The idea of a stored-program computer was already present in the design of J. Presper Eckert and John William Mauchly's ENIAC, but was initially omitted so that it could be finished sooner.

The first electronic programmable digital computer, the ENIAC, using thousands of octal-base radio vacuum tubes, could perform simple calculations involving 20 numbers of ten decimal digits which were held in the vacuum tube accumulators.

ENIAC had twenty ten-digit signed accumulators which used ten's complement representation and could perform 5, 000 simple addition or subtraction operations between any of them and a source ( e. g., another accumulator, or a constant transmitter ) every second.

In one of these cycles, ENIAC could write a number to a register, read a number from a register, or add / subtract two numbers.

ENIAC could be programmed to perform complex sequences of operations, which could include loops, branches, and subroutines.

Eckert and Mauchly's agreement with the University of Pennsylvania was that Eckert and Mauchly retained the patent rights to the ENIAC but the University could license it to the government and non-profit organizations.

Because of its high-speed calculations, ENIAC could solve problems that were previously unsolvable.

At that time, the ENIAC was considered to be the first computer in the modern sense, but in 1973 a U. S. District Court invalidated the ENIAC patent and concluded that the ENIAC inventors had derived the subject matter of the electronic digital computer from Atanasoff ( see Patent dispute ).

Computers such as the ENIAC had to be physically rewired to perform different tasks, which caused these machines to be called " fixed-program computers.

The first actual implementation of a Turing-complete machine appeared in 1941: the program-controlled Z3 of Konrad Zuse, but the first machine explicitly designed to be Turing complete and widely appreciated as being universal was the 1946 ENIAC.

The idea of the stored-program computer with combined memory for program and data was conceived during the development of ENIAC, but it was not initially implemented in ENIAC because World War II priorities required the machine to be completed quickly, and ENIAC's 20 storage locations would be too small to hold data and programs.

A contract was awarded for Moore School's construction of the proposed computing machine, which would be named ENIAC, and Eckert was made the project's chief engineer.

Hartree's fourth and final major contribution to British computing started in early 1947 when the catering firm of J. Lyons & Co. in London heard of the ENIAC and sent a small team in the summer of that year to study what was happening in the USA, because they felt that these new computers might be of assistance in the huge amount of administrative and accounting work which the firm had to do.

* ENIAC-the computer, ENIAC, an invention of an old inventor became animated and contacted Cheryl Saltz of Alva Technologies wanting to be connected to the information superhighway, it holds Cheryl Saltz and David Kim / Xombi hostage.

The 1946 ENIAC had more tubes than the SSEC and was faster in some operations, but was originally less flexible, needing to be rewired for each new problem.

This overcame a severe limitation of ENIAC, which was the considerable time and effort required to reconfigure the computer to perform a new task.

ENIAC was a modular computer, composed of individual panels to perform different functions.

ENIAC used four of the accumulators, controlled by a special Multiplier unit, to perform up to 385 multiplication operations per second.

Machines such as the Z3, the Atanasoff – Berry Computer, the Colossus computers, and the ENIAC were built by hand using circuits containing relays or valves ( vacuum tubes ), and often used punched cards or punched paper tape for input and as the main ( non-volatile ) storage medium.

ENIAC used common octal-base radio tubes of the day ; the decimal accumulators were made of 6SN7 flip-flops, while 6L7s, 6SJ7s, 6SA7s and 6AC7s were used in logic functions.

There are also seven panels and detailed history and explanation of ENIAC functions using text, graphics, photographs and interactive touch screen on display at the Perot Group in Plano, Texas.

J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly similarly were not aware of the details of Babbage's Analytical Engine work prior to the completion of their design for the first electronic general-purpose computer, the ENIAC.

It was not a Turing complete computer, which distinguishes it from more general machines, like contemporary Konrad Zuse's Z3 ( 1941 ), or later machines like the 1946 ENIAC, 1949 EDVAC, the University of Manchester designs, or Alan Turing's post-War designs at NPL and elsewhere.

J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly were the first to patent a digital computing device, the ENIAC.

The ABC had been examined by John Mauchly in June 1941, and Isaac Auerbach, a former student of Mauchly's, alleged that it influenced his later work on ENIAC, although Mauchly denied this ( Shurkin, pg.

In 1967 Honeywell sued Sperry Rand in an attempt to break their ENIAC patents, arguing the ABC constituted prior art.

The United States District Court for the District of Minnesota released its judgement on October 19, 1973, finding in Honeywell v. Sperry Rand that the ENIAC patent was a derivative of John Atanasoff's invention.

The case was legally resolved on October 19, 1973 when U. S. District Judge Earl R. Larson held the ENIAC patent invalid, ruling that the ENIAC derived many basic ideas from the Atanasoff – Berry Computer.

It is quite conventional in principle in past and present computing machines of the most varied types, e. g. desk multipliers, standard IBM counters, more modern relay machines, the ENIAC " ( Goldstine and von Neumann, 1946 ; p. 98 in Bell and Newell 1971 ).

It could be some kind of trick Budd had thought up.

) hung on a hook on the wall, and underneath it I could see his tie, knotted, ready to be slipped over his head, a black badge of frayed respectability that ought never to have left his neck.

They, and the two large fans which I could dimly see as daylight filtered through their vents, down at the far end of the hall, could be turned on by a master switch situated inside the office.

Their roar, like the swelling volume of a hundred tornadoes could be heard for miles.

Atonement, if atonement were possible, could only be made at that sacred, sacrificial basin.

Bushes and vines abetted the rocks in forming thorny detours for the struggling stranger, and without the direct light of the sun to act as compass, Pamela could no longer be positive of her direction.

There was a peculiar density about it, a thick substance that could be sensed but never identified, never actually perceived.

And even with her limited knowledge of such things, she knew that the car could be repaired there ; ;

Not even an empty cartridge case could be found.

Inside the crown, stuffed behind the stained sweatband, could be seen thin, crumpled wads of currency.

How much of an accident could that be ''??

So far as he knew, only his father could be there.

A hell of an altitude for a barrel roll, but it could be done.

With the rapid rate of closure, the approach from below, the side, and ahead, there would be only a moment when damage could be done.

At once my ears were drowned by a flow of what I took to be Spanish, but -- the driver's white teeth flashing at me, the road wildly veering beyond his glistening hair, beyond his gesticulating bottle -- it could have been the purest Oxford English I was half hearing ; ;

The entire length of the street could be raked with rifle fire from this barn.

When he awoke in the mornings, she was in his mind and he could hardly wait to get to school to be near her in the flesh.

It is hard to see how the situation could be otherwise.

Each could be the real thing.

Officers who participate in the continual practice drills assured me that the President's decision could be made and announced on the gold circuit within minutes after the first flash from Aj.

Seeking an obscure, dark, relatively quiet corner in the airy room otherwise suffused with afternoon sunshine, he asked if the soft background music could be turned off.

Faulkner culminates the Southern legend perhaps more masterfully than it has ever been, or could ever be, done.

The conversation that ensued may have been engrossing but it could hardly be called world-shattering.