It was less a general purpose stored-program computer and more of a collection of logic circuits that could be configured to solve problems — sort of a giant vacuum tube FPGA, if you will.

ENIAC filled an entire room. With its bank of blinking lights and 6,000 manual switches, it looked like something we'd associate with a 1950s science fiction movie. Probably because it's what ...

ENIAC is the world's first electronic computer. As a stand-alone device, it didn't support networking, although it facilitated a network of humans who used it for years to aid the efforts of World ...

A bank of blinking lights indicate the mysterious processes going on within: That classic symbol of a computer has lasted long after computers evolved into friendly desktop tools. This was not a ...

Philadelphia schoolchildren are drilled on the names of its accomplished citizens. William Penn. Benjamin Franklin. Betsy Ross. But during all the baby-boomer years I attended schools in the City ...