John Mauchly and J Presper Eckert: The Fathers of Computers Who Built the First Programmable Machine
John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert: The Fathers of Computers Who Built the First Programmable Machine Who are the pioneers behind the creation of the first programmable machine? American engineers John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert are often referred to as the fathers of computers. As graduate students in physics at the University of Pennsylvania, they invented the world’s first general-purpose, fully electronic digital computer, which was called the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator). This invention put an end to the slow and tedious process of computers, and Mauchly and Eckert's invention of the computer remains a landmark of modern technology. Mauchly and Eckert were two educated and innovative scientists who by no means achieved their invention by sheer luck. Born in Philadelphia in 1907 and 1909, respectively, Mauchly and Eckert first met at Penn in 1934, where Mauchly was a teaching assistant for a course in electrical engineering. Eckert, a independent s...