John Mauchly facts for kids

John William Mauchly (born August 30, 1907 – died January 8, 1980) was an American physicist. He worked with J. Presper Eckert to create ENIAC, which was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. They also designed other early computers like EDVAC, BINAC, and UNIVAC I. UNIVAC I was the first computer sold for business use in the United States.

Together, Mauchly and Eckert started the first computer company, called the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC). They helped create important computer ideas such as the stored program (where instructions are kept inside the computer), subroutines (small reusable parts of a program), and programming languages. Their ideas, shared in a report called First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC (1945) and through the Moore School Lectures (1946), led to a huge growth in computer development around the world in the late 1940s.

Biography of John Mauchly

John W. Mauchly was born on August 30, 1907, in Cincinnati, Ohio. When he was young, his family moved to Chevy Chase, Maryland. His father worked at the Carnegie Institution for Science. As a teenager, John was very interested in science, especially electricity. He even fixed electrical systems for his neighbors.

Mauchly went to McKinley Technical High School. He was active in debates and was the editor of the school newspaper. In 1925, he received a scholarship to study engineering at Johns Hopkins University. He later switched to physics and earned his Ph.D. in physics in 1932.

From 1933, Mauchly taught at Ursinus College. He was the head of the physics department there.

In the summer of 1941, Mauchly took an electronics course at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering. There, he met J. Presper Eckert. They became long-time partners in computer work. Mauchly was hired as an instructor at the Moore School. In 1943, he became an assistant professor. During World War II, the United States Army Ordnance Department asked the Moore School to build an electronic computer. Mauchly and Eckert suggested this computer to help calculate artillery firing tables faster.

In 1959, Mauchly left Sperry Rand and started his own company, Mauchly Associates, Inc. This company helped develop the Critical Path Method (CPM). CPM is a way to schedule construction projects using computers. Mauchly also started a consulting company called Dynatrend in 1967. He worked as a consultant for Sperry UNIVAC until he passed away.

John Mauchly died on January 8, 1980, in Ambler, Pennsylvania. He had heart surgery after a long illness. He had two children with his first wife, Mary Augusta Walzl. In 1948, he married Kathleen Kay McNulty, who was one of the first ENIAC programmers. They had five children together.

Moore School and Early Computers

In 1941, Mauchly took a course at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. This school was important for wartime computing. He met J. Presper Eckert there. Mauchly then accepted a teaching job at the Moore School. Eckert convinced Mauchly that vacuum tubes could be used reliably to build computers. The main problem the Moore School was working on was ballistics. This involved calculating firing tables for the U.S. Army's new guns during the war.

ENIAC: The First Electronic Computer

In 1942, Mauchly wrote a paper suggesting a general-purpose electronic computer. This idea was shared at the Moore School. It highlighted how much faster computers could be using digital electronics with no moving parts. Lieutenant Herman Goldstine from the United States Army saw the potential. He asked Mauchly to write a formal proposal.

In April 1943, the Army hired the Moore School to build the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC). Mauchly led the design ideas, while Eckert managed the hardware building. Many other talented engineers also worked on this secret "Project PX."

ENIAC was amazing because it could solve problems that were too hard before. It was about a thousand times faster than older machines. It could add 5,000 numbers or do 357 multiplications of 10-digit numbers in just one second.

ENIAC could be set up to do many tasks. These included adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, finding square roots, and handling input/output. It could also make decisions based on conditions. At first, programming ENIAC meant connecting wires and setting switches. This could take days to change a program. Later, in 1948, it was changed to use stored programs, which made it easier to reprogram.

In 2002, John Mauchly was added to the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his work on ENIAC.

EDVAC: The Next Step

The design for ENIAC was finalized in 1944 so it could be built. Eckert and Mauchly already knew ENIAC had some limits. They started planning a second computer called EDVAC. By January 1945, they had a contract to build this stored-program computer. Eckert suggested using a mercury delay-line memory to store both the program and the data.

Later that year, mathematician John von Neumann learned about the project. He joined some of the engineering talks. He wrote a document describing the EDVAC. This document was called First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC. It was one of the first written descriptions of a general-purpose stored-program computer. This paper helped spread the ideas of stored-program computers to other computer designers.

The Moore School Lectures

In March 1946, after ENIAC was announced, the Moore School changed its rules about patents. They wanted to own the commercial rights to all computer developments made there. Eckert and Mauchly disagreed with this and resigned. However, they had already agreed to give a series of talks on computer design.

The course was called "The Theory and Techniques for Design of Digital Computers." It ran from July 8 to August 31, 1946. Eckert gave 11 lectures, and Mauchly gave 6. These talks became known as "The Moore School Lectures." Many important people attended, including representatives from the army, navy, MIT, Cambridge University, IBM, and Bell Labs. Many attendees later went on to build their own computers, like Maurice Wilkes, who built EDSAC.

Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation

In 1947, Eckert and Mauchly started the first computer company. It was called the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC). Mauchly was the president. They got a contract to build a computer called "EDVAC II," which was later named UNIVAC.

A picture of UNIVAC I borrowed for the 1952 U.S. Presidential election results analysis by CBS news team. J. Presper Eckert (c.), co-designer of the UNIVAC, and Harold Sweeny of the US Census Bureau, with Walter Cronkite

UNIVAC was the first computer designed for business uses. It had new features like magnetic tape for storing large amounts of data.

While building UNIVAC, the company also made a smaller computer called BINAC. EMCC faced financial problems. So, Remington Rand bought the company, and it became their UNIVAC division.

Software Development

Early on at EMCC, John Mauchly took charge of programming and applications for their computers. He talked with people from the Census Bureau and others interested in statistics and business problems. This made him realize that new computer users would need software and training. He knew it would be hard to sell computers without these things. So, EMCC started hiring mathematicians to work on coding in 1947.

Mauchly was interested in how computers could be used, as well as how they were built. His experience with programming ENIAC led him to create Short Code. This was the first programming language actually used on a computer. It was a way to interpret mathematical problems and ran on the UNIVAC I and II. Mauchly believed that programming languages were very important. He hired Grace Hopper to develop a compiler for the UNIVAC.

John Mauchly is also known for being one of the first people to use the word "to program" in a paper he wrote in 1942 about electronic computing.

Career and Contributions

Mauchly stayed involved with computers throughout his life. He helped start and was president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He also helped found the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).

After Remington Rand bought Eckert–Mauchly Corporation in 1950, Mauchly stayed on as Director of Univac Applications Research for ten years. In 1959, he left to form Mauchly Associates. This company introduced the critical path method (CPM), which helps schedule construction projects using computers. In 1967, he founded Dynatrend, another computer consulting company. From 1973 until his death, he worked as a consultant for Sperry Univac.

Awards and Honors

John Mauchly received many awards and honors for his work. He was a life member of the Franklin Institute and the National Academy of Engineering. He was also a Fellow of the Institute of Radio Engineers (now part of IEEE) and the American Statistical Association. He received honorary degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Ursinus College. Some of his awards include the Philadelphia Award, the Scott Medal, the Goode Medal, the Pennsylvania Award, the Emanuel R. Piore Award, and the Howard N. Potts Medal.

See also

In Spanish: John William Mauchly para niños

• Mauchly's sphericity test
• List of pioneers in computer science