The Moore School of Electrical Engineering was a school at 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 ...

. The school was integrated into the

University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science The University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science (Penn Engineering or SEAS) is the undergraduate and graduate engineering school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private research university in Philadelphia. The school ...

. The Moore School came into existence as a result of an endowment from Alfred Fitler Moore on June 4, 1923. It was granted to Penn's School of Electrical Engineering, located in the Towne Building. The first dean of the Moore School was

Harold Pender Harold Pender (13 January 1879, Tarboro, North Carolina – 6 Kennebunkport, Maine1959) was an American academic, author, and inventor. He was the first Dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering, a positio ...

. The Moore School is particularly famed as the birthplace of the computer industry: * It was here that the first general-purpose Turing complete digital electronic computer, the

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 ...

, was built between 1943 and 1946. * Preliminary design work on the

's successor machine the

EDVAC EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) was one of the earliest electronic computers. It was built by Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Along with ORDVAC, it was a successor to the ENIAC. ...

resulted in the

stored program A stored-program computer is a computer that stores program instructions in electronically, electromagnetically, or optically accessible memory. This contrasts with systems that stored the program instructions with plugboards or similar mechani ...

concept used in all computers today, the logical design having been promulgated in

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 ''

First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC The ''First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC'' (commonly shortened to ''First Draft'') is an incomplete 101-page document written by John von Neumann and distributed on June 30, 1945 by Herman Goldstine, security officer on the classified ENIAC pr ...

'', a set of notes synthesized from meetings he attended at the Moore School. * The first computer course was given at the Moore School in Summer 1946, leading to an explosion in computer development all over the world. * Moore School faculty

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 ...

and

J. Presper Eckert John Adam Presper "Pres" Eckert Jr. (April 9, 1919 – June 3, 1995) was an American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. With John Mauchly, he designed the first general-purpose electronic digital computer (ENIAC), presented the first cour ...

founded the first computer company, which produced 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 ...

computer. The Moore School has been integrated into Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science. It no longer exists as a separate entity; however, the three-story structure itself still stands and is known on campus as the Moore School Building. Originally constructed in 1921 as a two-story building by Erskin & Morris, it was renovated in 1926 by

Paul Philippe Cret Paul Philippe Cret (October 23, 1876 – September 8, 1945) was a French-born Philadelphia architect and industrial designer. For more than thirty years, he taught at a design studio in the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsyl ...

and a third story was added in 1940 by

Alfred Bendiner Alfred Bendiner (23 July 1899 – 19 March 1964) was an American architect and artist, perhaps best known for his caricatures and cartoons. Biography He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Hungarian immigrants Armin and Rachel Hartman ...

Notes

External links

* A complet
history for all of Penn Engineering
including the Moore School. {{Authority control University of Pennsylvania campus Universities and colleges established in 1923 Electrical engineering departments 1923 establishments in Pennsylvania