From ENIAC to Skeduflo: The Untold Story of Mauchly's Post-ENIAC Innovations
Come for Eniac, Stay for Univac and Skeduflo
John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert invented ENIAC at Penn in 1946, but their later work on UNIVAC and even Skeduflo, a computer in a suitcase, is often overlooked. Mauchly's papers reveal a relentless innovator who, after ENIAC, developed BINAC, EDVAC, and UNIVAC, and later founded Mauchly Associates to create Skeduflo for construction scheduling. This post highlights Mauchly's role at the UNIVAC Applications and Research Center, where he sought problems for computers to solve, and his prediction that computers would fit in pockets by 1980—a vision realized in today's smartphones.
Rarely have so few people altered the world as much as [ENIAC’s] inventors, yet gained so little for having done so.
- opan
I was hoping Minnesota would be mentioned, I had an older relative that once worked for UNIVAC. I didn't realize how spread out it was.
From Wikipedia:
>The UNIVAC was manufactured at Remington Rand's former Eckert-Mauchly Division plant on W Allegheny Avenue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[1][9] Remington Rand also had an engineering research lab in Norwalk, Connecticut, and later bought Engineering Research Associates (ERA) in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1953 or 1954 Remington Rand merged their Norwalk tabulating machine division, the ERA "scientific" computer division, and the UNIVAC "business" computer division into a single division under the UNIVAC name.
I'm guessing all the coolest stuff had long since happened before my relative was there.
- EvanAnderson
Quoting a Time article in 1962[0]:
> Definitely not yet on the market, but envisioned by Dr. John W. Mauchly, is a miniature computer for household use that will not only make shopping lists obsolete but will also mark the extinction of the grocery clerk and the checkout-counter man. Before going to market, a woman will slip her computer into her purse (it will have an inventory of what she needs in the way of staples and supplies stored in its wafer-thin memory cells). Once at the market, she will plug her computer into a socket in a vacant “delivery alcove” and wait for the results. The computer will carry out the business of identifying itself, making the proper accounting entries in its own memory, and authorizing the charge against its mistress’ universal checking account. In less than a minute the order slides down a chute, and the housewife brings home the electronic bacon. Dr. Mauchly, who invented some of the original big computers and has already built one the size of a suitcase, is working on the pocket monster.
[0] https://time.com/archive/6625605/the-marketplace-build-small...
- JoeDaDude
For a while I worked at what was then the Sperry Rand Corporation (now Unisys) which had some pride in their heritage as the descendant of the Univac Corporation founded by ENIAC inventors Eckert and Mauchly. In a glass case there was a vacuum tube circuit said to be a memory unit of the original ENIAC. No one seemed to know much about it, casting doubt on the claimed provenance of the device.
The tube circuit resembled the ones shown in the photo linked below (although none of those in the photo are from ENIAC).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Women_holding_parts_of_th...
(This is a repost of an older comment I made)