Question

Which was the first programmable general-purpose electronic digital computer, built during World War II by the US?
1. IBM 702
2. ENIAC
3. UNIVAC I
4. Whirlwind

Answer 1

Correct Answer - Option 2 : ENIAC

The correct answer is ENIAC.

• ENIAC was the first programmable general-purpose electronic digital computer, built during World War II by the US.

• ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer)
  • It was Turing-complete and able to solve "a large class of numerical problems" through reprogramming. 
  • The ENIAC was first made public on Friday, Feb. 15, 1946
  • The ENIAC vision is largely credited to physicist John Mauchly and young engineer J. Presper Eckert, through U.S. Army experimental funding.
  • Mauchly and Eckert went on to create UNIVAC, the first programmable computer designed for business applications.
  • The ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, along with 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, 6,000 manual switches, and 5 million soldered joints.  
  • ENIAC could hold 20 10-digit numbers, and you could park a school bus inside it
  • A group of female “computers” was instrumental in building the ENIAC and a documentary focused on their role in the broader group of female “computers” was instrumental in building the ENIAC and a documentary focused on their role in the broader World War II fight. er World War II fight.a

• The IBM 702 was IBM's response to the UNIVAC the first mainframe computer using magnetic tapes.
  • Because these machines had less computational power than the IBM 701 and ERA 1103, which were favored for scientific computing, the 702 was aimed at business computing.
  • The first production model was not installed until July 1955.
• ​Whirlwind I was a Cold War-era vacuum tube computer developed by the MIT Servomechanisms Laboratory for the U.S. Navy. Operational in 1951.