Short description: American electrical engineer and computer pioneer J. Presper Eckert J. Presper Eckert (c.), co-designer of the UNIVAC, and Harold Sweeny of the US Census Bureau at the console of the UNIVAC, with Walter Cronkite (r.) on CBS TV, during Presidential election night, 1952 Born| John Adam Presper Eckert Jr. April 9, 1919 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US Died| June 3, 1995(1995-06-03) (aged 76) Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, US Occupation| Electrical engineer Known for| ENIAC Awards| Harry H. Goode Memorial Award (1966) National Medal of Science (1968) Harold Pender Award (1973) IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award (1978)[1] John Adam Presper Eckert Jr. (April 9, 1919 – June 3, 1995) was an American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. With John Mauchly, he designed the first general-purpose electronic digital computer (ENIAC), presented the first course in computing topics (the Moore School Lectures), founded the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation, and designed the first commercial computer in the U.S., the UNIVAC, which incorporated Eckert's invention of the mercury delay-line memory. ## Contents * 1 Education * 2 Development of ENIAC * 3 Entrepreneurship * 4 Later career * 5 "Eckert architecture" * 6 See also * 7 References * 8 External links ## Education Eckert was born in Philadelphia to wealthy real estate developer John Eckert, and was raised in a large house in Philadelphia's Germantown section. During elementary school, he was driven by chauffeur to William Penn Charter School, and in high school joined the Engineer's Club of Philadelphia and spent afternoons at the electronics laboratory of television inventor Philo Farnsworth in Chestnut Hill. He placed second in the country on the math portion of the College Board examination.[2] Eckert initially enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School to study business at the encouragement of his parents, but in 1937 transferred to Penn's Moore School of Electrical Engineering. In 1940, at age 21, Eckert applied for his first patent, "Light Modulating Method and Apparatus".[3] At the Moore School, Eckert participated in research on radar timing, made improvements to the speed and precision of the Moore School's differential analyzer, and in 1941 assisted in teaching a summer course in electronics under the Engineering, Science, and Management War Training (ESMWT) offered through the Moore School by the United States Department of War. ## Development of ENIAC John Mauchly, then chairman of the physics department of nearby Ursinus College, was a student in the summer electronics course, and the following fall secured a teaching position at the Moore School. Mauchly's proposal for building an electronic digital computer using vacuum tubes, many times faster and more accurate than the differential analyzer for computing ballistics tables for artillery, caught the interest of the Moore School's Army liaison, Lieutenant Herman Goldstine, and on April 9, 1943, was formally presented in a meeting at Aberdeen Proving Ground to director Colonel Leslie Simon, Oswald Veblen, and others. A contract was awarded for Moore School's construction of the proposed computing machine, which would be named ENIAC, and Eckert was made the project's chief engineer. ENIAC was completed in late 1945 and was unveiled to the public in February 1946. ## Entrepreneurship Both Eckert and Mauchly left the Moore School in March 1946 over a dispute involving assignment of claims on intellectual property developed at the University. In that year, the University of Pennsylvania adopted a new patent policy to protect the intellectual purity of the research it sponsored, which would have required Eckert and Mauchly to assign all their patents to the University had they stayed beyond March. Eckert and Mauchly's agreement with the University of Pennsylvania was that Eckert and Mauchly retained the patent rights to the ENIAC but the University could license it to the government and non-profit organizations. The University wanted to change the agreement so that they would also have commercial rights to the patent. In the following months, Eckert and Mauchly started up the Electronic Control Company which built the Binary Automatic Computer (BINAC). One of the major advances of this machine, which was used from August 1950, was that data was stored on magnetic tape. The Electronic Control Company soon became the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation, and it received an order from the National Bureau of Standards to build the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC). Eckert was awarded the Howard N. Potts Medal in 1949. In 1950, Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation ran into financial troubles and was acquired by Remington Rand Corporation. The UNIVAC I was finished on December 21, 1950. In 1968, "For pioneering and continuing contributions in creating, developing, and improving the high-speed electronic digital computer", Eckert was awarded the National Medal of Science.[4] ## Later career Eckert remained with Remington Rand and became an executive within the company. He continued with Remington Rand as it merged with the Burroughs Corporation to become Unisys in 1986. In 1989, Eckert retired from Unisys but continued to act as a consultant for the company. He died of leukemia in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.[5] In 2002, he was inducted, posthumously, into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.[6] ## "Eckert architecture" Eckert believed that the widely adopted term "von Neumann architecture" should properly be known as the "Eckert architecture", since the stored-program concept central to the von Neumann architecture had already been developed at the Moore School by the time von Neumann arrived on the scene in 1944–1945.[7] Eckert's contention that von Neumann improperly took credit for devising the stored-program computer architecture was supported by Jean Bartik, one of the original ENIAC programmers.[8][9] ## See also * List of pioneers in computer science ## References 1. ↑ "IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award Recipients". IEEE. http://www.ieee.org/documents/piore_rl.pdf. Retrieved March 20, 2021. 2. ↑ McCartney, Scott (1999). ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer. New York: Walker and Company. pp. 39–41. ISBN 0-8027-1348-3. https://archive.org/details/eniac00scot/page/39. 3. ↑ , John Presper Jr."Light Modulating Method and Apparatus" US patent 2283545, issued May 19, 1942 4. ↑ "The President's National Medal of Science: Recipient Details". National Science Foundation. https://www.nsf.gov/od/nms/recip_details.jsp?recip_id=115. 5. ↑ "J. Presper Eckert, Computer Inventor". Pottsville Republican: p. 2. June 6, 1995. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/48036112/j-presper-eckert-1919-1995/. 6. ↑ "J. Presper Eckert". National Inventors Hall of Fame. https://www.invent.org/inductees/j-presper-eckert. 7. ↑ Mauchly, John W. (1979). "Amending the ENIAC Story". Datamation 25 (11). https://sites.google.com/a/opgate.com/eniac/Home/john-mauchly. 8. ↑ Bartik, Jean (July 1, 2008). "Oral History of Jean Bartik" (PDF) (Interview). Interviewed by Gardner Hendrie. Computer History Museum. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 24, 2018. 9. ↑ "[Goldstine] enthusiastically supported von Neumann's wrongful claims and essentially helped the man hijack the work of Eckert, Mauchly, and the others in the Moore School group." Jennings Bartik, Pioneer Programmer, 518. * From Dits to Bits: A personal history of the electronic computer. Portland, Oregon, Salk middle school: Robotics Press. 1979. ISBN 0-89661-002-0. ## External links * Oral history interview with J. Presper Eckert, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Eckert, a co-inventor of the ENIAC, discusses its development at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering; describes difficulties in securing patent rights for the ENIAC and the problems posed by the circulation of John von Neumann's 1945 First Draft of the Report on EDVAC, which placed the ENIAC inventions in the public domain. Interview by Nancy Stern, October 28, 1977. * Oral history interview with Carl Chambers, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Describes the interactions among the ENIAC staff, and focuses on the personalities and working relationships of Mauchly and Eckert. * A Tribute to Dr. J. Presper Eckert Co-Inventor of ENIAC. 2000 Daniel F. McGrath Jr. * ENIAC museum at the University of Pennsylvania * Q&A: A lost interview with ENIAC co-inventor J. Presper Eckert * 1989 interview of Eckert by Alexander Randall 5th, published February 23, 2006 on KurzweilAI.net. Includes Eckert's reflections on the creation of ENIAC. * Interview with Eckert Transcript of a video interview with Eckert by David Allison for the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution on February 2, 1988. An in-depth, technical discussion on the ENIAC, including the thought process behind the design. * v * t * e United States National Medal of Science laureates Behavioral and social science | 1960s| 1964 Roger Adams Othmar H. Ammann Theodosius Dobzhansky Neal Elgar Miller | 1980s| 1986 Herbert A. Simon 1987 Anne Anastasi George J. Stigler 1988 Milton Friedman 1990s| 1990 Leonid Hurwicz Patrick Suppes 1991 Robert W. Kates George A. Miller 1992 Eleanor J. Gibson 1994 Robert K. Merton 1995 Roger N. Shepard 1996 Paul Samuelson 1997 William K. Estes 1998 William Julius Wilson 1999 Robert M. Solow 2000s| 2000 Gary Becker 2001 George Bass 2003 R. Duncan Luce 2004 Kenneth Arrow 2005 Gordon H. Bower 2008 Michael I. Posner 2009 Mortimer Mishkin 2010s| 2011 Anne Treisman 2014 Robert Axelrod 2015 Albert Bandura Biological sciences | 1960s| 1963 C. B. van Niel 1964 Marshall W. Nirenberg 1965 Francis P. Rous George G. Simpson Donald D. Van Slyke 1966 Edward F. Knipling Fritz Albert Lipmann William C. Rose Sewall Wright 1967 Kenneth S. Cole Harry F. Harlow Michael Heidelberger Alfred H. Sturtevant 1968 Horace Barker Bernard B. Brodie Detlev W. Bronk Jay Lush Burrhus Frederic Skinner 1969 Robert Huebner Ernst Mayr | 1970s| 1970 Barbara McClintock Albert B. Sabin 1973 Daniel I. Arnon Earl W. Sutherland Jr. 1974 Britton Chance Erwin Chargaff James V. Neel James Augustine Shannon 1975 Hallowell Davis Paul Gyorgy Sterling B. Hendricks Orville Alvin Vogel 1976 Roger Guillemin Keith Roberts Porter Efraim Racker E. O. Wilson 1979 Robert H. Burris Elizabeth C. Crosby Arthur Kornberg Severo Ochoa Earl Reece Stadtman George Ledyard Stebbins Paul Alfred Weiss 1980s| 1981 Philip Handler 1982 Seymour Benzer Glenn W. Burton Mildred Cohn 1983 Howard L. Bachrach Paul Berg Wendell L. Roelofs Berta Scharrer 1986 Stanley Cohen Donald A. Henderson Vernon B. Mountcastle George Emil Palade Joan A. Steitz 1987 Michael E. DeBakey Theodor O. Diener Harry Eagle Har Gobind Khorana Rita Levi-Montalcini 1988 Michael S. Brown Stanley Norman Cohen Joseph L. Goldstein Maurice R. Hilleman Eric R. Kandel Rosalyn Sussman Yalow 1989 Katherine Esau Viktor Hamburger Philip Leder Joshua Lederberg Roger W. Sperry Harland G. Wood 1990s| 1990 Baruj Benacerraf Herbert W. Boyer Daniel E. Koshland Jr. Edward B. Lewis David G. Nathan E. Donnall Thomas 1991 Mary Ellen Avery G. Evelyn Hutchinson Elvin A. Kabat Salvador Luria Paul A. Marks Folke K. Skoog Paul C. Zamecnik 1992 Maxine Singer Howard Martin Temin 1993 Daniel Nathans Salome G. Waelsch 1994 Thomas Eisner Elizabeth F. Neufeld 1995 Alexander Rich 1996 Ruth Patrick 1997 James Watson Robert A. Weinberg 1998 Bruce Ames Janet Rowley 1999 David Baltimore Jared Diamond Lynn Margulis 2000s| 2000 Nancy C. Andreasen Peter H. Raven Carl Woese 2001 Francisco J. Ayala Mario R. Capecchi Ann Graybiel Gene E. Likens Victor A. McKusick Harold Varmus 2002 James E. Darnell Evelyn M. Witkin 2003 J. Michael Bishop Solomon H. Snyder Charles Yanofsky 2004 Norman E. Borlaug Phillip A. Sharp Thomas E. Starzl 2005 Anthony S. Fauci Torsten N. Wiesel 2006 Rita R. Colwell Nina Fedoroff Lubert Stryer 2007 Robert J. Lefkowitz Bert W. O'Malley 2008 Francis S. Collins Elaine Fuchs J. Craig Venter 2009 Susan L. Lindquist Stanley B. Prusiner 2010s| 2010 Ralph L. Brinster Shu Chien Rudolf Jaenisch 2011 Lucy Shapiro Leroy Hood Sallie Chisholm 2014 May Berenbaum Bruce Alberts 2015 Stanley Falkow Rakesh K. Jain Mary-Claire King Simon Levin Chemistry | 1980s| 1982 F. Albert Cotton Gilbert Stork 1983 Roald Hoffmann George C. Pimentel Richard N. Zare 1986 Harry B. Gray Yuan Tseh Lee Carl S. Marvel Frank H. Westheimer 1987 William S. Johnson Walter H. Stockmayer Max Tishler 1988 William O. Baker Konrad E. Bloch Elias J. Corey 1989 Richard B. Bernstein Melvin Calvin Rudolph A. Marcus Harden M. McConnell | 1990s| 1990 Elkan Blout Karl Folkers John D. Roberts 1991 Ronald Breslow Gertrude B. Elion Dudley R. Herschbach Glenn T. Seaborg 1992 Howard E. Simmons Jr. 1993 Donald J. Cram Norman Hackerman 1994 George S. Hammond 1995 Thomas Cech Isabella L. Karle 1996 Norman Davidson 1997 Darleane C. Hoffman Harold S. Johnston 1998 John W. Cahn George M. Whitesides 1999 Stuart A. Rice John Ross Susan Solomon 2000s| 2000 John D. Baldeschwieler Ralph F. Hirschmann 2001 Ernest R. Davidson Gábor A. Somorjai 2002 John I. Brauman 2004 Stephen J. Lippard 2006 Marvin H. Caruthers Peter B. Dervan 2007 Mostafa A. El-Sayed 2008 Joanna Fowler JoAnne Stubbe 2009 Stephen J. Benkovic Marye Anne Fox 2010s| 2010 Jacqueline K. Barton Peter J. Stang 2011 Allen J. Bard M. Frederick Hawthorne 2014 Judith P. Klinman Jerrold Meinwald 2015 A. Paul Alivisatos Geraldine L. Richmond Engineering sciences | 1960s| 1962 Theodore von Kármán 1963 Vannevar Bush John Robinson Pierce 1964 Charles S. Draper 1965 Hugh L. Dryden Clarence L. Johnson Warren K. Lewis 1966 Claude E. Shannon 1967 Edwin H. Land Igor I. Sikorsky 1968 J. Presper Eckert Nathan M. Newmark 1969 Jack St. Clair Kilby | 1970s| 1970 George E. Mueller 1973 Harold E. Edgerton Richard T. Whitcomb 1974 Rudolf Kompfner Ralph Brazelton Peck Abel Wolman 1975 Manson Benedict William Hayward Pickering Frederick E. Terman Wernher von Braun 1976 Morris Cohen Peter C. Goldmark Erwin Wilhelm Müller 1979 Emmett N. Leith Raymond D. Mindlin Robert N. Noyce Earl R. Parker Simon Ramo 1980s| 1982 Edward H. Heinemann Donald L. Katz 1983 Bill Hewlett George Low John G. Trump 1986 Hans Wolfgang Liepmann Tung-Yen Lin Bernard M. Oliver 1987 Robert Byron Bird H. Bolton Seed Ernst Weber 1988 Daniel C. Drucker Willis M. Hawkins George W. Housner 1989 Harry George Drickamer Herbert E. Grier 1990s| 1990 Mildred Dresselhaus Nick Holonyak Jr. 1991 George H. Heilmeier Luna B. Leopold H. Guyford Stever 1992 Calvin F. Quate John Roy Whinnery 1993 Alfred Y. Cho 1994 Ray W. Clough 1995 Hermann A. Haus 1996 James L. Flanagan C. Kumar N. Patel 1998 Eli Ruckenstein 1999 Kenneth N. Stevens 2000s| 2000 Yuan-Cheng B. Fung 2001 Andreas Acrivos 2002 Leo Beranek 2003 John M. Prausnitz 2004 Edwin N. Lightfoot 2005 Jan D. Achenbach Tobin J. Marks 2006 Robert S. Langer 2007 David J. Wineland 2008 Rudolf E. Kálmán 2009 Amnon Yariv 2010s| 2010 Shu Chien 2011 John B. Goodenough 2014 Thomas Kailath Mathematical, statistical, and computer sciences | 1960s| 1963 Norbert Wiener 1964 Solomon Lefschetz H. Marston Morse 1965 Oscar Zariski 1966 John Milnor 1967 Paul Cohen 1968 Jerzy Neyman 1969 William Feller | 1970s| 1970 Richard Brauer 1973 John Tukey 1974 Kurt Gödel 1975 John W. Backus Shiing-Shen Chern George Dantzig 1976 Kurt Otto Friedrichs Hassler Whitney 1979 Joseph L. Doob Donald E. Knuth 1980s| 1982 Marshall Harvey Stone 1983 Herman Goldstine Isadore Singer 1986 Peter Lax Antoni Zygmund 1987 Raoul Bott Michael Freedman 1988 Ralph E. Gomory Joseph B. Keller 1989 Samuel Karlin Saunders Mac Lane Donald C. Spencer 1990s| 1990 George F. Carrier Stephen Cole Kleene John McCarthy 1991 Alberto Calderón 1992 Allen Newell 1993 Martin David Kruskal 1994 John Cocke 1995 Louis Nirenberg 1996 Richard Karp Stephen Smale 1997 Shing-Tung Yau 1998 Cathleen Synge Morawetz 1999 Felix Browder Ronald R. Coifman 2000s| 2000 John Griggs Thompson Karen Uhlenbeck 2001 Calyampudi R. Rao Elias M. Stein 2002 James G. Glimm 2003 Carl R. de Boor 2004 Dennis P. Sullivan 2005 Bradley Efron 2006 Hyman Bass 2007 Leonard Kleinrock Andrew J. Viterbi 2009 David B. Mumford 2010s| 2010 Richard A. Tapia S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan 2011 Solomon W. Golomb Barry Mazur 2014 Alexandre Chorin David Blackwell 2015 Michael Artin Physical sciences | 1960s| 1963 Luis W. Alvarez 1964 Julian Schwinger Harold Clayton Urey Robert Burns Woodward 1965 John Bardeen Peter Debye Leon M. Lederman William Rubey 1966 Jacob Bjerknes Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Henry Eyring John H. Van Vleck Vladimir K. Zworykin 1967 Jesse Beams Francis Birch Gregory Breit Louis Hammett George Kistiakowsky 1968 Paul Bartlett Herbert Friedman Lars Onsager Eugene Wigner 1969 Herbert C. Brown Wolfgang Panofsky | 1970s| 1970 Robert H. Dicke Allan R. Sandage John C. Slater John A. Wheeler Saul Winstein 1973 Carl Djerassi Maurice Ewing Arie Jan Haagen-Smit Vladimir Haensel Frederick Seitz Robert Rathbun Wilson 1974 Nicolaas Bloembergen Paul Flory William Alfred Fowler Linus Carl Pauling Kenneth Sanborn Pitzer 1975 Hans A. Bethe Joseph O. Hirschfelder Lewis Sarett Edgar Bright Wilson Chien-Shiung Wu 1976 Samuel Goudsmit Herbert S. Gutowsky Frederick Rossini Verner Suomi Henry Taube George Uhlenbeck 1979 Richard P. Feynman Herman Mark Edward M. Purcell John Sinfelt Lyman Spitzer Victor F. Weisskopf 1980s| 1982 Philip W. Anderson Yoichiro Nambu Edward Teller Charles H. Townes 1983 E. Margaret Burbidge Maurice Goldhaber Helmut Landsberg Walter Munk Frederick Reines Bruno B. Rossi J. Robert Schrieffer 1986 Solomon J. Buchsbaum H. Richard Crane Herman Feshbach Robert Hofstadter Chen-Ning Yang 1987 Philip Abelson Walter Elsasser Paul C. Lauterbur George Pake James A. Van Allen 1988 D. Allan Bromley Paul Ching-Wu Chu Walter Kohn Norman F. Ramsey Jack Steinberger 1989 Arnold O. Beckman Eugene Parker Robert Sharp Henry Stommel 1990s| 1990 Allan M. Cormack Edwin M. McMillan Robert Pound Roger Revelle 1991 Arthur L. Schawlow Ed Stone Steven Weinberg 1992 Eugene M. Shoemaker 1993 Val Fitch Vera Rubin 1994 Albert Overhauser Frank Press 1995 Hans Dehmelt Peter Goldreich 1996 Wallace S. Broecker 1997 Marshall Rosenbluth Martin Schwarzschild George Wetherill 1998 Don L. Anderson John N. Bahcall 1999 James Cronin Leo Kadanoff 2000s| 2000 Willis E. Lamb Jeremiah P. Ostriker Gilbert F. White 2001 Marvin L. Cohen Raymond Davis Jr. Charles Keeling 2002 Richard Garwin W. Jason Morgan Edward Witten 2003 G. Brent Dalrymple Riccardo Giacconi 2004 Robert N. Clayton 2005 Ralph A. Alpher Lonnie Thompson 2006 Daniel Kleppner 2007 Fay Ajzenberg-Selove Charles P. Slichter 2008 Berni Alder James E. Gunn 2009 Yakir Aharonov Esther M. Conwell Warren M. Washington 2010s| 2011 Sidney Drell Sandra Faber Sylvester James Gates 2012 Burton Richter Sean C. Solomon 2014 Shirley Ann Jackson * v * t * e Timelines of computing Computing| * before 1950 * 1950–1979 * 1980s * 1990s * 2000s * 2010s Software| | Open-source software| * 1970s * 1980s * 1990s * 2000s * 2010s * 2020s | Programming languages| Hypertext technology| Operating systems| * DOS family * Windows * Linux Virtualization development| Malware| Computer science| * Artificial intelligence * Quantum computing Internet| * Web browsers * Internet conflicts Men in computing| * John Vincent Atanasoff * Charles Babbage * John Backus * George Boole * Vint Cerf * John Cocke * Stephen Cook * J. Presper Eckert * David A. Huffman * Bob Kahn * Brian Kernighan * Andrew Koenig * Donald Knuth * Joseph Kruskal * Douglas McIlroy * John von Neumann * Dennis Ritchie * Guido van Rossum * Bjarne Stroustrup * Ken Thompson * Linus Torvalds * Alan Turing * Paul Vixie * Larry Wall * Stephen Wolfram * Steve Wozniak Women in computing| * Kathleen Antonelli * Jean Bartik * Adele Goldstine * Lois Haibt * Betty Holberton * Ada Lovelace * Margaret Hamilton * Grace Hopper * Nancy Leveson * Marlyn Meltzer * Klara Dan von Neumann * Frances Spence * Ruth Teitelbaum 0.00 (0 votes) Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J. Presper Eckert. Read more | Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Biography:J._Presper_Eckert&oldid=2671706" *[v]: View this template *[t]: Discuss this template *[e]: Edit this template