I don’t even have to look at my newsreader or MacSurfer’s home page to know that every other headline will be iPhone-related between now and next Friday. It’s enough to make one cranky sometimes. However: I do see the iPhone as more than just a fancy-pants cellphone. It will run a version of Mac OS X, the same operating system currently powering MacBooks, iMacs, Mac Pros, PowerBooks, iBooks, etc. That makes the iPhone a computer, in my opinion, and it seems I’m not the only one.
I think that sometimes, we lose sight of just how far computer technology has advanced. We become jaded by “the latest and the greatest,” expecting smaller forms, faster processors, bigger hard drives, and if you please, more efficient power-consumption so our batteries will last longer. It’s the way things are-time moves forward, not backward, unless Dr. Who or Hiro Nakamura are involved. Every now and then though, it’s good to look back, if only to remind ourselves that being able to carry a whole computer in a bag (or perhaps, pocket) wasn’t always a reality. Every now and then, it’s good to remind ourselves about ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer).
An elevator for the Moore Building, dumps you out into a short hallway right in front of ENIAC itself. Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science has four of the original 40 panels on display; other parts are located at various universities and museums across the U.S.
When you’re not expecting it, it’s quite an experience to to suddenly come upon a section of ENIAC and see that in its entirety, it really would have taken up a whole room. Yet this is where it began. The laptops, desktops, smartphones, PDAs, etc. of today owe their existence to (at first glance) a hodge-podge of tubes, switches, and panels.
Last year, for the machine’s 60th birthday, Computerworld’s Alexander Randall V released excerpts from a 1989 interview with ENIAC co-inventor, J. Presper Eckert, who died in 1995. Even in 1946, ENIAC was onto something new:
The ENIAC was the first electronic digital computer and could add those two 10-digit numbers in 0.0002 seconds — that’s 50,000 times faster than a human, 20,000 times faster than a calculator and 1,500 times faster than the Mark 1. For specialized scientific calculations, it was even faster..
How far have we come in computer technology? How far will we go? I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I do know that whenever I get close enough to pick up an iPhone (or a new iPod or new laptop), I will offer a short, silent “thanks” to its ancestors.
[Note: Marshall is an employee at the University of Pennsylvania]
