ENIAC: Penn to celebrate 50 years of ingenuity, creativity

The national spotlight will once again focus on the University this week, just as it did 50 years ago when the world's first digital computer was unveiled amidst accolades and skepticism. In 1946, after four years of research and experimentation, faculty and graduate students at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering completed work on the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, commonly known as ENIAC. The Moore School has since been absorbed by the School of Engineering and Applied Science. The University community will take time Wednesday to celebrate the historic 50th anniversary of ENIAC's first public demonstration. For the University and the rest of the world, ENIAC represented more than simply a change in technological capability, Engineering Dean Gregory Farrington explained. The invention would serve to change the world in ways no one could have even imagined. HOW ENIAC CAME TO BE In the early 1940s, the nation was at war. Many felt that the United States desperately needed an advancement in computing technology for combat maneuvers. The U.S. Army needed to calculate firing tables for each piece of artillery. Using a desktop calculator, it took 40 hours to calculate a trajectory. And while a differential analyzer -- then a state-of-the-art general computation machine -- shortened the necessary time from 40 hours to 30 minutes, the Moore School owned the only one in existence. The analyzer was therefore in constant demand, especially during the state of national emergency. Each firing table required the calculation of hundreds of trajectories. The heavy demand for the analyzer consistently outweighed its maximum capacities. As a result, most Army divisions were forced to use desktop calculators -- so it could still take the greater part of a month to complete one table. University mathematicians eventually completed the original ballistics computation work assigned by the Army, but as artillery designs and warfare patterns changed, requests for firing tables began to stack up. The pressure to find faster ways to perform ballistics computations increased. When Allied forces landed in North Africa in 1943, they encountered terrain that was incomparable to any they had ever seen. Accordingly, the military needed revised firing tables, increasing the University's backlog even more. This military emergency created the stimulus for experimentation in the field of electronic digital computers. John Mauchly, an Ursinus College professor hired by Penn to fill in for professors called to active military duty, wrote a memo about the possibility of creating a machine that could compute a ballistic trajectory in five minutes. On April 2, 1943, Mauchly, Moore School graduate student J. Presper Eckert and two others submitted a proposal for an "Electronic Differencing Analyzer." Unlike all previous devices, the proposed machine was completely electronic. After sending the initial proposal, Eckert and Mauchly refined the original and returned a more detailed version. On June 5, 1942, the University Board of Trustees and the U.S. Army Ordnance Department signed the contract that created ENIAC. Once the contract was signed, Eckert and Mauchly's major obstacle became reliability. Vacuum tubes, the heart of electronics at the time, could fail unpredictably during long periods of operation. Vacuum tubes were dependable only when used in small numbers; ENIAC required 17,480 tubes operating at a rate of 100,000 pulses per second. The machine therefore had 1.8 billion chances of failing each second. A single failure could alter the trajectory calculations drastically. Mathematicians calculated that the machine would have to operate with a malfunction probability of approximately one part in 10. Eckert and his team of engineers tested various vacuum tubes, performing a rigorous study of tube reliability. They instituted strict requirements for design and construction that engineers and technicians were required to meet. The engineers used lower power levels and careful design alternatives to minimize the work demanded of the vacuum tubes. Eventually, only the most reliable tubes were used to create ENIAC. This allowed ENIAC to operate consistently for periods greater than 12 hours. During its development, ENIAC was cloaked in secrecy. No papers could be published on the topic, and discussion was limited to the project's workers. In May 1944, the design team demonstrated ENIAC's viability with an accumulator test. But ENIAC only became fully operational 18 months later. Occupying a room 30 by 50 feet and weighing 30 tons, ENIAC spanned a width of 150 feet, included 20 banks of flashing lights and consumed 174 kilowatts of power. One rumor asserts that the lights in the entire city of Philadelphia dimmed when ENIAC was first turned on. But the story is apocryphal -- because the machine had its own power generator, it could not have affected the city's power levels. Since ENIAC was completed after the war, it could not be used for its original purpose of calculating firing tables for artillery weapons. Therefore, the machine's first tasks included making millions of discrete calculations associated with top-secret studies on thermonuclear chain reactions associated with the hydrogen bomb. The military recognized that ENIAC had more use than just for calculations associated with military weapons and national security. ENIAC, for instance, also publicly demonstrated the speed of electronic computing circuitry, laying the foundations for the modern computer industry that is its great legacy. ABOUT THE CELEBRATION ENIAC's 50th birthday bash promises to be a star-studded affair. Not only will Vice President Al Gore serve as the event's honorary chairperson, but the United States Postal Service, the city of Philadelphia, the Smithsonian Museum and the United States Army are all included in the festivities, Farrington said. And the official celebration will last more than a year. Farrington said the festivities will do more than simply examine ENIAC's past. "February 14 is about the past and the future -- but the rest of the year is about the future," he said. University President Judith Rodin agreed that Wednesday will be a day both for looking into the past and to the future. "Since Penn is where this age of computing started, this celebration will not only focus on Penn as a leader and but also on higher education," Rodin said. "We're eager to make both points and to demonstrate that Penn is an innovator." Gore, a public advocate of technology as the key to prosperity, will participate in various activities on campus Wednesday, including a re-enactment of the first public demonstration of ENIAC. After delivering the "ENIAC 50th Anniversary Policy Speech," Gore, accompanied by Rodin, will walk to the Moore building and activate a part of ENIAC that has been reworked by various faculty and graduate students, according to University spokesperson Barbara Beck. It will be the first time in 50 years that the computer will be turned on, she added. The U.S. Postal Service is saluting the golden anniversary with a commemorative stamp to be unveiled at the ENIAC 50th Celebration dinner at the Philadelphia Marriott Hotel Wednesday, Farrington said. The dinner is sponsored by several corporations, and will be attended by those who worked to create ENIAC, as well as the current top names in the computing industry. The city of Philadelphia is involved in the celebration as well. "Our city, the birthplace of our country 220 years ago, served as the birthplace of information technology 50 years ago," Mayor Ed Rendell said in a recent statement. "I am convinced that we will continue to be in the forefront of global leadership in this critically influential area in the future." The Franklin Institute is also participating by unveiling a new $7 million permanent exhibit entitled "Inside Information." The display, which will open next January, explores the science of information technology. University students are actively participating in the festivities as well. One group of current Engineering students put all of ENIAC's circuitry on one computer chip. The chip, which is now being reproduced, will soon be available to wear as a pin to commemorate ENIAC's 50th birthday. In addition, members of the Science and Technology Wing have created three projects highlighting computing at the University. The first is a magazine compiling articles and original artwork from professors and students on how information technology has changed their lives. The magazine will be available on the World Wide Web at "http://www.stwing.upenn.edu/eniac". The second STWing venture will take place on February 24, as students unveil a computer hardware exhibition at King's Court. Both outdated and current hardware will be showcased. A video mixing highlights of ENIAC's 50th birthday celebration with old ENIAC footage will complete the STWing programming. The video will be ready for viewing this summer. STWing's ENIAC coordinator and Wharton junior Faquiry Diaz said a large variety of students have worked on the projects. "We have had everyone from freshmen to recent graduates working on this," Diaz said. "It has actually been a lot of work, but we have had a lot of support from the Engineering School." Farrington said he was delighted with STWing's achievements. "They get four stars for spirit, enthusiasm and imagination," Farrington said. "Since we are talking about computers, let's say they get four mice." Farrington stressed that the birthday observance had two goals. "The first is to celebrate the great accomplishments of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences," he explained. "The second is to help point the University towards excellence in learning." Since the University placed 31st in last year's national rankings of engineering schools, Farrington said he hoped this celebration will begin efforts at making the Engineering School a leader once again. "Penn must be the leading university of the information age," Farrington added. In what many call a boost to this effort, construction began last October on the Institute for Advanced Science and Technology on the former site of Smith Hall, at 36th Street and Smith Walk.