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The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, was the most complex electronic equipment of any kind at the time it was built. It was programmable and used conditional (if-then) branching logic. Though the ENIAC was programmable, reprogramming the machine could take days. To give the computer new instructions, the operator had to change external wiring manually, similar to how a telephone operator used to rearrange plugs on a switchboard.

The ENIAC had been designed to calculate trajectories for weapons for the U.S. Army. Before the ENIAC, it took a person twenty hours to perform a trajectory calculation. The differential analyzer used at the Moore School before the ENIAC took thirty minutes. The ENIAC did the calculation in thirty seconds. The machine could execute up to five thousand additions per second. The ENIAC took up eighteen hundred square feet with eighteen thousand vacuum tubes. It weighed thirty tons and consumed 174 kilowatts of power. The machine was made up of individual units arranged in a horseshoe shape along the outside walls of a large room. The units were accumulators, multipliers, a unit for division and square roots, a unit of three function tables to store values for use by the machine, a card reader for input, a card punch for output, and a programming unit.

The ENIAC stored decimal digits with a "ring counter" designed by John Presper Eckert that used ten "flip-flops" (0-9). A flip-flop consisted of a pair of vacuum tubes connected so that only one conducted electricity at a given time. The flip-flop was in a 1 (on) state when it was conducting and in a 0 (off) state when another was conducting. At a given time, only one flip-flop in the ring could be on. To add the number 2 to the number 3 already in the ring counter, the machine sent two pulses into the ring counter. This turned on the fifth flip-flop in the ring. Then, if six pulses were added, the "on" would travel all the way around the ring and produce a carry pulse that caused the next highest ring to advance one place as well as turn on the first flip-flop in this ring.

The ENIAC was much more reliable than early critics had predicted. Because of the known unreliability of vacuum tubes, Eckert chose to focus on careful circuit design for reliability. He employed a "worst case" design strategy. For example, if a resistor needed to be able to withstand at least 0.25 watt, he used resistors with ratings of 0.5 or above. He also used tubes that drew far less current than what they were rated for, and they lasted longer. Eckert used only a few basic types of circuits and made them easily accessible for servicing. He also designed vacuum tubes with an average lifetime of 2,500 hours once they reached a final operating temperature. However, they had a high failure rate during warm-up, so the ENIAC engineers did not turn off the machine. It was shut down on October 2, 1955.

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