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JOHN WILLIAM MAUCHLY
1907-1980
BY ISAAC L. AUERBACH
jOHN WILLIAM MAUCHLY, one of the visionaries who pioneered the
era of the electronic digital computer, died on January 8, 1980, in
suburban Philadelphia at the age of seventy-two. John Mauchly was
a pioneer of automatic computing, particularly in the design and
construction of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
(ENIAC), the world's first all-electronic computer, and of the Binary
Automatic Computer (BINAC) and the Universal Automatic Com-
puter (UNIVAC). His efforts in the application of electronic com-
puters to the solution of scientific and business problems were
outstanding.
Dr. Mauchly was born August 30, 1907, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and
grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He attended Johns Hopkins
University on a scholarship, and received a Ph.D. in physics in
1932.
While Head of the Physics Department at Ursinus College, he
became interested in the problem of weather prediction. Realizing
the magnitude of the calculations involved, he began to experiment
with different techniques to achieve the high speed required. In the
summer of 1941 he attended a war training course at the Moore
School of Electrical Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania.
Realizing that both short- and long-range weather forecasting tech-
niques could only be improved by faster, cheaper, and more sophisti-
cated computational means, he turned his efforts to the development
of electronic computing devices at the Moore School.
187
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188
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
In a memorandum prepared for the Army Ordnance Depart-
ment, Dr. Mauchly proposed the basic ideas for an electronic com-
puter. On April 9, 1942, in collaboration with J. Presper Eckert, he
completed a more extensive proposal, which included more detailed
specifications of a computing machine. These specifications were
submitted to the Army Station at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in
Maryland. Within a month a contract was awarded for the first all-
electronic computer, ENIAC. Development of ENIAC was com-
pleted in 1946.
In the fall of 1944 the Moore School was awarded a contract to
study the design of a stored program computer called the Electronic
Discrete Variable Automatic Computer (EDVAC). Early progress
reports written by Drs. Mauchly and Eckert included the first disclo-
sure of the stored-program concept.
A dispute over the patent rights to the ENIAC caused Drs.
Mauchly and Eckert to leave the university in late 1946. The two
men formed the Electronic Computer Company in order to further
develop their ideas. The company was eventually to change its name
to the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, with John Mauchly
as President. Under study contracts from the National Bureau of
Standards, Prudential Life Insurance Company, and A. C. Neilsen
Company, they developed models of an acoustic memory system, an
advanced arithmetic unit, and a magnetic tape device. This research
led to a contract from the Northrop Company to design the BINAC
for missile steering. The BINAC was completed in 1949.
This was an extraordinarily creative period for Drs. Mauchly and
Eckert; not only was the concept for UNIVAC I being developed,
but John Mauchly also proposed the idea for a small scientific com-
puter, a slower version of the BINAC. Inadequate funding required
that they dedicate themselves to the development of only one com-
puter at a time. The result was UNIVAC I, completed in March
1951, for the Census Bureau. UNIVAC I was the first general-
purpose commercial computer capable of handling alphabetic and
numeric symbols and suited to a wide variety of applications.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s the electronic computer was an
idea whose time had come. Dr. John V. Atanasoff was developing
ideas at Iowa State College. Dr. Konrad Zuse was developing ideas
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TOHN WILLIAM MAUCHLY
189
in Bad Hersfeld, Germany. It was, however, Drs. Mauchly and
Eckert in 1946 who developed the first operational all-electronic
computer, the ENIAC, the precursor of all that was to follow.
Following the work on UNIVAC, John Mauchly returned to sta-
tistical analysis of solar and geophysical data, and under his guid-
ance the first Fortran-like programming system was produced. John
Mauchly headed the UNIVAC Applications and Research Center
from 1953 to 1959, and among other applications developed was the
network method of project analysis, now known as the critical path
method.
John Mauchly shares, with l. Presper Eckert, awards of the Potts
Medal of the Franklin Institute, the Philadelphia Scott Award, the
Modern Pioneers in Creative Industry Award from the National
Association of Manufacturers, and the Henry Goode Memorial
Award of the American Federation of Information Processing Soci-
eties. He was one of the founders and an early President of the
Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Society of
Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). He became a mem-
ber of the National Academy of Engineering in 1967, was a Fellow
of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the
American Statistical Association, and was a Life Member of the
Franklin Institute.
John Mauchly was an idea man of tremendously good instincts.
He was a conceptualizes, a catalyst, a warm human being, and a
pioneer who championed ideas before their time. He was certainly
the prime mover in securing the contract for the first electronic
computer. A brilliant innovator with a tremendous capacity to listen,
he was perpetually stimulating and influencing other people.
Dr. Mauchly always saw to it that anyone who worked for him
was encouraged to grow and to get more training. He was an ideal
person to be in charge of self-motivated people because he could
stimulate them to think and to rethink an idea without discouraging
their creativity.
Dr. J. Presper Eckert says of him, "He inspired me and he
inspired many others. He was not tied down by inhibitions or tradi-
tions. He had an interdisciplinary skill to get things done. "
Dr. Grace Hopper remembers him as "one of the brightest people
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190
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
I ever met and one of the nicest. He was a charming person and a
pleasure to work with. He not only got the work done, but he cared
for the growth of the people he worked with and was the finest boss
anyone ever had. "
Kay Mauchly, his wife, said, "John was a family man who loved
stimulating his children and grandchildren. He felt that an open
mind is like a fresh plot of ground to put something into. He was
eternally the teacher. He had a great sense of humor and loved
puns. "
John Mauchly was a warm human being with an incredibly wide
range of interests and achievements. We will all remember his lead-
ership and pioneering achievements, for which we will be forever
indebted.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
automatic computer
