Secrets of ENIAC

[pynchonoid]

Secrets of ENIAC

The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
(ENIAC) was among the very first computers—some say it
was the first, though there are competing claims.
Built at Penn from 1942 to 1946, its work was the most
prosaic imaginable: calculating missile ballistics and
later helping with the design of the hydrogen bomb.
Looking back from today, with every facet of society
permeated by super-fast, ultra-miniaturized,
all-but-invisible computers, the ENIAC seems
ludicrously clunky and primitive. But this is where it
all began.

For someone who came of age in the second half of the
computer revolution, the immediately surprising thing
about ENIAC is its physicality. It is a machine in the
most literal sense, built from huge metal boxes,
massive cables, thick copper wires joined by gobs of
solder, panels full of dials, bank upon bank of vacuum
tubes. Looking again, the second surprise is the
beauty and intricacy of its individual parts. A single
tube, responsible for just one numeral in a decimal
ring counter, contains a thicket of wires, planes, and
baffles. If you peer very closely, a microcosm of
strange and enigmatic scenes begins to unfold.

These images of ENIAC express the wonder I felt when,
as a child, I came to understand what a computer is:
not just a calculating machine, but a tool for
amplifying imagination, making it possible to weave
structures of pure abstract symbols and see them
rendered as concrete things, real places. This is pure
magic.  [...] 

http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/photos/2004-eniac.html


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