The Eckert-Mauchly Computers: Conceptual Triumphs, Commercial Tribulations

The electronic digital computer is a scientific and technological advance that has had, and continues to have, profound significance both for the scientific community and for society in general. Even so, historical studies have been sorely lacking. This study focuses on the early period and specifically on two inventors, John William Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, Jr., who between 1943 and 1951 were responsible for many "firsts" in the computing field, including the following: (1) the ENIAC, the first operational large-scale electronic digital computer, constructed at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania under an army ordnance contract during the years 1943-46; (2) the EDVAC, also constructed at the Moore School, the first electronic digital computer to incorporate the stored-program concept, conceived in 1944 and funded as a supplement to the ENIAC contract though not actually completed until 1951, five years after Eckert and Mauchly left to form their own company; (3) the BINAC, the first electronic digital computer with stored-program capability to be completed in the United States, begun in 1947, a year after Eckert and Mauchly formed their partnership, and completed in August 1949, just a few months after the British unveiled the EDSAC, the world's first stored-program computer, which had been modeled after the EDVAC; (4) the UNIVAC, the first general purpose electronic digital computer designed for commercial use, begun in 1946 and completed in 1951.1 In this article I propose to examine the entrepreneurial activities of