The Backstory: The Haunted Country Inn That Helped Launch the Computer Age

Hard to imagine that a little country hotel could have been the launching pad for the 30 ton device called ENIAC, that completely changed our world . . . the computer. This is the remarkable story of how a small haunted colonial inn became the unlikely birthplace of modern computing.

Feel free to DM me if you have a story you’d like me to cover . . . on Facebook it’s Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.

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Speaker 1: All right, Today we grab our laptop or even our

Speaker 1: mobile phone to do well. I don't know everything, but

Speaker 1: these little portable brains have only been around for several decades.

Speaker 1: Their ancestor was a device created by two geniuses from

Speaker 1: the University of Pennsylvania. Much of the work was done

Speaker 1: where the visiting brainiacs of the day stayed while helping

Speaker 1: pioneer the first computer. It was a small country in

Speaker 1: that had housed travelers starting in seventeen oh four. I'm

Speaker 1: Patty Steele. Genius narratives and a few ghost stories from

Speaker 1: the birthplace of the ENIAC computer. That's next on the backstory.

Speaker 1: The backstory is back, so right now, stop and look

Speaker 1: at the device it's allowing you to listen to the backstory.

Speaker 1: It's probably either your cell phone or your laptop. Now.

Speaker 1: The thing is, these devices are so ubiquitous in our

Speaker 1: lives that it's kind of easy for us to take

Speaker 1: them for granted. But where did they get their start?

Speaker 1: The first actual computer was called ENIAC, or the Electronic

Speaker 1: Numerical Integrator and Computer. This thing was massive. It took

Speaker 1: up one thousand square feet and weighed thirty tons. Powering

Speaker 1: it were eighteen thousand vacuum tubes. Eniac performed five thousand

Speaker 1: operations per second. But guess what. A typical cell phone

Speaker 1: today executes billions of operations per second. But in those days,

Speaker 1: it was earth altering. So let's go back. Imagine checking

Speaker 1: into a quiet inn in the Pennsylvania countryside. Businessmen in

Speaker 1: the lobby, couples enjoying dinner, bellhops, carrying luggage. It seems

Speaker 1: like any other hotel or inn, but this one is special.

Speaker 1: It opened in seventeen oh four as the Wayside In

Speaker 1: It had hosted American patriots like George Washington and Marquis

Speaker 1: de Lafayette, as well as British Redcoats and their hired

Speaker 1: Hessian soldiers. Its name was changed to the General Wayne

Speaker 1: Inn for a local revolutionary war hero in seventeen ninety four. Later,

Speaker 1: Edgar Allan Poe stayed there while revising his poem The Raven.

Speaker 1: But this was another kind of revolution one Behind locked

Speaker 1: doors at the Inn, some of the most brilliant mathematical

Speaker 1: minds in America are working around the clock on a

Speaker 1: machine so revolutionary it's going to change the future of humanity,

Speaker 1: and even they don't know it yet. They're building the

Speaker 1: ancestor of every laptop, smartphone, and AI program that exists today. Well, today,

Speaker 1: computers are everywhere. We carry one in our pockets, we

Speaker 1: wear them on our wrists. They fly airplanes, performed surgery.

Speaker 1: They help us communicate across the globe. But just eighty

Speaker 1: years ago, the word computer didn't describe a machine. It

Speaker 1: actually described a person. Seriously, it was a job description.

Speaker 1: One hundred years ago, thousands of people, a lot of

Speaker 1: them women, worked as human computers. Armed with pencils, paper,

Speaker 1: slide rules, and mechanical calculators, they spent their days solving

Speaker 1: mathematical equations by hand. It was slow and tedious, and

Speaker 1: during World War Two it became a major problem. As

Speaker 1: the US entered the war in nineteen forty one, the

Speaker 1: military faced a huge challenge. Every new artillery gun needed

Speaker 1: detailed firing tables to tell soldiers exactly how to aim

Speaker 1: their weapons, depending on distance, windspeed, temperature, elevation, and the

Speaker 1: AMMO they were using. Producing just one firing table took

Speaker 1: thousands of complicated calculations. Human computers needed weeks to complete them. Meanwhile,

Speaker 1: engineers were designing newer and more powerful weapons faster than

Speaker 1: the calculations could keep up. The army needed a better solution.

Speaker 1: Stepping up to the play, two young electrical engineers at

Speaker 1: the University of Pennsylvania, John Mawkley and Jay Presper Eckert,

Speaker 1: were convinced that electronics could perform calculations thousands of times

Speaker 1: faster than mechanical machines and human computers. Those early calculating

Speaker 1: machines relied on gears, switches, and moving parts. Mauchley and

Speaker 1: Eckert proposed using thousands of electronic vacuum tubes instead. Problem is,

Speaker 1: vacuum tubes burned out constantly. Experts said, how could a

Speaker 1: machine with almost eighteen thousand of them possibly work? Nevertheless,

Speaker 1: construction began in secret in nineteen forty three. The goal

Speaker 1: build the world's first large scale, fully electronic general purpose computer.

Speaker 1: The machine would eventually be called ENIAC, the Electronic Numerical

Speaker 1: Integrator and Computer. It wasn't elegant, and it was massive.

Speaker 1: At sixty thousand pounds, it had over five million hands

Speaker 1: soldered connections linking its components together. Because all those tubes

Speaker 1: generated so much heat, it needed giant cooling systems just

Speaker 1: to keep it operating. And this is going to remind

Speaker 1: you of all the complaints we're hearing now about energy

Speaker 1: consumption at the new AI data centers. When ENIAC was running,

Speaker 1: it ate up enough electricity to dim lights in parts

Speaker 1: of Philadelphia. And that was just one computer, but it

Speaker 1: was astonishingly, shockingly fast. Calculations that once took days were

Speaker 1: now completed in seconds. And here's where the General Wayne

Speaker 1: comes into the story. As work accelerated during the war,

Speaker 1: a lot of scientists, engineers, army officers, and visiting experts

Speaker 1: needed a place to stay. The historic General Wayne Inn,

Speaker 1: just outside Philadelphia was the perfect spot to wage this

Speaker 1: new battle, not with muskets, but with math. Evenings at

Speaker 1: the Inn were extensions of the laboratory. Dinner conversations were

Speaker 1: brainstorming sessions. Ideas bounced between these brilliant minds, and the

Speaker 1: Inn became an informal think tank where some of the

Speaker 1: biggest tech breakthroughs of the twentieth century took shape. Also

Speaker 1: integraled to the project six remarkable women, Ky McNulty, Betty Jennings,

Speaker 1: Betty Snyder, Marilyn Westkoff, Francis Beelis, and Ruth Lichtermann ENIAC's

Speaker 1: first programmers. There were no programming languages no instruction manuals,

Speaker 1: no computer science degrees. To make ENIAC solve a new problem,

Speaker 1: they physically rewired the machine by moving cables, setting switches,

Speaker 1: and configuring thousands of connections. Programming could take days, but

Speaker 1: the calculations took only seconds. When ENIAC was officially unveiled

Speaker 1: in February of nineteen forty six, journalists were stunned. In

Speaker 1: that time, five thousand operations every second was unbelievable. Yes,

Speaker 1: your smartphone performs billions of operations each second, but in

Speaker 1: nineteen forty six, ENIAC was a thousand times faster than

Speaker 1: any existing calculating machine. It was actually the beginning of

Speaker 1: the digital age. The engineers who gathered in laboratories and

Speaker 1: at the General Wayne Inn could never have imagined what

Speaker 1: their work would become. Within decades, computers would shrink from

Speaker 1: room sized machines to desktop PCs, than laptops, than smartphones.

Speaker 1: So every email you send, every online purchase, every streaming movie,

Speaker 1: every GPS direction, and every AI conversation all trace their

Speaker 1: roots back to those breakthroughs at the General Wayne Inn.

Speaker 1: The Inn has had its share of remarkable stories over

Speaker 1: the years, reports of ghosts, even a two thousand and

Speaker 1: two murder where one of the inn's owners killed his

Speaker 1: partner over both financial problems as well as an illicit

Speaker 1: affair with a young chef at the inn. At any rate,

Speaker 1: these stories are a reminder that history isn't always made

Speaker 1: in famous capitals and palaces, or even gleaming laboratories. Sometimes

Speaker 1: it happens in quieter places, a classroom, a garage, a workshop,

Speaker 1: or a centuries old inn where brilliant minds gathered after

Speaker 1: long days of work, sharing ideas over dinner as they

Speaker 1: unknowingly helped create the modern world. The General Wayne Inn

Speaker 1: a meeting place for the people whose ideas transformed civilization.

Speaker 1: So every time you unlock your phone or open your laptop,

Speaker 1: you're benefiting from a revolution that began with a handful

Speaker 1: of visionaries, one enormous machine called Eniac, and conversations that

Speaker 1: continued long after the workday had ended. Hope you liked

Speaker 1: the backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a review. I'd

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Speaker 1: get new episodes delivered automatically, and feel free to dm

Speaker 1: me if you have a good story you'd like me

Speaker 1: to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram

Speaker 1: Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a

Speaker 1: production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Duran Group, and

Speaker 1: Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Mike Pieseglia. Our writer

Speaker 1: is Jake Kushner. New episodes are out every Tuesday and Friday,

Speaker 1: and feel free to reach out to me with comments

Speaker 1: and story suggests on Instagram at reel Patty Steele and

Speaker 1: on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the

Speaker 1: Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of history you didn't

Speaker 1: know you needed to know.