Who invented the digital computer? When I was in school, there was a simple answer: the computer was invented by Eckert and Mauchly, the creators of ENIAC. Lawsuits and scholarship have cast a shadow over this simple answer. Should Turing’s theoretical machine count? Had others designed or built earlier computers or parts of computers? Was there secret war work that has yet to be disclosed? Happily, this book eschews these difficult questions and focuses on the actual verifiable record of what, when, and how the ENIAC project flourished.

The book consists of an introduction, a conclusion, and 12 relatively short chapters with lots of photos and diagrams. The first three chapters take us from the reason for (calculation of ballistics tables), the design of, and the construction of ENIAC.

Chapters 4 and 5 report on the work of ENIAC, from various mathematical problems to its real job of computing ballistics tables. Chapters 6 and 7 consider the impact of the EDVAC design and the reconstruction of ENIAC. Chapters 8 and 9 cover the use of ENIAC for Monte Carlo simulations, which were of importance to the construction of nuclear weapons. Chapter 10 assesses the work that ENIAC accomplished as a working computer. Chapter 11 is a discussion of the stored program concept. Chapter 12 describes the iconic status of the ENIAC project: electronic brain, fountainhead of an industry, the original women programmers.

Overall, the book does a good job. I found it easy to read. I have a few quibbles. The index is inadequate--it only covers the names of people. While there are extensive notes, some of the citations are incomplete. There is no list of sources. I wonder if some of the sources are available to others without the authors’ connections.

In Communications of the ACM (CACM) last year, there was a series of discussions about the possibility and necessity of a history of computer science. This book shows that a history based on reliable records and up to the standards of professional historians is possible if there is sufficient support from foundations and the government. On the other hand, there is still demand for the personal recollections (often contradictory) of the pioneers, even if such oral histories might not stand up to historiographical standards.

In the end, “history” is the tales we pass on to our students, and they to theirs. This book is a valuable antidote to history as anecdote, but I will continue telling my story that ENIAC was created because Norbert Wiener spent the First War computing ballistic tables and he didn’t want to spend the Second War doing the same job.

There are two competing themes in this book: the documented history of ENIAC, and the question of what is “history.” The authors have done a superb job on the documented history, but I am not convinced that this is the only, or real, meaning of “history.”

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