Inventions & Discoveries · Communication and computing

ENIAC

1945 · 20th century · Also known as Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945 at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering. Designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert and financed by the United States Army to calculate artillery firing tables, it was on the order of a thousand times faster than electro-mechanical machines. Six women did most of its programming; it worked at Aberdeen Proving Ground until 1955, and pieces of it are now held by the Smithsonian and other museums.

ENIAC
Image: Unidentified U.S. Army photographer · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

On the inventions tree

First known
1945
Where
Philadelphia
Credited to
John Mauchly · J. Presper Eckert · United States

Also arose independentlyBritain (Colossus) (during the Second World War)

NoteA US court ruled in 1973 that its inventors had drawn on John Atanasoff’s Atanasoff–Berry Computer, prototyped in 1939.

Led toARPANET1969

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See also

Cite this entry
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). ENIAC. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/eniac
MLA
“ENIAC.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/eniac. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “ENIAC.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/eniac.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘ENIAC’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/eniac (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻