These Truths: A History of the United States

by Jill Lepore

Against this campaign stood advocates for federal government funding of the new field of computer science, who launched their own publicity campaign, beginning with the well-staged unveiling of ENIAC. It had been difficult to stir up interest. No demonstration of a general-purpose computer could have the drama of an atomic explosion, or even of the 1939 World’s Fair chain-smoking Elektro the Moto-Man. ENIAC was inert. Its vacuum tubes, lit by dim neon bulbs, were barely visible. When the machine was working, there was no real way to see much of anything happening. Mauchly and Eckert prepared press releases and, in advance of a scheduled press conference, tricked up the machine for dramatic effect. Eckert cut Ping-Pong balls in half, wrote numbers on them, and placed them over the tips of the bulbs, so that when the machine was working, the room flashed as the lights flickered and blinked. It blinked fast. The Times gushed, “The ‘Eniac,’ as the new electronic speed marvel is known, virtually eliminates time.”