John Mauchly, with J. Presper Eckert, designed and built several significant computers in the 1940s--ENIAC, EDVAC, BINAC, and UNIVAC. Mauchly was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and became interested in science while very young. He studied engineering and physics at Johns Hopkins University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1932; he spent the next year there as a research assistant. In 1934, when he became a faculty member at Ursinus College, he carried out weather research.

All of this work required large amounts of computation, and he began to consider how to make calculating easier. After taking a course at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering in the summer of 1941, he was asked to join the faculty. There he met Eckert, who was a student.

Because of World War II, the university had a contract to develop a calculating machine for the United States Army. Mauchly and Eckert designed...