Harold Pender

Harold Pender (1879–1959) was an American academic, author, and inventor. He was the first Dean of the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

Moore School of Electrical Engineering The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania came into existence as a result of an endowment from Alfred Fitler Moore on June 4, 1923. It was granted to Penn's School of Electrical Engineering, located in the Towne ...

, a position he held from the founding of the School in 1923 until his retirement in 1949. During his tenure, the Moore School built the

ENIAC ENIAC (; Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer, completed in 1945. There were other computers that had these features, but the ENIAC had all of them in one packa ...

, the first general-purpose electronic

digital computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These pro ...

, and began construction of its successor machine, the EDVAC. Pender also proposed the

Moore School Lectures ''Theory and Techniques for Design of Electronic Digital Computers'' (popularly called the "Moore School Lectures") was a course in the construction of electronic digital computers held at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical ...

, the first course in computers, which the Moore School offered by invitation in Summer 1946. The

Harold Pender Award The Harold Pender Award, initiated in 1972 and named after founding Dean Harold Pender, is given by the Faculty of the School of Engineering and Applied Science of the University of Pennsylvania to an outstanding member of the engineering professio ...

is named after him. 1879 births 1959 deaths University of Pennsylvania faculty American electrical engineers Fellows of the American Physical Society {{US-academic-administrator-stub