Electronic Computing Circuits of the ENIAC

The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), the first electronic computing machine to be built, is a very large device (containing 18,000 vacuum tubes) compounded out of a few basic types of computing circuits. The design principles that were followed in order to insure reliable operation of the electronic computer are presented, and the basic types of computing circuits are analyzed. Most of the design work on component circuits was devoted to constructing reliable memory circuits (flip-flops) and adding circuits (counters). These are treated in detail. The ENIAC performs the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, square-rooting, and the looking up of function values automatically. The units which perform these operations, the units which take numerical data into and out of the machine, and those which control the over-all operation are described. The technique of combining the basic electronic circuits to perform these functions is illustrated by three typical computing circuits: the addition circuit, a programming circuit, and the multiplication circuit.