J. Presper Eckert

Lore & Background

Eckert was born in Philadelphia to Ethel M. Hallowell and John Eckert, a wealthy real estate developer. He attended William Penn Charter School, joined the Engineer's Club of Philadelphia, and spent afternoons at the electronics laboratory of television inventor Philo Farnsworth. He placed second in the country on the math portion of the College Board examination. John Mauchly, then chairman of the physics department at Ursinus College, was a student in that summer course and later secured a teaching position at the Moore School. A contract was awarded for construction of ENIAC, with Eckert as chief engineer. They started the Electronic Control Company, which built the Binary Automatic Computer (BINAC), and soon became the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation. The company received an order from the National Bureau of Standards to build UNIVAC. In 1950, the company was acquired by Remington Rand Corporation, and the UNIVAC I was finished on December 21, 1950.

Reader's Guide

Eckert's significance lies in his central role in the creation of the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, ENIAC, and the first commercial computer in the U.S., UNIVAC. His invention of the mercury delay-line memory was a key enabling technology for stored-program computing. Along with John Mauchly, he also presented the first course in computing topics, the Moore School Lectures, which disseminated foundational knowledge. His legacy includes a lasting dispute over the naming of computer architecture: Eckert believed the stored-program concept, central to what is widely called 'von Neumann architecture', should be known as 'Eckert architecture', a contention supported by original ENIAC programmer Jean Bartik. The article notes this as a matter of dispute, without resolving it.

Did You Know?

• Eckert placed second in the country on the math portion of the College Board examination.