Lost interview with ENIAC chief engineer

J. Presper Eckert was the chief engineer for the ENIAC computer project at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electronics. The ENIAC was the first useful electronic computer. This Computerworld interview was recorded by Alexander Randall six years before Eckert died in 1995. Several myths are deflated: ENIAC didn't burn through a couple of tubes every few minutes, nor did it dim the lights when powered up. About the actual invention process itself, Eckert says

"If I hadn't done it, someone else would have. All that any inventor does is accelerate the process. The main thing was we made a machine that didn't fail the first time. If it had failed, we might have discouraged this line of work for a long time. People usually build prototypes, see their errors and try again. We couldn't do that. We had to make it work the first time out".

ENIAC could add two 10-digit numbers in 0.2 mS. My v200 with AMS 3.10 takes 8.8 mS to add two 14-digit numbers, or 44 times as long. On the other hand, ENIAC didn't run on three AAAs. Some other timing results:

Subtraction: 9.5 mS
Multiplication: 10.4 mS
Division: 11.0 mS
Square root: 12.5 mS
Natural logarithm: 13.7 mS

Note that additions don't execute all that much more quickly than divisions. This means that the trick of rearranging an equation to trade multiplication and division for addition and subtraction won't save as much time as on other systems.