The ENIAC, unveiled to the public in 1946, was the first machine that used electronic devices on a large scale for high-speed calculations. Its sophistication, for its day, was unparalleled. Its successful operation demonstrated that electronic computing was not only feasible but that it could be done at unprecedented speeds - about 3 orders of magnitude faster than any other computing machine yet built.

This presentation will give a brief historical overview of the ENIAC and describes its internal architecture. The function and operation of some individual modules will be described in more detail in order to give an appreciation of the machine's capabilities and limitations. We will show how the ENIAC could perform conditional branching and execute nested loops. We will conclude with a discussion of the recent reconstruction of the ENIAC in silicon using VLSI technology.

Jan Van der Spiegel (Fellow IEEE) is a Professor and Interim chair of the Electrical and Systems Engineering Department, and the Director of the Center for Sensor Technologies at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Van der Spiegel received his Masters degree in Electro-Mechanical Engineering and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Leuven, Belgium, in 1974 and 1979, respectively. His primary research interests are in high-speed, low-power analog and mixed-mode VLSI design, biologically based sensors and sensory information processing systems, micro-sensor technology, and analog-to-digital converters. He is the author of over 150 journal and conference papers and holds 4 patents.

Dr. Van der Spiegel has been involved in several companies. He co-founded Corticon, Inc, a company that aims to produce biologically inspired sensors and systems. His earlier work on chemical sensors let to the formation of Integrated Ionics, that was later renamed I-Stat. The company focuses on the development and manufacturing of sensors for medical diagnostics for blood analysis.

He is a fellow of the IEEE, the recipient of the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, the UPS Foundation Distinguished Education Chair and the Bicentennial Class of 1940 Term Chair. He received the Christian and Mary Lindback Foundation, and the S. Reid Warren Award for Distinguished Teaching, and the Presidential Young Investigator Award. He has served on several IEEE program committees and is currently the program secretary of the International Solid-State Circuit Conference (ISSCC). He is also the chapters Chairs coordinator of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) and the Editor of Sensors and Actuators A for North and South America. He is a member of Phi Beta Delta and Tau Beta Pi.