John Adam Presper "Pres" Eckert Jr. (April 9, 1919 – June 3, 1995) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 electrical engineer

Electrical engineering

Electrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...

 and computer

Computer

A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

 pioneer. With John Mauchly

John Mauchly

John William Mauchly was an American physicist who, along with J. Presper Eckert, designed ENIAC, the first general purpose electronic digital computer, as well as EDVAC, BINAC and UNIVAC I, the first commercial computer made in the United States.Together they started the first computer company,...

 he invented the first general-purpose electronic digital computer (ENIAC

ENIAC

ENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems....

), presented the first course in computing topics (the Moore School Lectures

Moore School Lectures

Theory and Techniques for Design of Electronic Digital Computers was a course in the construction of electronic digital computers held at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering between July 8, 1946 and August 30, 1946, and was the first time any computer topics had...

), founded the first commercial computer company (the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation

Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation

The Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation was founded by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, and was incorporated on December 22, 1947. After building the ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania, Eckert and Mauchly formed EMCC to build new computer designs for commercial and military applications...

), and designed the first commercial computer in the U.S., the UNIVAC

UNIVAC I

The UNIVAC I was the first commercial computer produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the inventors of the ENIAC...

, which incorporated Eckert's invention of the mercury delay line memory

Delay line memory

Delay line memory was a form of computer memory used on some of the earliest digital computers. Like many modern forms of electronic computer memory, delay line memory was a refreshable memory, but as opposed to modern random-access memory, delay line memory was serial-access...

.
Eckert was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a wealthy real estate developer John Eckert and was raised in a large house in Philadelphia's Germantown

Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Germantown is a neighborhood in the northwest section of the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, about 7–8 miles northwest from the center of the city...

 section.