a team led by George Reitwiesner and John von Neumann that same year achieved 2,037 digits with a calculation that took 70 hours of computer time on the ENIAC computer." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi#Computer_era_and_iterative_algorithms
The court case in the 1970's proving the inventor's had used ideas from the Atanasof- Berry machine (ABC) is why we have smartphones laptops and game machines. Otherwise Sperry Rand would have ruled the computing world.
Well, there's a lot more history to that decision. Not everyone agreed with the judge's ruling. It is not clear that the Atanasof machine ever fully worked. In any case, the law suit created a vast amount of court records which are now a part of early computer history. Here is an interesting summary at the Hagley Museum site. invention.si.edu/honeywell-vs-sperry-rand-records-1935-1973
Good
What a smile from 1940s woman 3:03 🖤
When was Eniac programmed to evaluate the hydrogen bomb? I know it's in november 1945 but someone knows which day?
Awesome!👏👏👏
how is ENIAC the first programmable computer when Colossus in the UK was completed a year before
ENIAC was the first programmable, large scale, electronic computer in the U.S.
Colossus wasn't general purpose. Also not large scale. It did a special job very well, but that's all.
In minute 7:27 the woman seems know more than the man with keyboard....
Was there a 'tube' for watching videos? 😂
The first digital electronic computer was actually invented by John V. Atanasoff. The ENIAC patent was invalidated in 1973 because it was shown that Mauchly had derived the ENIAC design from the Atanasoff-Berry computer. Before ENIAC, Mauchly had visited Atanasoff's lab at Iowa State, and had access to Atanasoff's machine and design documents.
Can you recommend any books or articles that discuss this? Thanks
Hi Brian, there are several books on ENIAC, and numerous web articles. Here is one often quoted: "ENIAC
The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer," By Scott McCartney. Perhaps that one helps. (Sorry for the delay in replying. Didn't see this comment until today. )~ Thanks!
Now one can buy this power x5000 in a $0.10 RISCV chip.
Smells like burning...😭 ...world's first fire wire..
Back when men were men, and were made to use their imaginations to produce many devices today's generation takes for granted.
Artificial Brains.
HOla
मे ईनिआक कमप्युटर को नहीं चलाना चाहता हुं सीधे जाकर क्योकि मेरा कम्युटर ईनिआक कमप्युटर चलाना सिख जायेगा अंन्त
शालु
विशवास
Google Translate says: "I don't want to run the ENIAC computer directly because my computer will eventually learn to operate the ENIAC computer. "
(interesting)
🎉🎉
thank you
and you know how much worth was it? 10 million dollars 😂
This was state of the art machinery at the time.Of course
:)
600th like
Tretegg, Mr. 600th, we salute you! Thanks very much! ~ Vincent, at CHAP
my pc is slower than this