Sidebar: The Mouse Test

In our 1989 interview, I asked ENIAC co-inventor J. Presper Eckert to recall the zaniest thing he did while developing the historic computer. His reply: "The mouse cage was pretty funny. We knew mice would eat the insulation off the wires, so we got samples of all the wires that were available and put them in a cage with a bunch of mice to see which insulation they did not like. We only used wire that passed the mouse test."