»ENIAC

Scott McCartney's ultimately disappointing book ENIAC, "The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer", meanders through the lengthy ENIAC, a computer designed to facilitate the production of trajectory books for the United States Army.
McCartney briefly describes the history of computers, including Babbage's Difference Engine, before he delves into the convoluted intellectual and business history of the computer itself. He staunchly defends the two maverick engineers, John Mauchly and Pres Eckert, who led the ENIAC team at the University of Pennsylvania, and casts their efforts in a happily sentimental light. I was more interested in the technical aspects of ENIAC: of the concept of stored programs; of magnetic tape for storing data; the use of which Eckert pioneered; and of the parallel-processing units. These receive some attention, but light detail, in McCartney's book.
The book also ends very unhappily, as did the lives of the two protagonists. Neither succeeded in business, and together they filed and lost the patent on the first computer. Each lost a wife under tragic circumstances -- indeed, Mauchly's wife died during a midnight bathe off New Jersey, and this mysterious incident led to the U S Army denying Mauchly the security clearance necessary for his computer company to obtain vital government contracts. But the story I wanted to read was not in this book: this was much more of a human-interest story than anything else.