John Presper Eckert, Jr.

John Presper Eckert, Jr. (1919-1995), American electrical engineer and co-inventor of one of the first digital electronic computers. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Eckert attended the University of Pennsylvania, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1941 and a master’s degree in 1943, both in the field of electrical engineering. While there, he met John W. Mauchly, a professor of electrical engineering. Both men were interested in the construction of electronic computers to carry out massive computations. Working together, they made several valuable improvements to existing computing equipment. As a result of their work, they won a contract from the government to build a digital computer in which calculations would be done electronically instead of mechanically.

Eckert and Mauchly completed their computer by 1945 and called it ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator). An enormous feat of engineering, the ENIAC was introduced to the public at the University of Pennsylvania in February of 1946. The 30-ton machine was 9 feet high, 80 feet long, and contained about 19,000 vacuum tubes. The ENIAC performed about 5000 operations per second and was initially used to calculate the trajectories of artillery shells for the armed forces.

In 1947 Eckert and Mauchly established their own computer manufacturing firm, the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation. In 1949 they introduced the BINAC (BINary Automatic Computer), which stored information on magnetic tape instead of on punched cards. In 1951 they introduced the UNIVAC (UNIVersal Automatic Computer), a computer designed to handle business data. The UNIVAC was widely used in commerce and helped launch the mainframe computer boom.

Remington Rand Corporation acquired the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1950 and as a result of a merger became the Sperry Rand Corporation in 1955. Eckert remained in executive positions throughout all the company acquisitions and mergers. He received 85 patents from 1948 to 1966 for electronic inventions.