Mauchly, John William, << MAWK lee, jon WIHL yuhm >> (1907-1980), was a key figure in the development of the computer. He was the chief consultant on the project that built ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), one of the world’s first general-purpose electronic digital computers. The computer was developed for the United States Department of War. In 1943, the department selected Mauchly, then an engineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania, to serve on the project. It chose J. Presper Eckert, Jr., a graduate student at the university, to be the chief engineer. Mauchly, Eckert, and their team completed ENIAC in late 1945. They demonstrated it publicly in 1946. That same year, Eckert and Mauchly founded the Electronic Control Company (later renamed the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation).
In 1948, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began to investigate accusations, later proved false, that Mauchly had Communist connections. Mauchly’s military security clearance was taken away in 1950 but fully restored in 1958. During the period that Mauchly was denied security clearance, his company lost business because it could not secure certain military contracts.
Remington Rand, Inc. (now part of Unisys Corporation), purchased Eckert-Mauchly Computer in 1950. At Remington Rand, Eckert and Mauchly completed their construction of UNIVAC (UNIVersal Automatic Computer), the first commercially successful computer.
Mauchly was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He received a doctorate in physics in 1932 from Johns Hopkins University.
