J. Presper Eckert, co-inventor of the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, ENIAC, and co-founder of the first ever computer company was born on 9 April 1919 in Philadelphia.

John Adam Presper Eckert Jr.
(April 19, 1919 - June 3, 1995)

His name is usually linked to that of John William Mauchly, his partner both in the ENIAC project at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering computer and in founding the first computer company, the Electronic Control Company, later renamed the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation where the duo built the Binary Automatic Computer (BINAC) in which data was stored on magnetic tape, and the UNIVAC - although by the time it was finished the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation had run into financial trouble and been acquired by the Remington Rand Corporation.

Read our history of Eckert & Mauchley and the machines that kick-started computing in the 1940s.

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