John Mauchly Essay

John Mauchly pioneered the field of computer science and built the foundation for all modern computing with the creation of the world 's first fully functional digital computer, the ENIAC. The ENIAC, completed in 1946 at the University of Pennsylvania, occupied 1800 square feet, weighed 30 tons, had 18000 vacuum tubes, and cost about $5,000,000 in modern dollars (ENIAC Definition from PC Magazine Encyclopedia). John Mauchly originally conceived the ENIAC as a tool for statistical weather prediction; however, he was only able to secure funding by building the ENIAC for the US Army to calculate artillery tables for use in World War II. John Mauchly was born in August 1907 in Cincinnati, Ohio. His father, Sebastian Mauchly, was the chief physicist of the Terrestrial Electricity and Magnetism Section at the Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C. (Bartik, Rickman, and Todd 6). Mauchly showed engineering talent at a young age: "When neighbours had trouble with their wiring... they called John Mauchly." (McCartney 29) He earned near-perfect scores in high school and received an engineering scholarship to John Hopkins University.
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Mauchly developed the first portable computer, but technology prevented Mauchly 's product from becoming practical. Mauchly co-founded the Association for Computing Machinery and the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics. (John Mauchly - Ohio History Central). In 1966 Mauchly founded a consulting company known as Dynatrend Inc. The company developed encryption, electronic fund transfer, and electronic mail. Unfortunately, there was no market for Mauchly 's ideas as the personal computer had not yet been developed. Mauchly spent his last days suffering from financial and health problems, running weather prediction programs on his two Radio Shack TRS-80