ENIAC, the Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer
Publisher: Walker, January 1, 1999.
Book Condition: New
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 0802713483 / 9780802713483
John Mauchly and Presper Eckert designed and built the first digital, electronic computer. The story of their three-year race to create the legendary ENIAC and their three-decade struggle to gain credit for it has never been told and is a compelling tale of brilliance and misfortune. Mauchly and Eckert met by chance in 1941 at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Engineering. They soon developed a revolutionary vision: to use electricity as a means of computing - in other words, to make electricity "think." Ignored by their colleagues, in early 1943 they were fortuitously discovered and funded by the U.S. Army, itself in urgent need of a machine that could quickly calculate ballistic missile trajectories in wartime Europe and Africa.
Review
"This lively account of the computer pioneers of another era not only fills a black hole in the history of technology, but demonstrates that the same chaotic and unpredictable creative processes that gave birth to the PC led, decades earlier, to the creation of the first mainframes. Without ENIAC, there could have been no Apple II, no IBM PC, no Macintosh." -- Walt Mossberg, Personal Technology Columnist, The Wall Street Journal
...[ENIAC] tells an absorbing story and sheds light on a moment when our world was transformed. -- The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
About the Author
Price: $17.87