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Experiencing and programming the ENIAC in VR

Published:06 September 2020Publication History

ABSTRACT

Virtual Reality (VR) applications are applied in various domains (e.g. education, training, engineering or entertainment) and offer new possibilities especially when it comes to training of complex tasks which are not suitable or available in a real physical environment. In this paper, we present a VR application which supports experiencing and learning basic steps in programming the ENIAC in a virtual environment. The ENIAC is one of the world's first general-purpose programmable electronic computers which occupied a 40 x 60 foot room, weighed 30 tons, and was programmed using knobs, switches, and cables. Our implemented VR application has twofold goals. On the one hand it enables to re-experience an early computer and understand its historical context and architecture. On the other hand it demos how to program a computer in a completely different "language" (i.e., knobs and switches) by guiding the user step-by-step through a predefined configuration of the ENIAC.

References

  1. Douglas E. Harms. 2004. A virtual reality simulator of the ENIAC. In Proc. of the 9th Annual SIGCSE. ACM, 239. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  2. Brian L. Stuart. 2018. Simulating the ENIAC [Scanning our Past]. Proc. IEEE 106, 4 (2018), 761--772.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  3. Enes Yigitbas, Joshua Heindörfer, and Gregor Engels. 2019. A Context-aware Virtual Reality First Aid Training Application. In Proceedings of Mensch und Computer 2019, Hamburg, Germany, September 8-11, 2019. GI / ACM, 885--888.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  4. Hui Zhang. 2017. Head-mounted display-based intuitive virtual reality training system for the mining industry. International Journal of Mining Science and Technology 27, 4 (2017), 717--722.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  5. Till Zoppke and Raúl Rojas. 2006. The Virtual Life of ENIAC: Simulating the Operation of the First Electronic Computer. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 28, 2 (2006), 18--25.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library

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  1. Experiencing and programming the ENIAC in VR

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    • Published in

      cover image ACM Other conferences
      MuC '20: Proceedings of Mensch und Computer 2020
      September 2020
      523 pages
      ISBN:9781450375405
      DOI:10.1145/3404983

      Copyright © 2020 Owner/Author

      Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      • Published: 6 September 2020

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