The ENIAC, an electronic computing machine

Hartree, Douglas R. (1897-1958). The ENIAC, an electronic computing machine. In Nature 158 (October 1946): 500-506. 8vo extract of 495-528pp. Text illustrations. 250 x 170 mm. Disbound. Corner torn from last leaf of number, affecting text, spine splitting. Very good copy. First Edition. The first paper on an electronic digital computer published in a large-circulation international scientific journal. The ENIAC, developed during World War II by Pres Eckert and John Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Engineering, was the world's first large-scale general purpose digital computer. Hartree, a British mathematician, first learned of ENIAC in 1945, when he saw the as-yet uncompleted machine during a visit to the Moore School. In 1946 he returned to the Moore School as a participant in the Moore School lectures, advising on nonmilitary uses of ENIAC; during this time he became the first Englishman to work with the machine. He was the first to bring news of ENIAC to Great Britain, publishing the above article in Nature shortly after his return from the United States. Although he himself invented no new calculating devices, Hartree's promotion of electronic digital calculating methods in scientific computation helped to stimulate the development of more powerful computers like Cambridge University's EDSAC. Origins of Cyberspace 648. Randell 1982a, 473. .