er based on standard electromechanical IBM parts (Chopsky, 103). Their invention was extremely advantageous to the computer industry because it had unique built-in programs that handled logarithms and trigonometric functions. Its controls were prepunched paper tape with output from cardpunch and electric typewriters. The system was fully automatic and capable of performing lengthy computations. Unfortunately, the computer was slow and required approximately 3 to 5 seconds for multiplication computations (Chposky, 103). Regardless though, they did operate automatically and required no human intervention, which was still a major advantage to those who needed them. Then came ENIAC—“Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator.”It was the beginning of World War II, and the government was in desperate need for a system that could accommodate trajectory tables and other essential military data. Luckily for government, John P. Eckert, John W. Mauchley, and several associates at the University of Pennsylvania developed the computer known as ENIAC. ENIAC could multiply two numbers at the rate of 300 products per second, by finding the value of each product from a multiplication table stored in its memory. It operated with punched-card input and output. ENIAC performed tasks 1,000 times faster than its late relatives, used 18,000 standard vacuum tubes, occupied 1,800 square feet of floor space, and used about 180,000 watts of electricity. This was another major accomplishment for the computer industry. However, ENIAC was not easy to program. While it did efficiently handle the particular operations it was set up to do, it had to be re-wired to perform all other tasks. ENIAC was used in numerous applications from 1946 to 1955. It soon became known as the first effective high-speed electronic digital computer. That was forty-five years ago. Today’s estimated cost for the ENIAC is $3,000,000 (http://ei.cs.v...
