Inventors Of The Modern Computer The Atanasoff-Berry Computer

The First Electronic Computer John Vincent Atanasoff & Clifford Berry

Fathers of the first computer

"I have always taken the position that there is enough credit for everyone in the inventionand development of the electronic computer" - John Vincent Atanasoff Professor John Atanasoff, together with graduate student Clifford Berry, built the world's first electronical, digital, computer, at Iowa State University, between 1939 and 1942. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer, represented several innovations in computing, including a binary system of arithmetic, parallel processing, regenerative memory, and a separation of memory and computing functions. The 1946, ENIAC computer was long thought to have been the first electronic computer and the inventors, J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly were the first to patent a digital computing device - - but a 1973, patent infringement case (Sperry Rand Vs. Honeywell), voided the ENIAC patent as a derivative of Atanasoff's invention. Atanasoff was quite generous in stating that there was enough credit to go around for all computer inventors, as it was only recently that Atanasoff has received the recognition he deserved. "It was at an evening of scotch and 100 mph car rides," Atanasoff said, "when the concept came, for an electronically operated machine, that would use base-two (binary) numbers instead of the traditional base-10 numbers, condensers for memory, and a regenerative process to preclude loss of memory from electrical failure. Most of the concepts, of the first modern computer, Atanasoff wrote on the back of a cocktail napkin. In late 1939, Atanasoff teamed up with Berry to build the prototype, of the first computing machine to use electricity, vacuum tubes, binary numbers, and capacitors in a rotating drum which held the electrical charge for the memory.

Nah Wee Peng
Blk 699 Hougang Street 52 #01-13 Singapore 530966.
Telephone: 3862043 Fax: 7522132
E-mail address: johnny84@2bsure.com