Abstract
The paper analyzes John Presper Eckert and John William Mauchly’s endeavours to design, sell, and build the revolutionary new technology of the first large, commercial computers. It discusses how Eckert and Mauchly’s conceptualization of the computer grew out of their ENIAC and EDVAC projects at University of Pennsylvania. They incorporated their own business to gain profit from production and attain the freedom needed to develop their revolutionary new computer technology through a series of small, separate computer projects with private and government customers. It approaches innovation as a chaotic process and uses uncertainty to conceptualize the basic relations between actors and organizations.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
Heide, L. (2011). Making Business of a Revolutionary New Technology: The Eckert-Mauchly Company, 1945–1951. In: Impagliazzo, J., Lundin, P., Wangler, B. (eds) History of Nordic Computing 3. HiNC 2010. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 350. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23315-9_23
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23315-9_23
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-23314-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-23315-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)