John Vincent Atanasoff

John Vincent Atanasoff (October 4,1903 – June 15,1995) was a prominent American computer engineer of Bulgarian origin. His work was instrumental in the development of the digital computer.

Intellectual property entanglement

Atanasoff meets Mauchly

John Atanasoff met John Mauchly at the December 1940 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Philadelphia, where Mauchly was demonstrating his "harmonic analyzer". This was an analog calculator for analysis of weather data. Atanasoff told Mauchly about his new digital device and invited him to see it. Also during the Philadelphia trip, Atanasoff and Berry visited the patent office in Washington, where their research assured them that their concepts were new. A January 15 1941 story in the Des Moines Register announced the ABC as "an electrical computing machine" with more than 300 vacuum tubes that would "compute complicated algebraic equations. In June 1941 Mauchly visited Atanasoff in Ames, Iowa to see the ABC. During his four day visit as Atanasoff's houseguest, Mauchly thoroughly discussed the prototype ABC, examined it, and reviewed Atanasoff's design manuscript in detail. Up to this time Mauchly had not proposed a digital computer. In September 1942 Atanasoff left Iowa State for a wartime assignment with the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington D.C. He entrusted his patent application for the ABC to Iowa State College administrators. It was never filed. Mauchly visited Atanasoff multiple times in Washington during 1943 and discussed Atanasoff's computing theories, but did not mention that he was working on a computer project himself. Mauchly's own government work, he said, was too highly secret to reveal. John Mauchly's construction of ENIAC, the first Turing-complete computer, with J. Presper Eckert during 1943-1946 thus led to the controversy over who was the actual inventor of the computer.

Related Topics:
John Mauchly - 1940 - American Association for the Advancement of Science - Patent - January 15 - 1941 - Des Moines Register - Ames - Iowa - 1942 - Naval Ordnance Laboratory - Washington D.C. - 1943 - ENIAC - Turing-complete - J. Presper Eckert - 1946 - Computer

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Patent disputed

The dispute over patent rights eventually resulted in a lawsuit filed on May 26, 1967 by Honeywell Inc. against the patent of the ENIAC held by Sperry Rand on behalf of Mauchly and Eckert in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The trial, one of the longest and most expensive in the federal courts to that time, began on June 1 1971, lasted until March 13, 1972, had 77 witnessess, plus 80 depositions and 30,000 exhibits. It was legally resolved on Friday, October 19, 1973, when U.S. District Judge Earl R. Larson held the patent invalid, ruling that the ENIAC derived many basic ideas from the Atanasoff Berry Computer. Judge Larson explicitly stated, "Eckert and Mauchly did not themselves first invent the automatic electronic digital computer, but instead derived that subject matter from one Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff". The decision in Honeywell Inc. v. Sperry Rand Corp. et al., was so well substantiated that there was no appeal. But the decision received little publicity at the time, perhaps because it was overshadowed by the Watergate Era "Saturday Night Massacre" firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox by President Richard Nixon the next day. While legally vindicated, Atanasoff's victory was incomplete as the ENIAC, rather than the ABC, continues to be widely regarded as the first computer.

Related Topics:
Patent - May 26 - 1967 - Honeywell - Sperry Rand - Minneapolis - Minnesota - June 1 - 1971 - March 13 - 1972 - October 19 - 1973 - Earl R. Larson - Watergate - Saturday Night Massacre - Archibald Cox - Richard Nixon

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~