John Atanasoff
Determining who was first in the computing business isn't always as easy as ABC. Professor John Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry built the world's first electronic-digital computer at Iowa State University between 1939 and 1942. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer symbolized numerous innovations in computing, including a binary system of arithmetic, parallel processing, regenerative memory, and a separation of memory and computing functions.
Presper Eckert and John Mauchly were the first to patent a digital computing device, the ENIAC computer. A patent infringement case (Sperry Rand Vs. Honeywell, 1973) voided the ENIAC patent as a derivative of John Atanasoff's invention. Although Eckert and Mauchly obtained most of the credit for inventing the first electronic-digital computer, most historians now say that the Atanasoff-Berry computer was the first.
Short Biography Of John Atanasoff
John Atanasoff was born on 4 October 1903 a couple of miles west of Hamilton, New York. His father was a Bulgarian immigrant. After John's birth, his father took an electrical engineering position in Florida. It was here that John Atanasoff finished grade school and started understanding the concepts of electricity. In 1921, he enrolled at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Since the university didn't offer a degree in theoretical physics, he began taking electrical engineering courses. While taking these courses, he became fascinated with electronics and continued onto higher mathematics.
Atanasoff graduated from the University of Florida in 1925 with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering. He held a straight "A" academic average. Even though he had numerous offers of teaching fellowships, including one from Harvard, he took the one from Iowa State College, because it was the first one he received and because of the institution's grand reputation in engineering and sciences.
After receiving his PhD. in theoretical physics in July 1930, he became driven to try to make a faster, more effective computing machine. In the fall of 1930 he became a member of the Iowa State College faculty as assistant professor in mathematics and physics. He started generating ideas on how to create this computer. John Atanasoff wrote most of the ideas for the first modern computer on the back of a cocktail napkin. He was very partial to fast cars and scotch.
Co-Inventor Of The Computer, Clifford Berry
Clifford Edward Berry was born in Gladbrook, Iowa on 19 April 1918 to Fred Gordon who had an electrical appliance and repair shop. From as early as his family could recall, Clifford had aspired to study electrical engineering. His father had determined that Iowa State College was the college for Clifford, as its College of Engineering had a fine reputation around the country. From the beginning of his college years, his record as a student of electrical engineering was spectacular. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1939. Professor Harold Anderson was a professor of electrical engineering and one of John Vincent Atanasoff's closest friends. So, when Atanasoff asked him if he could recommend a graduate student in electrical engineering to help him in his computer-machine project, Professor Anderson instantly thought of Clifford Berry.
So, on a morning in the spring of 1939, the two brilliant men had their initial conversation about the concepts and the fundamental problems they'd have to figure out in the construction of the prototype of an electronic digital computer.
In late 1939, John Atanasoff teamed up with Clifford Berry to build the prototype. They produced the first computing machine to utilize electricity, vacuum tubes, binary numbers and capacitors. The capacitors were in a revolving drum that held the electrical charge for the memory. The bright and creative Berry, with his background in electronics and mechanical construction skills, was the perfect partner for Atanasoff. The prototype won the two a grant of $850 to construct a full-scale model. They spent the next two years further improving the Atanasoff-Berry Computer.
The ultimate product was the size of a desk, weighed 700 pounds, held more than 300 vacuum tubes, and carried a mile of wire. It could calculate approximately one operation every 15 seconds, today a computer can calculate 150 billion operations in 15 seconds. Too bulky to go anywhere, it stayed in the basement of the physics department. The war campaign kept John Atanasoff from completing the patent process and doing any additional work on the computer.
Controversy Between The Atanasoff-Berry & The ENIAC
J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly were the first to patent a digital computing device, the ENIAC. The ABC had been examined by John Mauchly in June 1941, and Isaac Auerbach, a former student of Mauchly's, declared that it influenced his subsequent work on ENIAC, though Mauchly denied this. Atanasoff, even so, never viewed himself to be the conceiver of the idea of a general purpose computer until years after the ENIAC was unveiled. In 1954 a patent attorney from IBM approached Atanasoff requesting his help in smashing the Mauchly patent. In a 1982 interview, Atanasoff stated "That was the first shock I had. First time. Nobody had compared the two of us."
In 1967 Honeywell sued Sperry Rand in an effort to break their ENIAC patents, and claiming the ABC as prior art. The United States District Court for the District of Minnesota published its judgement on October 19, 1973, finding in Honeywell v. Sperry Rand that the ENIAC patent was a derivative of John Atanasoff's invention. The decision wasn't appealed. Campbell-Kelly and Aspray conclude: The extent to which Mauchly drew on Atanasoff's ideas remains obscure, and the evidence is monumental and contradictory. The ABC was rather modest technology, and it wasn't fully implemented. At the very least we can infer that Mauchly saw the potential significance of the ABC and that this may have led him to propose a similar, electronic solution.
Legacy Of The Atanasoff-Berry Computer
In October 1963 Clifford Berry left the Defense Contractor that he had been working for to become Manager of Advanced Development at the Vacuum-Electronics Corporation in Plainview, New York. He died suddenly on October 30, 1963, before his family had an opportunity to join him in New York. Dr. Berry was issued 19 patents in the field of mass spectrometry, 11 patents in assorted areas of vacuum and electronics and, at the time of his death, had 13 patents pending.
John Vincent Atanasoff was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President George H. W. Bush in a Ceremony at the White House on November 13, 1990. After a long illness, John Atanasoff died of a stroke on 15 June 1995 at his home in Maryland.
The original ABC was in time disassembled, when the University converted the basement to classrooms, and all of its pieces except for one memory drum were thrown-away. In 1997, a team of researchers from Ames Laboratory (located on the Iowa State campus) completed construction of a working replica of the Atanasoff–Berry Computer at a cost of $350,000. The replica ABC is now on permanent exhibit in the first floor lobby of the Durham Center for Computation and Communication at Iowa State University.
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