| Mauchly, John W.
b. Aug. 30, 1907, Cincinnati,
Ohio, U.S.
d. Jan. 8, 1980, Ambler, Pa. |
in full JOHN WILLIAM MAUCHLY, American
physicist and engineer, coinventor in 1946, with John P.
Eckert, of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
(ENIAC), the first general-purpose electronic computer.
After completing his education, Mauchly entered the
teaching profession, eventually becoming an associate
professor of electrical engineering at the University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. During World War II Mauchly
and Eckert, a graduate engineer, were asked to devise
ways to accelerate the recomputation of artillery firing
tables for the U.S. Army. They accordingly proposed the
construction of a general-purpose digital computer
that would handle data in coded form; by 1946 they
completed the ENIAC, a huge machine (containing more
than 18,000 vacuum tubes) that incorporated features
developed by J.V. Atanasoff. The ENIAC was first used by
the U.S. Army at its Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland
in 1947 for ballistics tests.
The following year Mauchly and Eckert formed a computer-manufacturing
firm, and in 1949 they announced the Binary Automatic Computer
(BINAC), which used magnetic tape instead of punched
cards. In 1950 the Eckert-Mauchly Computer
Corporation was acquired by Remington Rand, Inc. (later
Sperry Rand Corporation), Mauchly becoming director of
special projects. The third computer after BINAC
was UNIVAC I, specially designed to handle business
data. Mauchly continued his work in the computer
field, winning many honours. He served as president
(1959-65) and chairman of the board (1965-69) of Mauchly
Associates, Inc., and as president of Dynatrend Inc.
(1968-80) and of Marketrend Inc. (1970-80).
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