Detail map of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Overview map of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

A: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Eckert & Mauchly Issue the First Engineering Report on the EDVAC

9/30/1945

On September 30, 1945 J. Presber Eckert and John Mauchly published Automatic High-Speed Computing. A Progress Report on the EDVAC. Parts 5,6, and 7 of the report were written by Harry Huskey. This report, written from the engineering point of view, was the first detailed report on the EDVAC published after John von Neumann's theoretical First Draft of the Report on the EDVAC, which had been published on June 30, 1945. 

In their Acknowledgments to the report published by the Moore School at the University of Pennsylvania Eckert & Mauchly credited Arthur Burks, Herman Goldstine and "especially Dr. John von Neumann" for their participation in "discussions of EDVAC plans." Eckert and Mauchly's confidential report was issued in only 50 copies.

Notably in the "Historical Comments" beginning the report Eckert and Mauchly referred to Eckert's unpublished 1944 memorandum, Disclosure of Magnetic Calculating Machine, and indicated that they planned to use the delay line memory that Eckert had recently invented instead of any type of magnetic disk or drum to which the 1944 "disclosure" alluded. When Eckert and Mauchly left the Moore School to start their own business, the Electronic Control Company, to commercialize electronic computers, they used Eckert's delay line memories on their first products, the BINAC and the UNIVAC.

Timeline Themes

Related Entries