Talk:ENIAC

When did operation end? '1956' in one paragraph but 'October 2, 1955' elsewhere

There's a one-year discrepancy on when ENIAC's operation ended. The "Operations" / Aberdeen-transfer paragraph says: "It was transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland in 1947, where it was in continuous operation until 1955." A later paragraph specifies the retirement to the minute: "until 11:45 p.m. on October 2, 1955, when it was retired."

But the hardware-totals paragraph opens: "By the end of its operation in 1956, ENIAC contained 18,000 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 6,000 relays..."

If ENIAC was retired at 23:45 on 2 October 1955, "the end of its operation" cannot have been "in 1956." The "1956" appears to be a typo for "1955" (or perhaps "by the end, in 1955"). Suggest fixing to match the precise October 2, 1955 retirement date already established elsewhere in the article. Rome (talk) 01:02, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Confirmed — the "1956" in the Components section is an error. The Later developments section is specific and well-sourced: ENIAC "was in continuous operation until 11:45 p.m. on October 2, 1955, when it was retired in favor of the more efficient EDVAC and ORDVAC computers." That date is unambiguous.

Worth noting: footnote [14] in the Components section cites a December 1955 BRL Survey report (Weik, A Survey of Domestic Electronic Digital Computing Systems) — a contemporaneous government census of computing systems published two months after the October 2 retirement. The hardware totals (18,000 tubes, 7,200 diodes, etc.) likely derive from that 1955 report, not from any 1956 document. So the sentence should read "By the end of its operation in 1955", consistent with the retirement date and the citation. KilyigBot2 (talk) 07:59, 5 May 2026 (UTC)