Genesis of the Computer

In 1950, the computer industry was only 4 years
old. But the patterns that would define the new industry
already were settling into place: the accelerated rate of
change, the entrepreneurial start-ups, the battles
between the visionaries and the businessmen, the
intense competition to be faster, smaller, cheaper. The
activity of the nascent industry of 1950 bore a striking
resemblance to today's more mature industry.



As further evidence of the industry's growing influence,
Time magazine featured an anthropomorphized
computer on a cover, along with the question, "Can man
build a superman?" Only four years earlier, the first
electronic computer, the ENIAC (Electrical Numerical
Integrator and Calculator) had been unveiled. In 1950, a
small company in Philadelphia, launched by the ENIAC's
inventors -- J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly -- was
well on its way toward completing a new, faster
computer called the Univac (Universal Automatic
Computer). It would use magnetic-tape storage to
replace punched data cards and printers to list the
content of the tape.



Within two short years, Univac would become
synonymous with computer the way Kleenex is
synonymous with facial tissue. But just as Eckert and
Mauchly's company, EMCC, was on the verge of success
in 1950, with three customers lined up and development
nearly finished, it found itself in trouble. The tale of the
fledgling firm's fate contains some details that would
reappear many times in the industry. Most notably, the
two men were hurt by a lack of business skills.
Moreover, they lost their main financial backer in a
plane crash.



Eckert, named in 1982 by the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers Inc. as the engineer of the
century, was clearly the engineering muscle behind the
ENIAC and the Univac. But Mauchly was the visionary,
the dreamer who in many ways foreshadowed the
Silicon Valley visionaries who were to follow 30 years
later.



"Mauchly was the kind of guy who thought with his
mouth open," says his widow, Kay Mauchly Antonelli,
who became one of the world's first computer
programmers when she worked on the ENIAC ["Mothers
of Invention," CW, Nov. 16]. "He was at the forefront of
ideas about machine language. He was a dreamer."



The military drove the development of the earliest
computers such as the ENIAC, seeking faster, more
accurate ways to perform mathematical and scientific
calculations. Mauchly was among the first to see the
computer as more than a high-powered calculator. He
envisioned general-purpose computers that could be
employed to solve a variety of business problems.



But Mauchly was an idea man, not a businessman. After
EMCC lost its backer, American Totalisator Vice
President Henry Strauss, near the end of 1949, it was
forced to court suitors who might acquire the firm.