Written Documents from People You Know Offered by the Raab Collection

This next document takes us back to the dawn of the computer. In 1943, the University of Pennsylvania received funding from the government to create what would be the world's first computer. For three years, their school of electrical engineering would work on the project, it being headed by John P. Eckert and John Mauchly. They produced what was known as ENIAC (electronic numerical integrator and computer). It was an amazing machine. It could perform mathematical calculations at a thousand times the speed of any prior calculating machine. Of course, it had 17,468 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, 6,000 manual switches, 5 million soldered joints, took up 1,800 square feet of floor space, and weighed 30 tons. This is why people didn't have laptops back then. The military, which got the machine, loved it, but Eckert and Mauchly wanted to go into private business producing the machines. There was one problem. The University of Pennsylvania had the copyright. So, they asked the school to assign it to them, and amazingly, with a few restrictions, they did. Item 4 is the letter, signed by University President George McClelland, dated March 15, 1945, that gave them the patent. With it, they set up the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, and began building ENIAC's famed successor, Univac (universal automatic computer). Their first major customer was again the government, who used their Univac for the 1950 census. Eckert and Mauchly's company later would be sold to typewriter manufacturer Remington-Rand, and several corporate consolidations later survives as one of many predecessors to the current Unisys Corporation. $75,000.

The Raab Collection may be reached at 800-977-8333 or questions@raabcollection.com. Their website is www.raabcollection.com