THE WORLD’S FIRST COMPUTER!!!

first-computer-hf.jpgTHE AMAZING “ENIAC” SOLVES MATHEMATICAL PROBLEMS 1,000 TIMES FASTER THAN EVER BEFORE.
NEW COMPUTER COSTS $400,000 and WEIGHS 30 TONS! OCCUPIES A 30 X 60′ ROOM!
NEW ERA OF ELECTRONIC SPEED IS PREDICTED!

The New York Times
February 15, 1946

Beginning smack on Page One of the Times is the startling announcement of what is considered to be the world’s first computer–the amazing ENIAC! The headline reads: “ELECTRONIC COMPUTER FLASHES ANSWERS, MAY SPEED ENGINEERING.” The story, in part: “One of the war’s top secrets, an amazing machine which applies electronic speeds for the first time to mathematical tasks hitherto too difficult and cumbersome for solution, was announced here tonight by the War Department….Its inventors say it computes a mathematical problem 1,000 times faster than it has ever been done before. The machine is being used on a problem in nuclear physics.”

The history-making announcement and reporting continues on page 15 (most of the page) with actual photos of the ENIAC and its two inventors, Dr. John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, Jr. (see scans). Here are just a few of the remarkable details of the new computer in the story: “The machine, however, can do much more (than mathematics). It has the human faculty of “memory,” four kinds of it, to perform certain tasks in the proper sequence….”Watch closely, you may miss it (Dr. Arthur W. Burks of the Moore School), as a button was pressed to multiply 97,367 by itself 5,000 times. Most of the onlookers missed it–the operation took place in less than the wink of an eye….The Eniac was then told to solve a difficult problem that would have required several weeks work by a trained man. The Eniac did it in exactly fifteen seconds.”

One of the Eniac’s inventors, Mr. Eckert, prophetically “predicted an era which, with electronic speeds available, problems that have been thought impossible because they might require a lifetime will be readily resolved for man’s use….The old era is going, the new one of electronic speed is on the way….”

Offered here exclusively by The Mitchell Archives is the complete 42-page issue that has been been preserved flat in a formerly bound volume by a major institution. Very few of these issues exist, and I know of no other one available at this time. Excellent condition and perfect for anyone who really takes computers seriously. Bill Gates would almost certainly love to have this one!

$4,500

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Posted by mmitchell | Filed Under All Historic Newspapers, The 20th + 21st Centuries