EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) was one of the earliest electronic computers, built by the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Along with ORDVAC, it was a successor to ENIAC, but unlike ENIAC it was binary rather than decimal and was designed from the outset to be a stored-program computer. John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, ENIAC's own inventors, proposed its construction in August 1945, and a contract to build it was signed in April 1946 with an initial budget of 100,000 dollars. EDVAC was delivered to the Ballistic Research Laboratory in 1949. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
SignificanceOne of the earliest stored-program computers and a direct successor to ENIAC, distinguished from it by a binary rather than decimal design, proposed by ENIAC's own inventors, John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, in August 1945. 1 FAQs
Why is the stored-program design called the von Neumann architecture and not an EDVAC design?
The First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC carried only von Neumann's name on its title page.
In June 1945 John von Neumann condensed his notes on the EDVAC design into a 101 page working document titled First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC and had it distributed to 24 people on the project. It became the seminal document describing the general purpose stored-program digital computer, and because his name was the only one on the title page, the design became known as the von Neumann architecture. This was much to the chagrin of J. Presper Eckert, John Mauchly and others who worked on the project.
Connections
In Field
Source Wikipedia: EDVAC
Invented By
J. Presper Eckert co-designed EDVAC at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering as the stored-program successor to ENIAC.
Source Wikipedia: J. Presper Eckert
John Mauchly co-designed EDVAC at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering as the stored-program successor to ENIAC.
Source Wikipedia: John Mauchly
Preceded By
ENIAC, Systems EDVAC was designed at the Moore School as the stored-program successor to ENIAC, described in von Neumanns 1945 First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: EDVAC
Wikimedia FoundationLead section
Unlike ENIAC, it was binary rather than decimal, and was designed to be a stored-program computer.
Lead sentence
EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) was one of the earliest electronic computers.
Article text
EDVAC ran until 1962 when it was replaced by BRLESC.
View the Source Wikidata: EDVAC
Wikidata Q834849, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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