John Eckert

John Presper Eckert

Born: 9 April 1919 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania , USA
Died: 

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John Eckert was a graduate of Pennsylvania and developed jointly with John W Mauchly the first electronic digital computer ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). It had 500 000 hand soldered connections and used punched cards to store data. ENIAC was used by the U.S. Army for military calculations.

In 1949 Eckert and Mauchly launched BINAC (Binary Automatic Computer) which used magnitic tape to store data. Later research resulted in UNIVAC1 (Universal Automatic Computer), a computer containing many of the elements of today's machines. Between 1948 and 1966 Eckert took out patents on 85 inventions, almost all electronic in nature.

References:

  1. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  2. T Atherton, J W Mauchly and J P Eckert : the men who built ENIAC, Electronics world and wireless world 96 (1990), 541-543.
  3. P Eckstein, J Presper Eckert, Annals of the history of computing 18, (1996), 25-44.
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JOC/EFR February 1996