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We begin with a discussion of the public launch of ENIAC in February 1946 as a carefully orchestrated scientific spectacle. We draw on oral history accounts and on archival sources, including seating plans, press releases, and records of the demonstration itself. We then consider ENIAC’s first year as an operational computer, during which its initial programming method was used on to run around a dozen applications at the Moore School. These are listed with brief discussion. We describe in some detail calculations performed by Douglas Hartree on supersonic airflow, the firing table calculations run as a public demonstration, and a mathematical experiment to detect prime numbers. These case studies integrate discussion of the various mathematical methods involved, the compromises and methods needed to adapt them for ENIAC, and the labor processes involved in running them on an often uncooperative machine in a chaotic environment.

In spring 1947 a project was launched to convert ENIAC to run code written in the new from introduced with the 1945 “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC.” This was intertwined with the planning of Monte Carlo calculations for Los Alamos. Adele Goldstine worked with a team of contractors led by Jean Bartik and a group of Aberdeen employees under Richard Clippinger to develop a succession of planned “set-ups” to implement a new control mechanism and vocabulary of general purpose instructions for ENIAC. Our analysis focuses particularly on the relationship of this work on concurrent efforts by von Neumann’s team on the design of the Institute for Advanced Studies computer and a series of related reports on programming methods. Accounts by participants and historians have differed dramatically in assigning credit for the conversion and on such basic facts as when the conversion was implemented and what version of the design was used. The conversion was finally implement in March 1948 by Nick Metropolis (of Los Alamos and the University of Chicago) using a variant design he formulated with Klara von Neumann. At this point ENIAC became the first computer ever to execute a program written in the “modern code paradigm.”

This chapter explores the construction and initial use of ENIAC during 1944 and 1945. It highlights the challenges of procuring components in the wartime environment, from wire and steel to custom-built power supplies and high precision resistors. ENIAC was built by a forgotten, almost exclusively female, team of “wiremen.” The project was repeatedly delayed, requiring contract renegotiations. The chapter then introduces machine’s initial cohort of six female operators, putting their work into the broader context of labor in applied mathematics. In concludes with a description of some of the challenges, including a flood, faced by the team as it worked to debug ENIAC as it struggled to run a calculation for Los Alamos intended to determine the viability of Edward Teller’s design for a “Super” fusion weapon.