A technology teacher and his neurodiverse students in Arizona built a full-scale ENIAC replica for its 80th anniversary—turning computer history into hands-on engineering.
A technology instructor in Arizona didn’t just teach students about computing history—he built it with them.
That project is a full-scale replica of ENIAC. the iconic 1940s Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. created for the 80th anniversary of the original machine’s construction.. Tom Burick. now a teacher at PS Academy in Gilbert. leads middle and high school students—many of whom learn best through structured hands-on work—through the kind of engineering exercise most classrooms never attempt.. ENIAC matters because it was among the first programmable electronic computers. and when it was built. it represented a dramatic leap in speed compared with earlier machines.
Burick’s motivation starts far earlier than the cardboard, glue, and simulated “vacuum tubes” used in the build.. Before teaching, he ran a robotics company for a decade in the 2000s.. But after a financial downturn forced the business to close. he redirected his energy into education. describing a personal responsibility to “pay it forward” after mentors helped him when he was younger.. In practice. that means he designs learning experiences that feel like real engineering: problem-solving. iteration. and long stretches of focused work.
His own path to tech was never purely linear.. As a kid. he was drawn to the “Lost in Space” robot on television—one of those early sparks that can matter more than any course catalog.. He then built toy robots out of whatever he could find, adding electronics as he grew.. By his teens. Burick was constructing autonomous. microprocessor-controlled machines. including a 150-pound steel firefighting robot that earned recognition from IEEE and other groups.. At the same time. he learned that his mind works differently: dyscalculia made traditional mathematics more difficult. and it pushed him to develop alternative engineering methods.
That neurodiversity shows up in how he teaches now.. Burick works with students who are on the autism spectrum and who may face challenges with conventional classroom structures.. He connects with them not only through experience. but through shared realities: hyperfocus. repeated task precision. and strong 3D spatial reasoning are recurring strengths many neurodivergent learners have. he says.. Rather than treating learning differences as obstacles. the program treats them as signals—capabilities that can drive engineering projects when the framework is built correctly.
The ENIAC replica became his clearest example of that approach.. Burick says the original computer was dismantled and partially destroyed after being decommissioned in 1955. and only a handful of panels ended up in museums.. There was. in his view. “no hope” of ever seeing the machine together again—so he and his students aimed to recreate what it would have looked like before it was taken apart.. They didn’t jump straight to full scale either.. First, they made a one-twelfth scale model to help students understand layout and complexity.. Once that groundwork clicked, confidence followed—and orders for supplies started.
The replica is designed to match what ENIAC looked like before disassembly: 40 large metal panels arranged in a U-shape. designed to hold vacuum tubes. resistors. capacitors. and switches.. Of those panels, 20 serve as accumulators, and students built them first before moving to smaller groupings.. The project’s repeating panels created symmetry. but it also created a hard engineering lesson: if one section is even slightly out of place. the error can compound in the next.. To mimic the original electronics visually and structurally. students installed 500 simulated vacuum tubes per panel for a total of 18. 000 simulated tubes across the build.
Then came the functional elements that made ENIAC feel like more than a sculpture.. Students added three portable function tables—each storing numerical constants using banks of switches—along with two punch-card machines.. The scale is the kind that changes how a classroom feels.. Burick describes the build as arriving at a point where students seemed to be working “in a room full of scientists.” By the time they finished. the project relied on nearly 300 square meters of thick-ream cardboard. roughly 1. 600 hot-glue-gun sticks. and gallons of black paint—materials that show how engineering learning doesn’t require lab access to become real.
There’s also a bigger lesson for how technology education can evolve.. Projects like this trade worksheets for systems thinking.. They reward careful repetition and give learners a reason to persist when steps get complex—especially important for students who may have spent years being told what they can’t do.. And because the build is rooted in real historical hardware. it links today’s digital world back to the physical reality of computing: components. wiring. and arrangements that once determined what machines could do.
Burick’s next steps suggest he intends to keep that momentum going.. His students previously built an 8-foot-long drivable Tesla Cybertruck and he’s already considering another recreation. potentially connected to the Apollo moon missions.. For students. that matters as much as the ENIAC itself: the opportunity to build. document. troubleshoot. and finish something large enough that it changes how they see their own abilities.
For Burick, the reward is cyclical. He describes it as closing a loop—feeling what it’s like to be the person who helped him get started, and watching students light up when a complicated idea becomes something they can physically hold, assemble, and understand.