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The history of the computing industry in the United States began in the post-war era and was largely shaped by military needs and government funding. During World War II, the US military sought advanced computing power for tasks such as codebreaking and ballistics calculations. The first programmable, electronic digital computer was the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), developed at the University of Pennsylvania in 1945. The ENIAC was designed to calculate firing cables for the Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory and was later used to study the impact of thermonuclear weapons. During this time, most computers were used by the military and military contractors for defense purposes, and computing research was largely sponsored by military sources.

The late 1940s and early 1950s saw the development of general-purpose, stored-program computers like the UNIVAC I, developed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly. UNIVAC I was the first digital computer designed for businesses rather than military application. In 1952, the UNIVAC was used by CBS News to correctly predict that Dwight D. Eisenhower would win the presidential election. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the computer industry focused primarily on mainframes—large, expensive machines used primarily by government agencies, research institutions, and large corporations.