John W. Mauchley

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John W. Mauchley

1907-1980

American physicist who proposed and later built the world's first successful, general digital computer. Mauchley constructed the mammoth Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC), with J. Presper Eckert, while at the Moore School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. It used cathode ray tubes as its memory. Mauchley and Eckert later went on to make UNIVAC, the first computer sold commercially by the Rand Corporation, running on Hollerith cards.

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