ENIAC, short for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, was the first large-scale,

electronic, digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems,

although earlier computers had been built with some of these properties.

ENIAC was developed and built by the U.S. Army for their Ballistics Research Laboratory,

with the purpose of calculating ballistic firing tables.

The computer was commissioned on May 17, 1943 as Project PX and constructed at

Penn's Moore School of Electrical Engineering from mid-1944. It was unveiled on February 14, 1946 at the University of Pennsylvania,

having cost almost $500,000. ENIAC was shut down on November 9, 1946 for a refurbishment and a memory upgrade,

and was transferred to the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland in 1947.

There, on July 29 of that year, it was turned on and would be in continuous operation until 11:45 PM on October 2, 1955