ENIAC: The Hack That Started It All

Presented at The Circle Of HOPE (2018), July 20, 2018, noon (60 minutes)

The ENIAC was dedicated on February 15, 1946 and became the testbed upon which people learned to build and program powerful digital computers. It became a national resource, contributing to a wide variety of R&D until it was decommissioned ten years later. ENIAC was designed and built at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, using 18,000 vacuum tubes consuming 150,000 watts of power. This presentation will focus on how the ENIAC was conceived, designed, built, and worked; how it was used in different modes of operation; and the details of its internal operations. This will be illustrated in real-time with a fully functional, interactive, and photorealistic ENIAC emulator created by the speaker. The significance and relevance of the ENIAC to computers we use today will also be discussed. A brief audience Q&A will follow.

Presenters:

  • Brian L. Stuart
    **Brian L. Stuart** is an associate teaching professor of computer science at Drexel University. He holds a B.S. in computer science and electrical engineering from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, an M.S. in electrical engineering from Notre Dame, and a Ph.D. in computer science from Purdue University. He has been researching the ENIAC for two years.

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