GoKawiilThis year marks the 80th anniversary of ENIAC, the first general-purpose digital computer. The computer was built during World War II to speed up ballistics calculations, but its contributions to computing extend well beyond military applications.
Two of ENIAC’s key architects—John W. Mauchly, its co-inventor, and Kathleen “Kay” McNulty, one of the six original programmers—married a few years after its completion and raised seven children together. Mauchly and McNulty’s grandchild Naomi Most delivered a talk as part of a celebration in honor of ENIAC’s anniversary on 15 February, which was held online and in-person at the American Helicopter Museum in West Chester, Pa. The following is adapted from that presentation.
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There was a library at my grandparents’ farmhouse that felt like it went on forever. September light through the windows, beech leaves rustling outside on the stone porch, the sounds of cousins and aunts and uncles somewhere in the house. And in the corner of that library, an IBM personal computer.
When I spent summers there as a child, I didn’t yet know that the computer was closely tied to my family’s story.
My grandparents are known for their contributions to creating the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC. But both were interested in more than just crunching numbers: My grandfather wanted to predict the weather. My grandmother wanted to be a good storyteller.
In Irish, the first language my grandmother Kathleen “Kay” McNulty ever spoke, a word existed to describe both of these impulses: ríomh.
I began to learn the Irish language myself five years ago, and I was struck by how certain words and phrases had multiple meanings. According to renowned Irish cultural historian Manchán Magan—from whom I took lessons—the word ríomh has at different times been used to mean to compute, but also to weave, to narrate, or to compose a poem. That one word that can tell the story of ENIAC, a machine with wires woven like thread that was built to compute, make predictions, and search for a signal in the noise.
John Mauchly’s Weather-Prediction Ambitions
Before working on ENIAC, John Mauchly spent years collecting rainfall data across the United States. His favorite pastime was meteorology, and he wanted to find patterns in storm systems to predict the weather.
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