ENIAC, the First General-Purpose Digital Computer, Turns 80

Happy 80th anniversary, ENIAC! The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, the first large-scale, general-purpose, programmable electronic digital computer, helped shape our world.On 15 February 1946, ENIAC—developed in the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia—was publicly demonstrated for the first time. Although primitive by today’s standards, ENIAC’s purely electronic design and programmability were breakthroughs in computing at the time. ENIAC made high-speed, general-purpose computing practicable and laid the foundation for today’s machines.On the eve of its unveiling, the U.S. Department of War issued a news release hailing it as a new machine “expected to revolutionize the mathematics of engineering and change many of our industrial design methods.” Without a doubt, electronic computers have transformed engineering and mathematics, as well as practically every other domain, including politics and spiritual