John W. Mauchly (1907-1980)
John Mauchly received a PhD in Physics from John Hopkins University in 1932. He then taught physics at a number of different colleges, becoming interested in developing electronic computers, which combined his interests in physics and engineering. Mauchly's interests were in electrical engineering and he looked for ways to develop electrical circuits for computation. Later at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, Mauchly and assistant John Eckert collaborated in the construction of the Electronic Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), which was completed in 1946. Although the machine was intended to be for general purposes, it was designed for a very specific task, namely compiling tables for the trajectories of bombs and shells. Mauchly and Eckert then started up the Electronic Controls Company and built the Binary Automatic Computer (BINAC). One of the major advances of this machine, which was used from August 1950, was that data was stored on magnetic tape rather than on punched cards. They went on to build the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC). This was the first computer to be produced commercially in the United States with 46 UNIVACs being built. One of the major advances that the UNIVAC introduced was an ability to handle both numerical and alphabetical information with equal success.