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Learn more about IEEE - Join the world's largest professional organization devoted to engineering and applied sciences and get access to this e-book plus all of IEEE Spectrum's articles, archives, PDF downloads, and other benefits. Learn more about IEEE - CREATE AN ACCOUNTSIGN IN JOIN IEEESIGN IN Close Access Thousands of Articles -- Completely Free Create an account and get exclusive content and features: Save articles, download collections, and post comments -- all free! For full access and benefits, subscribe to Spectrum. CREATE AN ACCOUNTSIGN IN The InstituteIEEE HistoryComputingGuest ArticleHistory of Technology ENIAC, the First General-Purpose Digital Computer, Turns 80 Celebrating the innovation that sparked a tech revolution San Murugesan 18 Mar 2026 6 min read Wide view of men and women working on the ENIAC in the 1940's. All four walls, from floor to ceiling, host different pieces of the electronic computer itself. From left: Inventors J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly are shown working on ENIAC. Bettmann/Getty Images Happy 80th anniversary, ENIAC! The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, the first large-scale, general-purpose, programmable electronic digital computer, helped shape our world. On 15 February 1946, ENIAC--developed in the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia--was publicly demonstrated for the first time. Although primitive by today's standards, ENIAC's purely electronic design and programmability were breakthroughs in computing at the time. ENIAC made high-speed, general-purpose computing practicable and laid the foundation for today's machines. On the eve of its unveiling, the U.S. Department of War issued a news release hailing it as a new machine "expected to revolutionize the mathematics of engineering and change many of our industrial design methods." Without a doubt, electronic computers have transformed engineering and mathematics, as well as practically every other domain, including politics and spirituality. ENIAC's success ushered the modern computing industry and laid the foundation for today's digital economy. During the past eight decades, computing has grown from a niche scientific endeavor into an engine of economic growth, the backbone of billion-dollar enterprises, and a catalyst for global innovation. Computing has led to a chain of innovations and developments such as stored programs, semiconductor electronics, integrated circuits, networking, software, the Internet, and distributed large-scale systems. Inside the ENIAC The motivation for developing ENIAC was the need for faster computation during World War II. The U.S. military wanted to produce extensive artillery firing tables for field gunners to quickly determine settings for a specific weapon, a target, and conditions. Calculating the tables by hand took "human computers" several days, and the available mechanical machines were far too slow to meet the demand. 80 Years of Electronic Computer Milestones 1946 ENIAC operational Birth of electronic computing 1951 UNIVAC I Start of commercial computing 1958 Integrated circuit Foundation for modern computer hardware 1964 IBM System/360 Popular mainframe computer 1970 Programmed Data Processor (PDP-11) Popular 16-bit minicomputer 1971 Intel 4004 Beginning of the microprocessor and microcomputer era 1975 Cray-1 First supercomputer 1977 VAX Popular 32-bit minicomputer 1981 IBM PC Personal and small-business computing 1989 World Wide Web Digital communication, interaction, and transaction (e-commerce) 2002 Amazon Web Services Beginning of the cloud computing revolution 2010 Apple iPad Handheld computer/tablet 2010 Industry 4.0 Delivered real-time decision-making, smart manufacturing, and logistics 2016 First reprogrammable quantum computer demonstrated Ignited interest in quantum computing 2023 Generative AI boom Widespread use of GenAI by individuals, businesses, and academia 2026 ENIAC's 80th anniversary 80 years of computing evolution In 1942 John Mauchly, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Penn's Moore School, suggested using vacuum tubes to speed up computer calculations. Following up on his theory, the U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, which was responsible for providing artillery settings to soldiers in the field, commissioned Mauchly and his colleagues J. Presper Eckert and Adele Katz Goldstine , to work on a new high-speed computer. Eckert was a lab instructor at Moore, and Goldstine became one of ENIAC's programmers. It took them a year to design ENIAC and 18 months to build it. The computer contained about 18,000 vacuum tubes, which were cooled by 80 air blowers. More than 30 meters long, it filled a 9 m by 15 m room and weighed about 30 kilograms. It consumed as much electricity as a small town. Programming the machine was difficult. ENIAC did not have stored programs, so to reprogram the machine, operators manually reconfigured cables with switches and plugboards, a process that took several days. By the 1950s, large universities either had acquired or built their own machines to rival ENIAC. The schools included Cambridge (EDSAC), MIT (Whirlwind), and Princeton (IAS). Researchers used the computers to model physical phenomena, solve mathematical problems, and perform simulations. After almost nine years of operation, ENIAC officially was decommissioned on 2 October 1955. ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer, a book by Thomas Haigh, Mark Priestley, and Crispin Rope, describes the design, construction, and testing processes and dives into its afterlife use. The book also outlines the complex relationship between ENIAC and its designers, as well as the revolutionary approaches to computer architecture. In the early 1970s, there was a controversy over who invented the electronic computer and who would be assigned the patent. In 1973 Judge Earl Richard Larson of U.S. District Court in Minnesota ruled in the Honeywell v. Sperry Rand case that Eckert and Mauchly did not invent the automatic electronic digital computer but instead had derived their subject matter from a computer prototyped in 1939 by John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry at Iowa State College (now Iowa State University). The ruling granted Atanasoff legal recognition as the inventor of the first electronic digital computer. IEEE's ENIAC Milestone In 1987 IEEE designated ENIAC as an IEEE Milestone, citing it as "a major advance in the history of computing" and saying the machine "established the practicality of large-scale electronic digital computers and strongly influenced the development of the modern, stored-program, general-purpose computer." The commemorative Milestone plaque is displayed at the Moore School, by the entrance to the classroom where ENIAC was built. "The ENIAC legacy heralded the computer age, transforming not only science and industry but also education, research, and human communication and interaction." A paper on the machine, published in 1996 in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing and available in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library , is a valuable source of technical information. "The Second Life of ENIAC," an article published in the annals in 2006, covers a lesser-known chapter in the machine's history, about how it evolved from a static system--configured and reconfigured through laborious cable plugging--into a precursor of today's stored-program computers. A classic history paper on ENIAC was published in the December 1995 IEEE Technology and Society Magazine. The IEEE Inspiring Technology: 34 Breakthroughs book, published in 2023, features an ENIAC chapter. The women behind ENIAC One of the most remarkable aspects of the ENIAC story is the pivotal role women played, according to the book Proving Ground: The Untold Story of the Six Women Who Programmed the World's First Modern Computer, highlighted in an article in The Institute. There were no "programmers" at that time; only schematics existed for the computer. Six women, known as the ENIAC 6, became the machine's first programmers. The ENIAC 6 were Kathleen Antonelli, Jean Bartik, Betty Holberton, Marlyn Meltzer, Frances Spence, and Ruth Teitelbaum. "These six women found out what it took to run this computer, and they really did incredible things," a Penn professor, Mitch Marcus, said in a 2006 PhillyVoice article. Marcus teaches in Penn's computer and information science department. In 1997 all six female programmers were inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame, in Los Angeles. Two other women contributed to the programming. Goldstine wrote ENIAC's five-volume manual, and Klara Dan von Neumann, wife of John von Neumann, helped train the programmers and debug and verify their code. To honor the women of ENIAC, the IEEE Computer Society established the annual Computer Pioneer Award in 1981. Eckert and Mauchly were among the award's first recipients. In 2008 Bartik was honored with the award. Nominations are open to all professionals, regardless of gender. An ENIAC replica Last year a group of 80 autistic students, ages 12 to 16, from PS Academy Arizona, in Gilbert, recreated the ENIAC using 22,000 custom parts. It took the students almost six months to assemble. A ceremony was held in January to display their creation. The full-scale replica features actual-size panels made from layered cardboard and wood. Although all electronic components are simulated, they are not electrically active. The machine, illuminated by hundreds of LEDs, is accompanied by a soundtrack that simulates the deep hum of ENIAC's transformers and the rhythmic clicking of relays. A white woman using a computer-adding machine in the 1940\u2019s. The device resembles a bulky typewriter and prints large stacks of paper with tabulated answers. This machine prints and tabulates the answers to the problems solved by the ENIAC. Bettmann/Getty Images "Every major unit, accumulators, function tables, initiator, and master programmer is present and placed exactly where it was on the original machine," Tom Burick, the teacher who mentored the project, said at the ceremony. The replica, still on display at the school, is expected to be moved to a more permanent spot in the near future. ENIAC's legacy ENIAC's significance is both technical and symbolic. Technically, it marks the beginning of the chain of innovations that created today's computational infrastructure. Symbolically, it made governments, militaries, universities, and industry view computation as a tool for improvement and for innovative applications that had previously been impossible. It marked a tectonic shift in the way humans approach problem-solving, modeling, and scientific reasoning. The ENIAC legacy heralded the computer age, transforming not only science and industry but also education, research, and human communication and interaction. As Eckert is reported to have said, "There are two epochs in computer history: Before ENIAC and After ENIAC." Coevolution of programming languages The remarkable evolution of computer hardware during the past 80 years has been sparked by advances in programming languages--the essential drivers of computing. From the manual rewiring of ENIAC to the orchestration of intelligent, distributed systems, programming languages have steadily evolved to make computers more powerful, expressive, and accessible. Lessons From Computing's Remarkable Journey Computing history teaches us that flexibility, accessibility, collaboration, sound governance, and forward thinking are essential for sustained technological progress. In a recent Communications of the ACM article, Richa Gupta identified four historic shifts that led to computing's rapid, transformative progress: 1. Programmable machines taught us that flexibility is key; technologies that adapt and are repurposed scale better. 2. The Internet showed that connection and standard protocols drive explosive growth but also bring new risks such as data security issues, invasion of privacy, and misuse. 3. Personal computers illustrated that accessibility and usability matter more than raw power. When nonexperts can use a tool easily, adoption rises. 4. The open-source movement revealed that collaborative innovation accelerates growth and helps spot problems early. Predictions for computing in the decades ahead The evolution of computing will continue along multiple trajectories, with the emphasis moving from generalization to specialization (for AI, graphics, security, and networking), from monolithic system design to modular integration, and from performance-centric metrics alone to energy efficiency and sustainability as primary objectives. Increasingly, security will be built into hardware by design. Computing paradigms will expand beyond traditional deterministic models to embrace probabilistic, approximate, and hybrid approaches for certain tasks. Those developments will usher in a new era of computing and a new class of applications. From Your Site Articles * Untold History of AI: Invisible Women Programmed America's First Electronic Computer > * The Computers Who Brought ENIAC to Life > * The Women Behind ENIAC > Related Articles Around the Web * ENIAC | Penn Engineering > IEEE historyENIACcomputingcomputershistory of technologytype:ti San Murugesan San Murugesan is director of Brite Professional Services, former editor in chief of IEEE Computer Society's IT Professional and IEEE Intelligent Systems. He is an IEEE life senior member and a Golden Core Member of IEEE Computer Society. He is also a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society. The Conversation (0) A hand holding a microchip between thumb and forefinger. ComputingSemiconductorsAINews Startups Bring Optical Metamaterials to AI Data Centers 3h 3 min read A small group of Nigerian men unloading an SUV from the back of a semi-truck. 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