ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "In early 1997, Garry Kasparov, the Russian grand master of chess, squared off against "Deep Blue," an International Business Machines Corporation computer built with circuits..." (more)
Key Phrases: counting circuits, firing tables, first electronic computer, Moore School, John Mauchly, Differential Analyzer (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Today's computers are fantastically complex machines, shaped by innovations dreamt up by hundreds of engineers and theorists over the last several decades. Does it even make sense, then, to ask who invented the computer? McCartney thinks so, and in ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer, he's written a compelling answer to the question, crediting two relatively unsung Pennsylvanians with what is arguably the most significant invention of the century.

McCartney's heroes are Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, and as he makes clear, there are those who might question the choice. Nobody doubts the pair designed and built ENIAC, the world's first fully electronic computer and a watershed in the history of computing. But for years the importance of their contribution, made during World War II and sponsored by the U.S. Army, has been downplayed. The brilliant John von Neumann's subsequent theoretical papers on computer design have made him the traditional "father of modern computing." And Eckert and Mauchly later even lost the patent on their machine when it was claimed that another early experimenter, John Atanasoff, had given them all the ideas about ENIAC that mattered.

But McCartney's meticulously researched narrative of Eckert and Mauchly's careers--covering the thrilling three years of ENIAC's construction and the frustrating decades of little recognition that followed--sets the record straight. He carefully weighs Atanasoff's claims and gives von Neumann the credit he earned for advancing computer science, but in the end he leaves no room for doubt: if anyone deserves to be remembered for inventing the computer, it's the two men whose tale he has told here so engagingly. --Julian Dibbell

From Publishers Weekly

This account of how an engineer barely out of college and a physicist with dreams of predicting the weather, conceived and built the world's first computer. But it tells a great story, and Wall Street Journal staff writer McCartney (Defying the Gods: Inside the New Frontiers of Organ Transplants) makes a strong case that J. Presper Eckert, the engineer, and John Mauchly, the physicist, deserve better treatment from posterity than they have received. His narrative of the conception and construction in the mid-1940s of the giant ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) centers on the lives and work of these two unlikely collaborators, who met by chance in an engineering course. Funding for the project was tied directly to the war effort and an army desperate for fast number crunching. Among McCartney's controversial claims is that the "von Neumann architecture" for stored-program machines, the basis for all computers, did not originate with German ?migr? John von Neumann but rather with the ENIAC duo. The feuds and legal battles that dominate the second half of the book as various corporations battle for trade secrets and patents will be of interest mainly to buffs, though the unsuccessful struggles of Eckert and Mauchly to make a profit in the postwar shadow of IBM are poignant. McCartney offers excellent documentation, interesting asides (the world's first computer programmers were all women) and real drama as the team races to complete the apartment-sized, vacuum tube-powered ENIAC before the war's end. Doubleday Select Bookclubs special selection; author tour; audio rights to Blackstone. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 262 pages
• Publisher: Walker & Company (1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802713483
• ISBN-13: 978-0802713483
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #304,847 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Author got it right, November 23, 1999

By	[e-mail] (Boston, Mass.) - See all my reviews

In the late 1980s I edited a feature magazine on the history of computing for Computerworld newspaper, and we concluded as the author of ENIAC does--that Eckert and Mauchly deserve credit as developing the first computer--with the same qualifications that the author states. Other earlier efforts, such as by Atanasoff, were important for advancing the understanding of the field, but they didn't lead to a standalone programmable electronic calculator that can be seen as the forerunner of today's machines. After Eckert and Mauchly, the field blossomed, and this book tells their story well.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ENIAC - S. McCartney does a fine job, December 30, 1999

By	Luis F. Moreno (Vestal, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Scott McCartney has written an excellent counterbalance to the current literature on the invention of the computer. It is a fine contrast to Herman Goldstine's book on the subject. Here, we see a johnny-come-lately view of the great mathematician John von Neumann, a man whose profound insight into the future value of an all-electronic calculating machine gives him the shared title of inventor of computer science (along with A. Turing), not the computer. This book leaves us no doubt, it was Eckert and Mauchly's creation, a plum that many others wanted credit for once it matured. The general purpose electronic computer is fittingly the invention of an electrical engineer (Eckert) and a visionary physicist (Mauchly). This is also a good resource on the entry by women into the world of computers. I was only disappointed that McCartney did not include a bit more of the technical, engineering details about ENIAC, and its comparison to the COLOSSUS, perhaps in an appendix.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars not too long, really fabulous historical account, October 31, 1999

By A Customer

Anybody who has taken an introductory computer science course has heard about how Mauchly and Eckert built ENIAC, the first electronic computer, which was originally intended to compute artillery shell trajectories during World War II. Here is the amazing story of the building of ENIAC, and how Mauchly and Eckert deserve far more credit for this triumph than the customary footnote they are usually given in computer science textbooks. After all, it was they who actually turned theory into real electrical wiring and vacuum tubes. This book questions whether John von Neumann deserves as much credit as he is sometimes given for being the "Father of the Modern Computer."