John Vincent Atanasoff

John Vincent Atanasoff was an American computer scientist (although the term did not yet exist when he did his most consequential work). He created the first digital electronic computing device, the Atanasoff-Berry Computer. (Although it was never fully working, the purely electronic portion of it eventually worked fine; its main remaining problem was elsewhere.)

At the undergraduate level, he studied electrical engineering at the University of Florida; his graduate education started with a master's in mathematics at Iowa State College (as it was then). For his doctorate in theoretical physics, he switched to the University of Wisconsin-Madison; his interest in creating a better computing device was developed during his doctoral work, where he had to do a great deal of work with a mechanical calculator. He had been a teaching fellow back at Iowa State College in 1925, and he became a professor in mathematics and physics there in the fall of 1930, after getting his doctorate.

He continued to think about creating a better computing device, and starting with a famous late-night drive in the winter of 1937-38, he came up with the basic concepts of the ABC:

• Use electronics
• Use binary internally
• Use capacitors for memory, using refresh
• Computation by use of logic circuits acting on binary numbers in a single operation, not by repetitive increments or decrements of numbers held in a register

He soon began to work on creating his imagined device; starting with a prototype.

In December, 1940, he fatefully met John Mauchly, who was also interested in creating a computing device, at a professional meeting, and briefly described the ABC to him. Mauchly arranged to come visit Atanasoff, and see the ABC, which he did during a lengthy visit in June, 1941. This led to the Atanasoff-Mauchly controversy.

With the start of World War II, Atanasoff was diverted onto other work - but he had still been the first person down the trail.

Further reading

• Clark R. Mollenhoff, Atanasoff: Forgotten Father of the Computer, Iowa State Press, Ames, 1988
• Jane Smiley, The Man Who Invented the Computer, Doubleday, New York, 2010
• Alice Rowe Burks, Arthur W. Burks, The First Electronic Computer: The Atanasoff Story, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1988
• Alice Rowe Burks, Who Invented the Computer? The Legal Battle That Changed History, Prometheus, Amherst, 2003 - a somewhat tendentious work, which attempts to claim the crown for Atanasoff
• Alice R. Burks, Arthur W. Burks, Who Invented the Computer? A Memoir of the 1940s, Michigan Quarterly Review, Volume XXXVI, Issue 2, Spring 1997
• Allan R. Mackintosh, "The First Electronic Computer", Physics Today, Volume 40, Issue 3, March 1987 - a fairly well-known early cannon-ball in the dispute
• Allan R. Mackintosh, Dr. Atanasoff's Computer, Scientific American, Volume 259, Number 2, August 1988, pp. 90-96 - likely a variant on the above
• Dr. Atanasoff’s computer - not totally accurate, but it gives a good idea of his current image

External links

• John Vincent Atanasoff - biography at IEEE
• John Vincent Atanasoff Biography - biography at Iowa State University, his home institution
  • John Vincent Atanasoff - The Inventor
• John Vincent Atanasoff: The father of the computer - biography at Columbia
• The beginning of the invention of the electronic digital computer - a good summary
• A long, fast drive into computer history - good summary of the creation of the ABC