John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, best known for ENIAC, went on to build several lesser-known machines afterward. BINAC, arguably the first commercialized digital computer, reportedly never worked correctly after delivery and was mishandled during a botched rebuild by the customer. Skeduflo, a 75-pound analog computer, used a patchboard and potentiometers for critical path method analysis with results plotted on an analog plotter. UNIVAC and EDVAC, by contrast, achieved lasting influence and success.
Questions this post answers
What was BINAC and why is it historically significant?
BINAC was a computer built by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert after ENIAC, and it can claim to be the first digital computer that was commercialized. Despite this milestone, it was fairly limited and reportedly never worked correctly after delivery; the customer disassembled it, shipped it to a secure facility, and had a newly graduated engineer attempt to rebuild it, without success. daily.dev surfaces stories like this for developers curious about computing's earliest commercial roots.
What did the Skeduflo computer do?
Skeduflo was a 75-pound analog computer built for critical path method (CPM) analysis, one of the lesser-known machines created by ENIAC inventors Mauchly and Eckert. Users set up problems using a patchboard and potentiometers, and results were output on an analog plotter, according to a PMI interview with Morgan Walker and Jim Kelley. Readers tracing the origins of project-management techniques like CPM can find such history on daily.dev.