Early Digital Computing: Our Ideas

Incorporating the rack of the ENIAC on display in the foyer of the new Computer Science and Engineering Building has the goal of informing current students and faculty about the MIDAC exhibit, while promoting attendance at CAVE openings and use of the web-based features. However, this exhibit feature can also serve to promote awareness of the link between ENIAC and Michigan through the work and teaching of Arthur Burks. Burks came to the University of Michigan in 1946 as a professor of philosophy, after having served as a principle designer of the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), a first digital electronic computer developed at the Moore School at the University of Pennsylvania. He brought the piece of ENIAC to Michigan in the mid-1960s. The ENIAC display should indicate the Michigan connection, and point out mechanical differences between ENIAC (originally released in 1946) and MIDAC (released 1953). The site serves the museum’s overall mission to connect virtual dis­plays to the real physical resources which abound on the Ann Arbor campus, intersecting the lives of the museum’s core audience: the current university community. Connecting these physical resources with virtual exhibits will promote not only an awareness of the virtual museum, but also an under­standing that the history of information technology corresponds to a fuller and richer understanding of the University of Michigan.