ENIAC celebrates 50th birthday

Dignitaries reflect on advances Although yesterday's ENIAC festivities centered around Vice President Al Gore's visit to campus, Gore was only one of many dignitaries attending the events. At a ceremony during which ENIAC was switched on for the first time in decades, Gore and others reflected on the technological advances that have taken place in the past 50 years and speculated about future breakthroughs. Judge Harold Berger, an alumnus of both the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Law School, was among those who played a minor role in the development of ENIAC. "I did not at that time focus on the tremendous explosion and revolution ENIAC would initiate," Berger said. "But I always had the feeling, from the first time I saw this room, that this was a new deal for our world. "[ENIAC] is possibly the greatest invention in history," he added. "And [the Moore Building] is where it happened." "We thought we would build about a half-dozen computers, and that's all the world would need," ENIAC project alumnus Bernard Victor said. He added that not even ENIAC's creators, John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, could have envisioned how the technology would expand. Army technical liaison to the ENIAC project Herman Goldstine said he agreed that scientists could not have predicted how the roomful of circuits would lead to today's laptop computers, which are 100 times more powerful. "[The visionaries] here at Penn were the spark that created wonders for this world," Mayor Ed Rendell said. "My guess is that in the next 10 years, we will progress more than we progressed in all the time up until now." And there is still much room for advancement. Mauchly's wife, Kay Mauchly Antonelli, pointed out that "it is ironic that my husband's original idea was to forecast the weather globally. We still don't have a machine that can do that accurately." "If he was still alive, maybe we wouldn't have blizzards with no one knowing about it beforehand," she added. "This celebration tells us about where we've come from, but more importantly it tells us where we are going," U.S. Representative Robert Walker (R-Pa.) said. "The 21st Century is going to be a wonderful time to be alive." Walker congratulated the University "not only for creating ENIAC 50 years ago, but for its ongoing work as a great research university." And Judy Eckert, wife of J. Presper Eckert, was also in attendance at yesterday's event. "I think the greatest thing to come from ENIAC's creation is the education that our children are receiving today," she said. Former Computer Science Professor John Carr said he was pleased with the recognition the important project received. "The interesting thing is how at long last the University of Pennsylvania, which has sort of ignored the ENIAC for many years, has decided to recognize it," he said.