Brainerd, John G. (John Grist), 1904-1988

There are two epochs in the history of computing: before the completion of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (known as the ENIAC), and after. While there are several controversies about the development of the ENIAC and its immediate successors, there is nearly universal agreement on three points: the ENIAC was the watershed project which convinced the world that electronic computing was not merely possible, but practicable; it was a masterpiece of electrical engineering, unprecedented in reliability and computing speed; the two men most responsible for its conceptual and technical success were John Presper Eckert, Jr., and John William Mauchly, both of the Moore School of Electrical Engineering.

The history of computing prior to the ENIAC was long and varied. The desire for a mechanical means of computation was ancient, and had prompted the invention of many devices, from the abacus to the adding machine. These developments culminated in the work of Charles Babbage, whose grandiose, fully mechanical designs had largely been forgotten by the turn of the 20th century, and of Herman Hollerith, whose electromechanical punched-card tabulators came to the rescue of the 1890 Federal Census. Notable later efforts included the creation of the differential or Bush analyzer. Though the Bush analyzer was able to perform many mathematical equations, it was still at its core a mechanical device with an electric drive and thus could not produce the greater precision and accuracy desired by scientists. It was partially in response to this slowdown in the advancement of electrical engineering technology that the ENIAC was developed.

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