However, Mauchly was able to find the time for both.
Mauchly's research focused on meteorology, which had come to require complex calculations in recent years. He wanted to find faster ways of doing these calculations. What were called calculators at the time did not work well or fast enough. Mauchly decided to create an electronic apparatus to accomplish this goal, perhaps with vacuum tubes. Since he did not know a lot about the subject, Mauchly decided to learn as much as possible.
In 1940, Mauchly built a small analog computer-like machine. It could do some harmonic analysis of weather data. He used the machine to write a paper on precipitation's quasi-periodicity. But Mauchly wanted to create a better computational device. The following year he visited John V. Atanasoff, a professor at Iowa State University, to study his primitive computer and learn how vacuum tubes were used. Atanasoff had built what he called the ABC (Atanasoff-Berry Computer). Mauchly was disappointed by what he saw because it did not match the ideas he wanted to pursue. Later, this visit would come back to haunt him.
Hired by the University of Pennsylvania
To pursue his goal, Mauchly took a summer class at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania during the summer of 1941.
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