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Eniac at 75
- user3939382 5y agoSomewhat tangential but anytime I see Eniac mentioned I think of this short story: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPICAC_(short_story) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPICAC_(short_story) The computer’s name (EPICAC) is a parody of Eniac but a homonym of a syrup used to induce vomiting lol
- jp57 5y ago> ENIAC could multiply two, ten digit numbers 357 times per second, and it required 150 kilowatts of electrical power to operate, which works out to about a tenth watt per computation. What am I missing here? A watt is already a rate, joules/sec, so "watt per computation" doesn't make sense. But even assuming they author meant "per joule", the math doesn't work. In a second it could do 357 computations and use 150,000 Joules of energy = 420 Joules per computation.
- kens 5y agoI puzzled over this for a bit; the statement should be a tenth of a watt-hour per computation.
- xiaolingxiao 5y agoThere was a professor at Penn that would keep a light bulb on his shelf. He took it out once and asked us what it is: none of us could answer it. It turns out, it was a bit from the Eniac! The lightbulb is connected to a magnet so that when switched on, the magnet would represent and 1, and the lightbulb would light up alerting the programmers that the bit is indeed on. There would be 16 (or 32 I can't remember) such bits on a wooden board, representing one integer. It's wild how far we have come. At the computer lab in the school, there is a part of the ENIAC on display, it was huge.
- kevinwang 5y agoOnly 75... It's amazing how commonplace computers are now, only a lifetime later. In 75 years they went from invented to taken for granted.