ENIAC is the world's first electronic computer. As a standalone device, it did not support networking, although it facilitated a network of people who used it for years to support the World War II effort. It relied on a series of vacuum tubes and other typical electronic devices rather than today's integrated circuits. Although it dates back to the 1940s, it has had a profound and lasting impact on the technology we rely on today.

ENIAC is an acronym for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. Also known as The Giant Brain, it was the first programmable general electronic digital computer.

In the 1940s, physicist John Mauchly began working on his concept for an electronic calculator while teaching at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, a center for wartime computing. The U.S. Army needed a faster computer to calculate the trajectory of artillery shells during World War II and funded his work to develop such a machine.

With the help of his partner, J. Presper Ekert Jr., Mauchly completed ENIAC shortly after the end of the war. ENIAC differed from the mechanical computers that preceded it, which could perform calculations but were difficult to program. ENIAC had no moving mechanical parts. Instead, it was a machine made up of several units, with some 18,000 vacuum tubes, several miles of wiring, and 40 eight-foot black panels. It was enormous, weighing 30 tons, and took up the 50-by-30-foot basement of the Moore School.