John Vincent Atanasoff . Outstanding American electronic engineer of Bulgarian origin. His work was fundamental to the development of the modern digital computer.
Summary
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- 1 Education
- 1 Development of the modern computer
- 2 The Tangle of Intellectual Property
- 1 Atanasoff meets Mauchly
- 2 By patent
- 3 After the war
- 4 Honors and distinctions
- 5 See also
- 3 Sources
Education
John Atanasoff, the son of an electrical engineer, grew up in Brewster, Florida . At the age of nine, he learned to use a slide rule, then studied logarithms, and completed High School in two years. In 1925 , he received his Bachelor of Science degree as an electrical engineer from the University of Florida, graduating with an A’s. He continued his education at ‘ Iowa State College’, where in 1926 he completed his master’s degree in Mathematics . He completed his formal education in 1930, obtaining a doctorate in Theoretical Physics from the University of Wisconsinwith the thesis ‘The dielectric constant of helium’. After completing his PhD, he accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Iowa State College.
Development of the modern computer
Partly due to the heaviness of using Monroe’s mechanical calculator, which was the best calculation tool Atanasoff had available while writing his doctoral thesis, he began looking for faster methods. At Iowa State, he investigated the use of slave Monroe calculators and the International Business Machines ( IBM ) tabulator for solving scientific problems. In 1936 he invented an analog calculator for the analysis of surface geometry . The mechanical tolerance required to achieve good accuracy led him to consider a digital design. The Atanasoff Berry Computer (ABC) was conceived by the professor based on a happy idea during the winter of1937 – 1938 . The idea came to him in a tavern where he wrote down the principles of his computer on a paper napkin. These principles were four: use of electronics and electricity, use of binary numbers, use of capacitors as memory elements and direct calculation of logical operations. For the development of ingenuity, Atanasoff considered enlisting the help of a graduate student.
He asked his colleague Harold Anderson, and he recommended Clifford Berry . With a $ 650 scholarship awarded in September 1939 , ABC had a prototype, it was the best that had been made so far.
Replica of the ABC built by Iowa State University, and exhibited throughout the United States in 1995 .
In November of that same year, this first prototype added or subtracted two twenty-five-bit registers using a carry bit, and it is the first known digital electronic computer.
The key points that defined ABC were a binary number system and the use of Boolean logic to solve systems of up to 29 linear equations. The ABC lacked a Central Processing Unit CPU , but was designed as an electronic machine and used vacuum valves to achieve a fast processing speed. It also used regenerative capacitor-based memory differentiated from the rest of the architecture, a system still used today in DRAM memories .
The Tangle of Intellectual Property
Atanasoff meets Mauchly
John Atanasoff met John Mauchly at a meeting of the ‘American Association for the Advancement of Science’ held in Philadelphia in December 1940 , where Mauchly was demonstrating his ‘harmonic analyzer’. This was an analog calculator for analyzing meteorological data. Atanosoff told Mauchly about his new digital genius and invited him to see it. During that same trip to Philadelphia , Atanasoff and Berry visited the patent office in Washington , where their research assured them that the concepts on which their machine was based were new. On 15 January as as 1941, an article in the ‘Des Moines Register’ spoke of the ABC as “an electronic computing machine” with more than 300 vacuum tubes that could “calculate complicated algebraic equations.”
In June 1941 Mauchly visited Atanasoff in Ames, Iowa to watch ABC. During those four days as Atanasoff’s guest, Mauchly thoroughly discussed the ABC prototype, examined it, and reviewed Atanasoff’s handwritten design in detail. Before this visit, Mauchly had not proposed the design of a digital computer. In September 1942 Atanasoff left Iowa State for a position at the Naval Order Laboratory in Washington DC . He entrusted the application for the ABC patent to the administrators of the ‘ Iowa State College’. The application was never filled out. Mauchly visited Atanasoff on multiple occasions in Washington during1943 and discussed computer theories, but did not mention that he was working on a project to build a computer.
Mauchly’s personal work, as he put it, was too secret to be revealed. The construction of John Mauchly’s ENIAC with the help of J. Presper Eckert between 1943 and 1946 , the first Turing computer (that is, it can perform the same functions as the theoretical Turing machine), sparked controversy over who was the true inventor of the modern computer.
By patent
The dispute over patent rights led to a lawsuit the 26 of maypole of 1967 of Honeywell Inc. against the ENIAC patent, defended by Sperry Rand on behalf of Mauchly and Eckert in the court of the district of Minneapolis , Minnesota . The process, one of the longest and most expensive in federal courts in its time, began on June 1 , 1971 and lasted until March 13 , 1972 , with 77 witnesses. It was legally resolved on Friday , October 19 , 1973, when District Judge Earl R. Larson declared the patent invalid, ruling that the ENIAC had inherited many key ideas from the Atanasoff Berry Computer.
Judge Larson said verbatim, “Eckert and Mauchly did not invent the first elected computer by themselves, but rather started from one of Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff.” The decision in Honeywell Inc. against Sperry Rand Corp. et al. it was so well corroborated that there was no appeal. But the verdict was little publicized in its time, perhaps because it was overshadowed by the Watergate case . Despite Atanasoff’s claim, his victory was not complete since the ENIAC , and not the ABC, continues to be considered the first modern computer.
After the war
After the end of World War II Atanasoff continued working for the government and developed seismographs and micro barometers specialized in the detection of long-distance explosions. In 1952 he founded and directed the ‘Ordnance Engineering Corporation’.
In 1956 he sold his company to the ‘Aerojet General Corporation’ and became the president of its Atlantic division. The ABC became a simple memory. It was not until 1954 that rumors were heard that some of his ideas had been ‘borrowed’. The ENIAC patent was applied for in 1947 but was not granted until 1964 .
In 1961 Atanasoff founded another company, ‘Cybernetics Incorporated’. He only gradually became involved in the legal dispute seeing the rapid growth of computer companies. Following the resolution of the patent, Atanasoff was warmly recognized by the ‘Iowa State College’, which had become the ‘Iowa State University’, followed by more awards. He retired in Maryland and died in 1995 . John Mauchly, Presper Eckert, and their families never admitted to wrongdoing.
Honors and distinctions
Ivan, Atanasoff’s father, had emigrated in 1889 from Bulgaria at the age of 13. In 1970 Atanasoff was invited to Bulgaria by the ‘Bulgarian Academy of Sciences’ for the Bulgarian government to award him the ‘Cyril and Methodius’ order of first class merit. He was proud that Bulgaria was the first country to recognize his work and always emphasized his Bulgarian roots.
In 1981 he received the ‘Computer Pioneer Medal’ awarded by the prestigious ‘Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ ( IEEE ). Atanasoff Hall, a computer science building on the Iowa State campus , is named after him. Finally, in 1990 , President George HW Bush awarded Atanasoff the ‘United States National Medal of Technology’. He received other distinctions, including:
- US Navy Distinguished Service Award (1945)
- Citation, Seismological Society of America (1947)
- Citation, Admiral, Bureau of Ordnance (1947)
- Cosmos Club membership (1947)
- Order of Cyril and Methodius (1970)
- Doctor of Science (hon.) University of Florida (1974)
- Honorary membership, Society for Computer Medicine (1974)
- Iowa Inventors Hall of Fame (1978)
- Iowa Governor’s Science Medal (1985)
- Order of Bulgaria, First Class Award (1985)
- Computing Appreciation Award, EDUCOM (1985)
- Holley Medal, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1985)
- Coors American Ingenuity Award (1986)
- Doctor of Science (hon.) University of Wisconsin (1987