Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
ENIAC
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
===Public knowledge=== The Z3 and Colossus were developed independently of each other, and of the ABC and ENIAC during World War II. Work on the ABC at [[Iowa State University]] was stopped in 1942 after [[John Atanasoff]] was called to [[Washington, D.C.]], to do physics research for the U.S. Navy, and it was subsequently dismantled.{{sfn|Copeland|2006|p=106}} The Z3 was destroyed by the Allied bombing raids of Berlin in 1943. As the ten Colossus machines were part of the UK's war effort their existence remained secret until the late 1970s, although knowledge of their capabilities remained among their UK staff and invited Americans. ENIAC, by contrast, was put through its paces for the press in 1946, "and captured the world's imagination". Older histories of computing may therefore not be comprehensive in their coverage and analysis of this period. All but two of the Colossus machines were dismantled in 1945; the remaining two were used to decrypt Soviet messages by [[GCHQ]] until the 1960s.{{sfn|Copeland|2006|p=2}}<ref>{{Citation |last=Ward |first=Mark |title=How GCHQ built on a colossal secret |work=BBC News |date=5 May 2014 |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26714967}}</ref> The public demonstration for ENIAC was developed by Snyder and Jennings who created a demo that would calculate the trajectory of a missile in 15 seconds, a task that would have taken several weeks for a [[human computer]].<ref name=":4" />
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)