From one John V. Atanasoff

You Who invented the incandescent light out That's correct arrow you're doing very well Who invented the first practical airplane? Great Tara you as a new insular work to invented electrical computer It's ironic that in this computer age, the inventor of the electronic digital computer is not well-known The name of John Vincent Atanasoff was missing from the early books on electronic digital computing those written before 1974 and with good cause a Patent had been issued to the developers of the ENIAC the earliest world war ii electronic digital computer And the patent holders. John mauchly and presper eckert were presumed to be the inventors But one book Electronic digital systems by RK richards published in 1966 was alone with another viewpoint the ancestry of all electronic digital systems appears to be traceable to the Atanasoff very computer Those words provided the beginning of a fascinating chain of events You In 1935, I had a number of graduate students working in theoretical physics some of them were working on The theory of how one obtained Approximate solutions of problems in theoretical physics and some of them were doing actual calculations at the various fields of the subject These students but we're having a great deal of trouble doing the calculations themselves It took me back to the day when I was working on my own thesis and they were spending much more than a month doing actual calculations This problem of calculations pressed me very hard. I Tried to find the various solutions. I Considered the possibility of getting a lot of marsh aunts or Monroe's and he'll come them together. So they'd work in unison to make the solution faster the whole thing looked pretty hopeless There was no machine in existence suitable for my purpose. And so I commenced to study the possibility of building a new machine and Between 1935 and 1937 I spent my time thinking about these possibilities and I came up to one day in the fall of 1937 when I went out to my office to work in the evening, and I realized I'd made no progress and That things were really in a bad way Finally, I was so unhappy But I saw I couldn't get anything done and I did something that I did in those days I got in my car I drove for a long period of time at a high rate of speed So that I would give my attention to driving and not to my problems After driving for perhaps three or four hours Come aware of the surroundings and I was crossing the Mississippi River. I Decided that I better slow down and see where I was going I Looked ahead and there was a light and I soon realized that that was a tavern I went in there hung up the overcoat bought myself a drink and That sit down And the cool atmosphere of the Roadhouse I now reached the following conclusions on my computing machine I would use separate memory and computing structures This is going to be a large machine and we would isolate these two elements in ordinary computer machines. They're Usually rather interrelated. I was going to use the binary number system The cert of the whole structure would be substantially electronic and we would have electronic logic circuits we would use a a sequential system instead of powers of 10 we have powers of two and The lower powers of 2 Would be computed first and then successively little higher powers of two this would be done by the same circuits since we could afford the Since electronic circuits was so fast that we could afford the time and we would carry over on each power of two We're going to use the capacity a capacitor memory the capacitor memory as seems satisfactory because it would provide sufficient power to actuate the electronic circuits and it could be Charged by the electronic circuits in order to use a capacity memory. I had a jhaggat or Sometimes it's sometimes called use regenerative circuits in this memory. It's like a little boy going to the store And repeating a dozen eggs a pound of over over again to prevent his forgetting what his mother told him to do At Nassau story about the little boy using a technique to remember what he wanted to get at The grocery store is illustrative of technique use in modern computing That is one of memory refreshing without it modern computing couldn't exist as it does today Another important concept with j-b introduced for the use of the binary Numbering system that is one in which there are only two digits 0 & 1 as opposed to our usual decimal numbering system in which there are 10 digits Machines prior this time had been largely a mechanical and used the decimal numbering system Whereas JB introduced the idea of the electronics into computing and used binary accounting system At the time a JV was working on his computers most people were interested in analog methods Whereas JB introduced digital methods without which we couldn't have a computer it is known today At this point I conceived but Not yet invented the Structures which were going to use the computing machine During next Year or so I commenced to invent the elements of this structure. I spent a lot of time on each part of the structure, but particularly the Logic circuits took a long time. I Had no modern approach to this subject and I had to do it by main strength and awkwardness Atanasoff then hired Clifford Berry a graduate student in electrical engineering After he applied for and received research funding from the AG Experiment Station the amount six hundred and fifty dollars In the fall Clifford berry and I decided that we would see if vacuum tubes could compute This is very much on our mind There's a really a question as to whether a person could build a computer machine out of vacuum tubes Transistors hadn't been invented at that time We decided to build a simple prototype Clifford and I went to work on the prototype and by the end of November It was working With the prototype successful doctor at an Asif was able to secure a fifty three hundred dollar grant from an off-campus foundation the Research Corporation Even before we finished the prototype we Commenced thinking about the larger machine that we wish to produce The first thing I did was to order a set of angle irons delivered to the physics department for this machine and people call it a NASA's following The various elements of the machine were constructed as the frame was being built The machine was not just another adding machine it was built to solve complex problems involving simultaneous equations a Punched card reader was used to feed in the data which was translated from the traditional base ten to a base two number system After which it was stored in a revolving capacitor drum When the drum was filled a base 2 card was punched and stored as base 2 outs From this point on the machine operated by base 2 numbers from the base 2 cards when the information on a certain card was needed it was placed in the base 2 reader and It's information moved into one of the capacitor drums the processes of arithmetic were brought into play by these drums by the boost and carryover drum and by 30 add subtract logic elements Each of these logic elements was in a 7 tube configuration after translating results back to the decimal system Readout was from dials This is actually a drum that came off of the original machine It gives me a sense of nostalgia to lay my hands on this drum Clifford berry and I worked very hard on the and the details of this structure Clifford Berry was a very fine Man and Afterwards when this machine commenced to have some Prominence in litigation. I mean this machine the ABC the at NASA very computer Clifford berry died in 1963 at the age of 45 cutting short a distinguished career in mass spectroscopy In the fall of 1939 I returned to Iowa State College to pursue a PhD in physics working with JV at NASA at the time I recall in October seeing the first prototype of a digital computer that at NASA was working on and then One realized that they had the beginnings of a full-fledged computer They worked on the machine for the next two years pretty solidly and by the spring of 1941 Had the machine pretty well along at which time I recalled John Mauchly visitings to see what the machine was like He spent most of a week with that nurse often Very trying to see how the machine worked and he got to see everything that was there about the machine World War two interrupted at an a scoffs work on the computer He left Iowa State College to take a position with the Navy Department in Washington DC. But Before leaving he made arrangements with the college patent committee. They were to file for the patent At an ass off and Barry prepared the descriptions the drawings and the working graphs for the claims They also visited the US Patent Office and consulted with a Chicago patent lawyer The minutes of the patent committee show their intention to file and there were eye catching news releases The war effort brought repeated changes in personnel those responsible did not sense the significance of the device The consummation the actual filing for a patent never took place In Washington Atanasoff special talents were emerging. He was awarded the US Navy Distinguished Service Award His contributions to technologies, which he was underwater sound waves figured prominently in this award at home He used an innovative form of tip-up construction to build his own home The man who could build his own garden tracker was also the man who in one six weeks period designed built and Placed in strategic locations the seismographs that monitored the Helgoland last when we detonated great quantities of war surplus explosives While he was serving his country setting up his own business selling that business and becoming a vice president in that organization and Accumulating some 30 patents. He also found time to spend many hours concentrating on some unfinished business a visionary new international alphabet drawn from the major language groups fully phonetic machine readable Simplified a concept which could benefit all mankind Atanasoff s-- washington years were filled with achievement. But his duties did not lead him to further work on computers This contrasted with the experience of dr. Mark Lee the man who came to visit at an SOS computer World war two brought him a significant chain of events which culminated in another computer the anti ack Dr. Arthur Burks a design participant in that development and moreover the report writer for the ante ACK tells that story Any act was designed and built for the Army Ordnance Department. It had a great need during the war for firing tables Before any act firing tables were calculated by human computers all women One of whom later became my life. I Was one of a group of women who computed trajectories on a desk calculator. We started out with a group of three women that Eventually grew to something like 80 It took us a half a day to a day perhaps to do one trajectory and we needed 3,000 trajectories for one firing table The ENIAC was built at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania. The Chief designers were Jay presper eckert and John Davi Immokalee The ENIAC was a huge machine completely filling a large room it had 18,000 vacuum tubes and calculated at the unprecedented speed of 100,000 pulses per second It was divided into 30 units of three kinds computing units input/output units and the master programmer A problem was put on the any act by plugging cables and setting switches it took several days to plan a problem for the ante Act a day to plug up the ENIAC and set switches and Another day to debug the program Once it was set up it computed trajectories for weeks on end This was much faster than calculating by hand We call that a human computer Required as much as a day to calculate a single trajectory That is the path of a shell that took say 30 seconds to reach its target The ENIAC could compute this trajectory in 20 seconds Faster than the shell could fly In 1950. John mauchly and presper eckert filed for a patent of the an e AK, but it was not issued until 1964 14 years later Mark, Lee and Eckert had assigned the patent to the sperry rand corporation In anticipation of the issue of the patent competing companies were paying Sperry Rand millions of dollars in royalties Now these companies studied the patent in detail In Washington Allen Kirkpatrick the third a lawyer researching the patent for control data corporation Read Richards book and those words the ancestry of all electronic digital systems appears to be traceable to the Atanasoff Barre computer In 1967 I knew I'd spent a portion of my life on computing machine, but hardly anybody else knew anything about it During a summer I got a call from Kirkpatrick and He wanted to talk to me about what I knew about computing machines and Mentioned my null after he'd talked to me mentioned my knowledge to the Honeywell people as a result I had to and I Looked at my files and came up with a solid cubic foot of Records There were several challenges of the Aniak patent. The most significant challenge came to court in Minneapolis When Sperry ran sued Honeywell for failure to pay royalties Honeywell filed a countersuit to recover payments already made Their lawyers went to visit doctor at NASA a fen hired him as a consultant. He was not a litigant But before the suit came to trial another computer connected episode took place JB and I had a most marvelous opportunity to visit Bulgaria in July of 1970 We received a letter from dr. Send-off. Dr. Send-off had been in England Independently researching early computer work and he came across JB's name and recognized it as Bulgarian so he came with this invitation to come to Bulgaria and he was invited to lecture at the Academy of Sciences during that first week and After the first week we were given a tour around the country The people of Bulgaria were so proud that a man who is the grandson of a patriot was also the inventor of the electronic digital computer and they came up to us in the street and asked to shake his hand and asked for autographs and It was such a beautiful thing And By special order of Parliament they had decorated him with the order of cyril and methodius which is the highest honor they can give to a scientist and We're very proud of it Bulgaria had recognized at an ass off as the inventor of the electronic digital computer Now the a-10s offs were returning to the US and the litigation challenging the Antioch patent The ENIAC rightfully was widely acclaimed The work of Eckert MOC Lee and others had resulted in a superb accomplishment. Dr. Burks again As a consequence of its speed and power the ENIAC saw problems previously beyond the reach of man Thereby establishing the feasibility of electronic digital computation Atanasoff 2 studied the Antioch patent He came to realize that some of the claims in the Antioch patents were present in his own ABC computer But could he convince the court? Barry was gone The ABC had been disassembled parts were scattered only a few remnants remained All at an S off had was what he could remember of events of 20-30 years ago and What he could pull out of that solid foot of records Suspense grew in the court your honor the Adhan s off the Barry computer Was a simple special purpose machine? It was built only to solve linear simultaneous equations So I was caretta irritated about the attorneys for Speer and who all was through it before the judge That this was a special purpose machine and didn't represent Originality in regard to the basic concept set for computing So I built a machine to solve linear systems, but in order to build a machine I just didn't pick up something that somebody else had done, but I build an entirely new system I had to conceive of new concepts from the beginning The ENIAC on the other hand is a milestone in the advancement of the art of computing the progenitor for all electronic digital Computers is the ENIAC Your honor we're not here to minimize the notable achievements of the ENIAC computer But to determine the origin of some of the claims I'd like to call to you from a lot of September 30 1941 From John Deborah Mark Lee to gravy at NASA and I quote Is there any objection from your point of view to my building? some sort of computer which incorporates some of the features of your machine Your machine being the at NASA very concluded The decision in the case came on October 19th 1973 on the question of invention judge Earl our Larson concluded that Eckert and Mauchly did not themselves first invent the automatic electronic digital computer But instead derived that subject matter from one doctor John Vincent, Atanasoff The ENIAC patent was invalidated judge Larson had agreed with the statement in Richards book To put this whole matter in perspective, let me comment on the origin of our modern electronic computer revolution It began with three steps the first was the aten a soft very computer at Iowa State an electronic digital computer The second step was the any Act the first general-purpose computer. The third was a stored-program computer Each step led directly to the next The principles at nassif developed for his machine were embodied in the any Act Moreover he passed along to mark lee an idea for generalizing his computer That inspired the concept of the ENIAC Finally two of Aten a soft sigh Diaz Ryu in the first stored program computer One was the regenerative principle of jogging the memory The other was the use of logic circuits for binary arithmetic The SATA Nassif's work served as a launchpad for the modern electronic computer After the trial some newspapers recognized the importance of the overturn of the Antioch patents But once again, the public was preoccupied with other events because of the way it all happened there was no corporate giant eager to champion at an s offs cause And he found himself facing a frustrating period of relative obscurity but recognition is developing from Florida an honorary degree and then another John V, Atanasoff Architect of a way of life. I confer upon you the honorary degree Doctor of Science As I look now I would say that Without my preparatory work. Why probably it would have been a couple of decades before we reach a stage Not many decades. No, it's bound to come No question about it There's this to say about invention. I remember just after World War two folks were discussing how long it would take Russia to? gain, access to the atomic secrets We had accomplished that And Perhaps for years, but we had a very large staff and a variable scientist Someone guessed that it would take Russia at least eight years I said it will only take them two because they know it can be done. It took them not much over a year Since the beginning many men have worked on computing and many have furnished elements that were important this applies to luckily Eckert Some members of the staff such as Burke's greater than others In a larger sense know man invents anything he builds an extent a little with his friends and on the shoulders of others Atanasoff is retired to his maryland estate. He has never received any money for the computer invention yet he lives comfortably because of his other accomplishments a man with much to remember I Think that any particular aspect of human mental process actually want to organize a computer for a while the computer could do it faster and better than a man, couldn't So we're in a peculiar position. I Don't know. I don't think the computers will take over the world And command it but then some people today Think computers are taking over their lives something