John Adam Presper "Pres" Eckert Jr. (April 9, 1919 – June 3, 1995) was an American

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and

computer pioneer This is a list of people who made transformative breakthroughs in the creation, development and imagining of what computers could do. Pioneers ~ Items marked with a tilde are circa dates. See also * Computer Pioneer Award * IEEE John von ...

. With

John Mauchly John William Mauchly ( ; August 30, 1907 – January 8, 1980) was an American physicist who, along with J. Presper Eckert, designed ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, as well as EDVAC, BINAC and UNIVAC I, the f ...

, he designed the first general-purpose electronic digital computer (

ENIAC ENIAC (; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first Computer programming, programmable, Electronics, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. Other computers had some of these features, but ENIAC was ...

), presented the first course in computing topics (the

Moore School Lectures ''Theory and Techniques for Design of Electronic Digital Computers'' (popularly called the "Moore School Lectures") was a course in the construction of electronic digital computers held at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrica ...

), founded the

Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation The Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) (March 1946 – 1950) was a computer company founded by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly. It was incorporated on December 22, 1947. After building the ENIAC at the University of Penns ...

, and designed the first commercial computer in the U.S., the

UNIVAC UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was a line of electronic digital stored-program computers starting with the products of the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation. Later the name was applied to a division of the Remington Rand company and ...

, which incorporated Eckert's invention of the mercury

delay-line memory Delay-line memory is a form of computer memory, mostly obsolete, that was used on some of the earliest Digital data, digital computers, and is reappearing in the form of #Optical_delay_lines, optical delay lines. Like many modern forms of electro ...

Education

Eckert was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

to Ethel M. Hallowell, who came from an old Philadelphia

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...

family, and John Eckert, a wealthy real estate developer of

Swiss German Swiss German (Standard German: , ,Because of the many different dialects, and because there is no #Conventions, defined orthography for any of them, many different spellings can be found. and others; ) is any of the Alemannic German, Alemannic ...

and Alsatian descent. He was raised in a large house in Philadelphia's Germantown section. During elementary school, he was driven by chauffeur to William Penn Charter School, and in high school joined the Engineer's Club of Philadelphia and spent afternoons at the electronics laboratory of television inventor

Philo Farnsworth Philo Taylor Farnsworth (August 19, 1906 – March 11, 1971), "The father of television", was the American inventor and pioneer who was granted the first patent for the television by the United States Government. Burns, R. W. (1998), ''Televisi ...

in Chestnut Hill. He placed second in the country on the math portion of the

College Board The College Board, styled as CollegeBoard, is an American not-for-profit organization that was formed in December 1899 as the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) to expand access to higher education. While the College Board is not an asso ...

examination. Eckert initially enrolled in the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

Wharton School The Wharton School ( ) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia. Established in 1881 through a donation from Joseph Wharton, a co-founder of Bethlehem Steel, the Wharton ...

to study business at the encouragement of his parents, but in 1937 transferred to Penn's

Moore School of Electrical Engineering The Moore School of Electrical Engineering was a school at the University of Pennsylvania. The school was integrated into the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science. The Moore School came into existence as a resul ...

. In 1940, at age 21, Eckert applied for his first patent, "Light Modulating Method and Apparatus". At the Moore School, Eckert participated in research on

radar Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), direction ( azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track ...

timing, made improvements to the speed and precision of the Moore School's

differential analyzer The differential analyser is a mechanical analogue computer designed to solve differential equations by integration, using wheel-and-disc mechanisms to perform the integration. It was one of the first advanced computing devices to be used ope ...

, and in 1941 assisted in teaching a summer course in electronics under the Engineering, Science, and Management War Training (ESMWT) offered through the Moore School by the

United States Department of War The United States Department of War, also called the War Department (and occasionally War Office in the early years), was the United States Cabinet department originally responsible for the operation and maintenance of the United States Army, als ...

Development of ENIAC

John Mauchly, then chairman of the physics department of nearby

Ursinus College Ursinus College is a private liberal arts college in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1869 and occupies a campus. Ursinus College's forerunner was the Freeland Seminary founded in 1848. Its $127 million endowment supports about 1, ...

, was a student in the summer electronics course, and the following fall secured a teaching position at the Moore School. Mauchly's proposal for building an electronic digital computer using

vacuum tube A vacuum tube, electron tube, thermionic valve (British usage), or tube (North America) is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric voltage, potential difference has been applied. It ...

s, many times faster and more accurate than the differential analyzer for computing

ballistics Ballistics is the field of mechanics concerned with the launching, flight behaviour and impact effects of projectiles, especially weapon munitions such as bullets, unguided bombs, rockets and the like; the science or art of designing and acceler ...

tables for

artillery Artillery consists of ranged weapons that launch Ammunition, munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during sieges, and l ...

, caught the interest of the Moore School's Army liaison, Lieutenant Herman Goldstine, and on April 9, 1943, was formally presented in a meeting at

Aberdeen Proving Ground Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) is a U.S. Army facility located adjacent to Aberdeen, Harford County, Maryland, United States. More than 7,500 civilians and 5,000 military personnel work at APG. There are 11 major commands among the tenant units, ...

to director Colonel Leslie Simon,

Oswald Veblen Oswald Veblen (June 24, 1880 – August 10, 1960) was an American mathematician, geometer and topologist, whose work found application in atomic physics and the theory of relativity. He proved the Jordan curve theorem in 1905; while this was lo ...

, and others. A contract was awarded for Moore School's construction of the proposed computing machine, which would be named

, and Eckert was made the project's chief engineer. ENIAC was completed in late 1945 and was unveiled to the public in February 1946.

Entrepreneurship

Both Eckert and Mauchly left the Moore School in March 1946 over a dispute involving assignment of claims on intellectual property developed at the university. In that year, the University of Pennsylvania adopted a new patent policy to protect the intellectual purity of the research it sponsored, which would have required Eckert and Mauchly to assign all their patents to the university had they stayed beyond March. 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. The university wanted to change the agreement so that they would also have commercial rights to the patent. In the following months, Eckert and Mauchly started up the Electronic Control Company which built the Binary Automatic Computer (

BINAC BINAC (Binary Automatic Computer) is an early electronic computer that was designed for Northrop Corporation, Northrop Aircraft Company by the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) in 1949. J. Presper Eckert, Eckert and Mauchly had started ...

). One of the major advances of this machine, which was used from August 1950, was that data was stored on

magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnetic ...

. The Electronic Control Company soon became the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation, and it received an order from the

National Bureau of Standards The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sc ...

to build the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC). Eckert was awarded the Howard N. Potts Medal in 1949. In 1950, Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation ran into financial troubles and was acquired by

Remington Rand Remington Rand, Inc. was an early American business machine manufacturer, originally a typewriter manufacturer and in a later incarnation the manufacturer of the UNIVAC line of mainframe computers. Formed in 1927 following a merger, Remington ...

Corporation. The

UNIVAC I The UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer I) was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer design for business application produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the invento ...

was finished on December 21, 1950. In 1968, "For pioneering and continuing contributions in creating, developing, and improving the high-speed electronic digital computer", Eckert was awarded the

National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral science, behavior ...

Later career

Eckert remained with Remington Rand and became an executive within the company. He continued with Remington Rand as it merged with the Burroughs Corporation to become

Unisys Unisys Corporation is a global technology solutions company founded in 1986 and headquartered in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. The company provides cloud, AI, digital workplace, logistics, and enterprise computing services. History Founding Unis ...

in 1986. In 1989, Eckert retired from Unisys but continued to act as a consultant for the company. He died of

leukemia Leukemia ( also spelled leukaemia; pronounced ) is a group of blood cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and produce high numbers of abnormal blood cells. These blood cells are not fully developed and are called ''blasts'' or '' ...

Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania Bryn Mawr (, from Welsh language, Welsh for 'big hill') is a census-designated place (CDP) located in Pennsylvania, United States. It is located just west of Philadelphia along Lancaster Avenue, also known as U.S. Route 30 in Pennsylvania, U.S. ...

. In 2002, he was inducted, posthumously, into the

National Inventors Hall of Fame The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a US patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also operate ...

"Eckert architecture"

Eckert believed that the widely adopted term "

von Neumann architecture The von Neumann architecture—also known as the von Neumann model or Princeton architecture—is a computer architecture based on the '' First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC'', written by John von Neumann in 1945, describing designs discus ...

" should properly be known as the "Eckert architecture", since the stored-program concept central to the von Neumann architecture had already been developed at the Moore School by the time von Neumann arrived on the scene in 1944–1945. Eckert's contention that von Neumann improperly took credit for devising the stored-program computer architecture was supported by

Jean Bartik Jean Bartik ( Betty Jean Jennings; December 27, 1924 – March 23, 2011) was an American computer programmer who was one of the original six programmers of the ENIAC computer. Bartik studied mathematics in school then began work at the Unive ...

, one of the original ENIAC programmers." oldstineenthusiastically supported von Neumann's wrongful claims and essentially helped the man hijack the work of Eckert, Mauchly, and the others in the Moore School group." Jennings Bartik, Pioneer Programmer, 518.

References

External links

Oral history interview with J. Presper Eckert

Charles Babbage Institute The IT History Society (ITHS) is an organization that supports the history and scholarship of information technology by encouraging, fostering, and facilitating archival and historical research. Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, ...

, University of Minnesota. Eckert, a co-inventor of the

, discusses its development at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering; describes difficulties in securing patent rights for the ENIAC and the problems posed by the circulation of

John von Neumann John von Neumann ( ; ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian and American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer. Von Neumann had perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time, in ...

's 1945 First Draft of the Report on EDVAC, which placed the ENIAC inventions in the public domain. Interview by Nancy Stern, October 28, 1977.
Oral history interview with Carl Chambers

, University of Minnesota. Describes the interactions among the ENIAC staff, and focuses on the personalities and working relationships of Mauchly and Eckert.
A Tribute to Dr. J. Presper Eckert Co-Inventor of ENIAC
2000 Daniel F. McGrath Jr.
ENIAC museum
at the University of Pennsylvania

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20070927194128/http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=%2Farticles%2Fart0645.html%3Fm%3D3 1989 interview of Eckertby Alexander Randall 5th, published February 23, 2006 on KurzweilAI.net. Includes Eckert's reflections on the creation of ENIAC.
Interview with Eckert
Transcript of a video interview with Eckert by David Allison for the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution on February 2, 1988. An in-depth, technical discussion on the ENIAC, including the thought process behind the design. {{DEFAULTSORT:Eckert, John Presper 1919 births 1994 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery 1995 deaths American people of Swiss-German descent Burroughs Corporation people Computer designers Computer hardware engineers Deaths from leukemia in Pennsylvania Howard N. Potts Medal recipients National Medal of Science laureates Scientists from Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni William Penn Charter School alumni Unisys