Eckert, J. Presper

Eckert, J. Presper

(1919–1995) American

Computer Engineer

   J. Presper Eckert played a key role in the design of what is often considered to be the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, then went on to pioneer the commer-cial computer industry. An only child, Eckert grew up in a prosperous Philadelphia family that traveled widely and had many connections with Hollywood celebrities such as Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin. He was a star stu-dent in his private high school and also did well at the Uni-versity of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1941 with a degree in electrical engineering and a strong mathematics background.

   Continuing at the university as a graduate student and researcher, Eckert met an older researcher, John Mauchly. They found they shared a deep interest in the possibili-ties of electronic computing, a technology that was being spurred by the needs of war research. After earning his master’s degree in electrical engineering, in 1942 Eckert joined Mauchly in submitting a proposal to the Ballistic Research Laboratory of the Army Ordnance Department for a computer that could be used to calculate urgently needed firing tables for guns, bombs, and missiles. The Army granted the contract, and they organized a team that grew to 50 people. Begun in April 1943, their ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was finished in 1946. While it was too late to aid the war effort, the room-size machine filled with 18,000 vacuum tubes demonstrated the practicability of electronic computing. Its computation rate of 5,000 additions per second far exceeded other calculators of the time.

   With some input from mathematician John von Neu-mann, Eckert and Mauchly began to develop a new machine, EDVAC, for the University of Pennsylvania (see von Neumann, John). While this effort was still under way, they formed their own business, the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation and began to develop the BINAC (BINary Automatic Computer), which was intended to be a (relatively) compact and lower-cost version of ENIAC. This machine demonstrated a key principle of modern com-puters—the storage of program instructions along with data. The ability to store, manipulate, and edit instructions vastly increased the flexibility and ease of use of computing machines (see history of computing).

   By the late 1940s, Eckert and Mauchly began to develop Univac I, the first commercial implementation of the new computing technology. When financial difficulties threat-ened to sink their company in 1950, it was acquired by Remington Rand. Working as a division within that com-pany, the Eckert-Mauchly team completed Univac I in time for the computer to make a remarkably accurate forecast of the 1952 presidential election results.

   Eckert continued with the Sperry-Rand Corporation (later called Univac and then Unisys Corporation) and became a vice president and senior technical adviser. He retired in 1989. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1964. In 1969, he was awarded the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest award for achievement in science and engineering.