ENIAC was a beast! Originally conceived to make ballistic charts, it led the computing world for several years. Here is an artice called The ENIAC Story, as told by Martin H. Weik, in 1961. In the story, Weik makes a point of ENIAC being an internally programmed computer. Take a look at this newsreel unveiling ENIAC to the American people.
Just as Babbage saw a chance to compute algorithms with the Difference machine, the government saw an opportunity to use computers to reshape war. Weik opines the computer "was provided by the extraordinary demand of war to find the solution to a task surpassing importance." This reminded me of something Dr. Zappala mentioned about the Internet. He said the Internet was created and owned by the United States' military and government for years. Is it just me, or is anyone else disturbed by the way technology seems to go hand in hand with war or industry? Or am I being pessimistic?
I did some research on one of the ladies in the video named Jean Bartik and shared some of her life story on my blog. It's funny how things evolve over the years. http://pucksonice.blogspot.com/2010/11/life-of-programmer-pioneer.html
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