ENIAC

ENIAC was the founding artifact of the computer age and the paradigm case for Smith's thesis that American technological development emerges from military-industrial institutions rather than market forces or garage inventors. Built between 1943 and 1945 at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering under contract to the U.S. Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory, ENIAC performed the task of calculating artillery firing tables—complex mathematical operations previously done by teams of human computers (predominantly women) whose labor could not keep pace with wartime weapons development. The machine occupied 1,800 square feet, weighed thirty tons, consumed 150 kilowatts, and could perform 5,000 additions per second—a capability with no commercial application at the time of its development. ENIAC's institutional origin established the pattern: fundamental computing breakthroughs emerge from military-funded research addressing strategic imperatives, not from market demand discovering commercial opportunities.