John Presper Eckert

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(person) by triangle (4.2 y) (print) ? 1 C! I like it! Thu Feb 12 2004 at 14:40:07

Born: April 9, 1919
Died: June 3, 1995

John Presper Eckert was born as the only son of a real estate developer. He was christened by Russel H. Conwell, an northern baptist minister. He grew up in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the Penn Charter School in Germantown, he deveolped a reputation for being a math wiz and electronic genius because "he was always tinkering with radios adn other electronic devices".

Eckert attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he received both a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering, in 1941 and 1943 respectively. He received an honorary D.Sc. from the same university in 1964.

He and his wife, Judith, had four children. They lived in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania.

J. Presper Eckert is best known for his collaboration with John William Mauchly on developing the ENIAC(Electronic Integrator and Computer). Mauchly was a student of Eckhert when he was teaching at the Moore School of Elecrical Engeneering.

Eckert and Mauchly started up the Electronic Control Company. They built the Binary Automatic Computer (BINAC) after recieving an order for it from the Northrop Aircraft Company. The main advance in the BNAIC was that data was stored on magnetic tape instead of punch cards.

After the Electronic Control Company became the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, they recieved an order from the National Bureau of Standards to buld the Universal Automatic Computer. The UNIVAC was another major advance because it could handle both numerical and alphabetical information with equal success.

Eckert took out patents on 85 inventions. In his lifetime, he recieved many awards, including the Harry M. Goode Memorial Award "For his pioneering contributions to automatic computing by participating in the design and construction of the ENIAC, the world's first all-electronic computer, and of the BINAC and the UNIVAC, and for his continuing work in the design of electronic computing systems." Eckert was also awarded the US National Medal of Science. He was elected to the National Academy of Engeneering.

Eckert died from complications relating to Leukaemia.

Timeline
1919 - born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1937 - graduated from the William Penn Carter Ccholl in Germanstown
1941 - graduated form the Moore School of Electrical Engeneering at the University of Pennsylvania and accepted a teaching position there
1946 - left the Moore School to start up the Electronic Control Company.
???? - the Electronic Control Company became the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation
1950 - the Remington Rand Corporation took over the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation; Eckert stayed on as an executive of the new company
1948 to 1966 - took out patents on 85 inventions
1966 - recieved the Harry M. Goode Memorial Award
1967 - elected to the National Academy of Engeneering
1969 - awarded the US National Medal of Science
1980 - recieved the IEEE Computer Society Pioneer Award
1989 - retired
1995 - died in Bryn Mawr, PA

sources
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Eckert_John.html
http://www.wellesley.edu/CS/courses/CS110/History/PresperEckert.html
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bleniac.htm
http://books.nap.edu/books/0309084571/html/71.html
http://www.luckbealady.com/eckertproject/childhood.htm

printable version
chaos

John William Mauchly	ENIAC	Harry M. Goode Memorial Award	George R. Stibitz
Acronym	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania	Whirlwind	Peter Chen
First Day Cover	Chronology of Communication after electronics to 1998	Jay W. Forrester	UniVAC

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