Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
     
         (ENIAC) The second general-purpose electronic
        {digital computer} and an ancestor of most computers in use
        today.  ENIAC was developed by Dr. {John Mauchly} and
        {J. Presper Eckert} during World War II at the Moore School of
        the {University of Pennsylvania}.
     
        In 1940 Dr. {John Vincent Atanasoff} attended a lecture by
        Mauchly and subsequently agreed to show him his computer, the
        {Atanasoff-Berry Computer} (ABC), which was built between
        1937-1942.  Mauchly used ideas from the ABC in the design of
        ENIAC, which was started in June 1943 and released publicly in
        1946.
     
        ENIAC was underwritten and its development overseen by
        Lieutenant Herman Goldstine of the U.S. Army Ballistic
        Research Laboratory (BRL).  While the prime motivation for
        constructing the machine was to automate the wartime
        production of firing and bombing tables, the very first
        program run on ENIAC was a highly classified computation
        for Los Alamos.  Later applications included weather
        prediction, cosmic ray studies, wind tunnel design,
        petroleum exploration, and optics.
     
        ENIAC had 20 {registers} made entirely from {vacuum tubes}.
        It had no other no memory as we currently understand it.  The
        machine performed an addition in 200 {microseconds}, a
        multiplication in about three {milliseconds}, and a division
        in about 30 milliseconds.
     
        {John von Neumann}, a world-renowned mathematician serving on
        the BRL Scientific Advisory Committee, soon joined the
        developers of ENIAC and made some critical contributions.
        While Mauchly, Eckert and the Penn team continued on the
        technological problems, he, Goldstine, and others took up the
        logical problems.  In 1947, while working on the design for
        the successor machine, EDVAC, von Neumann realized that
        ENIAC's lack of a centralized control unit could be overcome
        to obtain a rudimentary stored program computer.
        Modifications were undertaken, that eventually led to an
        {instruction set} of 92 "orders".  {Von Neumann} also proposed
        the {fetch-execute cycle}.
     
        [R. F. Clippinger, "A Logical Coding System Applied to the
        ENIAC", Ballistic Research Laboratory Report No. 673, Aberdeen
        Proving Ground, MD, September 1948.
        {(http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/comphist/48eniac-coding)}].
     
        [H. H. Goldstine, "The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann",
        Princeton University Press, 1972].
     
        [K. Kempf, "Electronic Computers within the Ordnance Corps",
        Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, 1961.
        {(http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/comphist/61ordnance)}].
     
        [M. H. Weik, "The ENIAC Story", J. American Ordnance Assoc.,
        1961. {(http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/comphist/eniac-story.html)}].
     
        (2002-06-03)