Any party requires planning, but a 50th anniversary celebration for the world's first all-electronic computer has presented a complex challenge over the past few years. Now the guests are at the front door.

The high point of the celebration of ENIAC (the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) will be Wednesday, Feb. 14, when Vice President Al Gore, honorary chairman of the ENIAC celebration, will come to Penn to deliver a major policy speech. With President Judith Rodin's assistance, he will throw a switch and light up a portion of the original ENIAC. That evening, President Rodin will host a dinner as the University joins major Philadelphia institutions, corporations, government officials and computing societies to toast the invention that has transformed the way information flows around the globe and into space.

Although everything comes together next week, this is really just the beginning. ENIAC events (see below) will continue for another 18 months of symposia, exhibitions, visits from schoolchildren and a host of other events celebrating "The Birth of the Information Age." That phrase, which appears on the ENIAC logo, was coined by SEAS Dean Gregory Farrington, the man at the center of the celebration--though he credits many other players.

"There is a method to the madness, and there's definitely been madness," he reflected during an interview in his sunny corner office of the Towne Building last week. Among the many hectic and humorous moments leading up to next week's celebration--and some "of pure, abject terror"--Dean Farrington shuddered at these:

His Thanksgiving pie-baking was interrupted by an ENIAC-related call.

As he was explaining the significance of ENIAC and modern computer technology to a former Penn student, the student began to doze off. The student was the Mayor of Philadelphia, Edward G. Rendell (C'65).

And there were times when "some people thought a few of my ideas were flaky," Dean Farrington recalled, chuckling.

But through all the planning--which spanned the administrations of three Penn presidents--the dean has kept two objectives clearly in focus.

"I've always had two goals: One is to communicate to the world what a truly dramatic advance was made here [with the birth of ENIAC]. The other is to highlight the genius of Penn--to attract attention to Penn as a dynamic, interesting place--and to position Philadelphia as a place of technology ... . After all, the birth of the information age took place at this University and in Philadelphia.

"This 50th anniversary comes at such a time of opportunity that is the result of ENIAC," he added. "So much of what we're doing in the world today--in education, communications, politics, economics--is driven by the fact that we can communicate faster, cheaper, and at length. That's the product of ENIAC."

To underscore the impact of ENIAC, Dean Farrington often uses two examples, the printing press and the automobile. "There's nothing so comparable in history, so dramatic, since the invention of print," he said. "In 1200, the Bible was written by hand, but mass-produced. That was followed by the production of print. By the early 1800s, there was cheap print with the rotary press. The resulting spread of literacy affected politics, economics, education."

But the automobile brought about a speedier revolution. "In 1880, everyone traveled by horse. But by 1920, most people didn't. The horse had been used for thousands of years, but it was replaced by an emerging technology known as the car--within just 40 years," he noted.

The information revolution spawned by ENIAC took less than a lifetime, but as the dean pointed out, the past five to 10 years have brought the most startling technological changes not only in the way and speed information moves around, but also in its impact on higher education in particular.

The spotlight on ENIAC offers another way to reconsider the role that universities can and should play in the future, in Dean Farrington's view. It is a challenge that clearly excites him. As he explained, his speech sped up, matching his metaphor for "putting Penn in the passing lane."

"If academe chooses not to go along, we'll be swept away by others in the passing lane," he said. "If we continue to think that higher education is just in the business of giving information, we'll never get in the passing lane."

ENIAC anniversary events can be "a turn on for Penn," he added. "For the University, I saw this [anniversary] as a challenge ... . We are suddenly in an onrushing age. We have things available that weren't even thought of five years ago. The technology of the book suddenly has changed.

"Universities were built around books," he continued. "Universities have been in the business of collecting and sorting information, in the form of books. Students had to come to them. Faculty had to live near universities. Suddenly the library is everywhere. The library is wherever you are today. It follows you. You can't escape it."

The availability of accessing information electronically, from nearly any place, at any time, and with lightning speed, challenges the way that higher education traditionally organized itself. "The idea of lecturing has been treated like a commandment written on Moses' tablets," Dean Farrington said. That has to change, in his view, or universities will lose out.

The modern computer makes learning lifelong and available to new users in new places. Dean Farrington predicted that within five to 10 years, "I'll be able to talk visually, with my face on the screen, to anyone around the world. The data will flow anywhere. People will work from home, office, dorm, laboratory. We can collaborate, talk, serve students throughout their lives."

The self-described "very touchy-feely engineering dean" likes that face-to-face interaction. But it's more than feel-good learning. "The best universities will have much bigger markets," he noted, if they use new technological tools to serve people in new ways. He cited the example of Penn's nursing school, which employs the technology of "distance-learning" in a nurse-midwifery master's level program for students in other parts of Pennsylvania.

While the tools of education have changed, and new ways of learning have been created, the dean warned that, "We have to be careful or we'll have what I call 'the microwave problem.' Remember when microwave ovens first came out? They were supposed to do everything--bake bread, cook anything. But they can't do everything.

"Some people think that a new thing is supposed to do everything. That's rubbish. It will do some things well, but not everything. Our job is to be very creative, to focus on how the student learns best." He cited the example of learning another language.

"The new technology can provide what I call the 'snickerless, indefatigable tutor.' Why do so many students not want to speak out in a language class? They don't want to be laughed at [for mispronunciation]. But a CD-ROM or computer 'tutor' doesn't snicker.

"It won't teach you Dante. You still have a lot of hard work to study Dante, but it teaches you the language. In other words, it heats your soup, but it won't bake bread."

Returning to his goals for the ENIAC celebration, Dean Farrington said that he wanted the events "to position Penn as an institution that would take on the mission of defining new ways of teaching with the new tools. If we do it right, we can get into the passing lane. Suddenly, we have the new tools, the new fuel. All the rules have changed, and we can take advantage of that. We have the content. Most important--we have the highest-quality content.

"The market will define what universities will become," he predicted. "We suddenly have new competition from private industry." For fundamental research needs, industry and government traditionally came to universities--as in the 1940s, the Army came to Penn's Moore School of Electrical Engineering for a faster way to calculate ballistics tables and accelerate the aim of artillery equipment.

But that is changing, he noted, referring to a recent comment of a General Electric vice president. Asked "Where are you going to get your research?," his answer was "Wherever I can." Dean Farrington said, "That should be chilling" for higher education. He predicted the "outsourcing of higher education--wherever the brains are. It's a global view. They'll buy research wherever they can. It's already happening in software, in China, in India."

This is just one implication for higher education ushered in by new technology. Dean Farrington hopes that this and other issues will be tackled by an ENIAC-related symposium in October for "high-level leadership from many universities to address strategic issues and choices that universities will face."

The ENIAC events also are providing an opportunity to create more connections between the University, the City of Philadelphia, and local civic, industrial, cultural and economic leaders. These connections, the dean said, "should be a spark to push Philadelphia ahead as a leading center of technology and learning."

The "ENIAC Celebration: The Birth of the Information Age" will bring together computing pioneers, scholars, business leaders, scientists and technology advocates for a series of events focused on the birth of modern computing and the ongoing technological revolution in all aspects of our work and lives that began with ENIAC. The 50th anniversary celebration will span 18 months and will be marked by symposia, hands-on demonstrations of new electronic technologies, art exhibits, and other events on campus and throughout Philadelphia. For more information, log onto the ENIAC home page at http://homepage.seas.upenn.edu/~museum/ for a schedule of events. For information about tickets and reservations for the 50th Celebration Dinner, hosted by President Judith Rodin, call 575-2200 or the ENIAC hotline: 898-8724.

Although inventors John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert had a few things going in their favor back in the 1940s, building ENIAC was a big gamble. For centuries, mathematicians tried to get something or someone to do their math for them. As a result, great progress was made towards the next computing machine. For example, electricity was already in use to power computers that moved cylinders and wheels to produce answers. These computers were very fast but many times gave the wrong answer.

There were also computers based on digital arithmetic that would give the right answer but too late, even when powered by electricity. It was impossible to have quick and correct answers at the same time. A very promising computer, using electronic voltages instead of moving cylinders to produce answers, was built at MIT. It was electronically fast but arithmetically inaccurate.

Mauchly had seen the first electronic digital computer (one that did not measure voltages to get the answer) in a visit to Iowa in 1941. This computer was fast and precise, but was small and could only answer one type of question. He thought he could push the limits of an electronic digital computer much further. He dreamed of a machine that could address any math problem. But he realized that he would have to build something much bigger.

The computing gurus of those days--many of them at MIT--thought it was futile to put together 18,000 rowdy vacuum tubes and expect them to work as a unit for long enough time to solve a complex mathematical problem. So they kept working on their voltage-based computer. But systems like theirs, based on precise measurements of voltages, were too prone to mathematical errors.

Eckert, who was an electrical-engineering wizard, thought he could make the 18,000 rowdy vacuum tubes work as a single orchestra. ENIAC showed it was possible for an electronic giant to give the right answer quickly and over long periods of time. The Penn inventors won the gamble, and a new electronic information age was born.

--Esaúl Sánchez

Return to Compass Features for February 6, 1996