Gore honors ENIAC's 50th birthday

The national spotlight focused onthe University this February as Vice President Al Gote and other dignitaries celebrated the 50th anniversary of the world's first digital computer. In 1946, after four years of research and experimentation, faculty and graduate students at the Moore School of Electrrical Engineering completed work on the Electronic Numberical Integrator and Computer, commonly known as ENIAC. "In the early days of ENIAC, nobody knew where it would all lead," Gore said in an address commemorating the birth of the information age. "Talented people improved on what ENIAC began," he added. In a brief ceremony following the "ENIAC 50th Anniversary Policy Speech," Gore, along with University President Judith Rodin activated a portion of the original ENIAC, that had been reworked by faculty and graduate students. Orange lights lit up the number "46" on a panel of numbers to signify 1946, the year ENIAC was first publicly demonstrated. ENIAC then added "50" to the umber "46" as the lights rested on "96," indicating the current year. For the University and the rest of the world, ENIAC represented more than simply a change in tecnological capability, Engineering Dean Gregory Farrington explained. In 1942, the U.S. Army Ordinance Department signed a contract with the University to fund the building of a machine that could perform complex cvomputations and was completely electronic. ENIAC was designed to calculate ballistic tables for the U.S. military during World War II. But since it was completed after the war, ENIAC's first job was to make millions of discrete calculations associated with top secret studies on thermonuclear chain reactions associated with the hydrogen bomb. The digital computer weighed 30 tons and was 100 feet long, 10 feet high and three feet deep, occupying an 1800 square foot room in the Moore Building. ENIAC could only handle numbers 10 digits long but could multiply in 2.8 milliseconds, divide in 24 milliseconds and add in 0.2 milliseconds. The largest obstacles ENIAC creator Professor John Mauchly and graduate research assistants faced in building the digital computer was the reliability of vacuum tubes, which was the heart of electronics at that time. ENIAC required 17,840 vacuum tubes operating at a rate of 100,000 pulses per second. The computer also required an enormous amount of pwoer - 174 kilowatts - which it drew from the Moore School's separate power supply. The Moore School has since beenabsored by the School of Engineering and Applied Science. The festivities commemorating ENIAC have continued throughout the year - past the February 14 birthday. The U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp that was unveiled at an celebration dinner. And the Franklin Institute will open a new $7 million permanent exhibit entitled "Inside Information." The display, which will open next January, explores the science of information technology.