Building on plans developed by Adele Goldstine and others, in April 1948, Nick Metropolis completed the conversion of ENIAC to the style of programming first described in John von Neumann’s 1947 “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC,” making ENIAC the first computer to execute programs written in the new style. This article documents the conversion process and compares the 1948 ENIAC’s capabilities to those of the first modern computers.
Thomas Haigh, Mark Priestley & Crispin Rope, “Engineering ‘The Miracle of the ENIAC’: Implementing the Modern Code Paradigm” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 36:2 (April-June 2014):41-59.
Supporting Sources
- Adele K. Goldstine, “Central Control for ENIAC,” July 10, 1947.
- Ballistic Research Laboratories (W. Barkley Fritz)Technical Note 141: Description and Use of the ENIAC Converter Code. Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, 1949.
- W. Barkley Fritz, BRL Memorandum Report No 582: Description of the ENIAC Converter Code. Aberdeen, MD: Ballistics Research Laboratory, 1951.