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Mauchly and one of ENIAC's programmers. After a disagreement with the University of Pennsylvania over patents, Mauchly and Eckert left to form the Eckert-Mauchly Computer, which was bought a few years later by Sperry Rand and later became Unisys. Although Eckert stayed on, Mauchly left and was nearly broke when he died in 1980.
Courtesy of the Computer History Museum.
See footage of the ENIAC's creators with their computing machine in action, bright lights, vacuum tubes and all.
"I was already wearing a plastic pocket protector and thick black glasses--taped together--so I didn't need something to increase my social dysfunction."
"I bought my first computer when I was 15 in 1980. It was an Apple II, which back then was the most popular PC in the U.S."
"I still had to re-key them everytime I wanted to change programs, but this wasn't too bad as the TI-58 only had enough memory for about 240 instructions."
Editors: Kari Dean McCarthy; Mike Yamamoto
Production: Bernie McGinn; Jennifer Guevin; Vincent Tremblay
Design: Ellen Ng