ENIAC, the triumphs and tragedies of the world's first computer
Scott McCartney
Walker
For all his genius, John von Neumann was not, as he is  generally credited, the true father of the modern computer. That honor  belongs to the two men who built the first programmable computer, the  lengendary ENIAC: John Mauchly and Presper Eckert.  In <I>ENIAC</I>, two  stories-of the three-year race to complete the computer, and of the  three-decade struggle to take credit for it-are intertwined and fully  revealed to general readers for the first time.</p><p><b>Amazon.com Review  Today's computers are fantastically complex machines, shaped  by innovations dreamt up by hundreds of engineers and theorists over  the last several decades. Does it even make sense, then, to ask who  invented the computer? McCartney thinks so, and in <I>ENIAC: The  Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer</I>, he's written  a compelling answer to the question, crediting two relatively unsung  Pennsylvanians with what is arguably the most significant invention of  the century.<p> McCartney's heroes are Presper Eckert and John  Mauchly, and as he makes clear, there are those who might question the  choice. Nobody doubts the pair designed and built ENIAC, the world's  first fully electronic computer and a watershed in the history of  computing. But for years the importance of their contribution, made  during World War II and sponsored by the U.S. Army, has been  downplayed. The brilliant John von Neumann's subsequent theoretical  papers on computer design have made him the traditional "father of  modern computing." And Eckert and Mauchly later even lost the patent  on their machine when it was claimed that another early experimenter,  John Atanasoff, had given them all the ideas about ENIAC that  mattered.<p> But McCartney's meticulously researched narrative of  Eckert and Mauchly's careers--covering the thrilling three years of  ENIAC's construction and the frustrating decades of little recognition  that followed--sets the record straight. He carefully weighs  Atanasoff's claims and gives von Neumann the credit he earned for  advancing computer science, but in the end he leaves no room for  doubt: if anyone deserves to be remembered for inventing the computer,  it's the two men whose tale he has told here so  engagingly. <I>--Julian Dibbell</I>