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'''John Vincent Atanasoff''' ({{IPA|ataˈnasɔf}}; October 4, 1903 – June 15, 1995) was an American physicist and inventor. The 1973 decision of the patent suit ''[[Honeywell v. Sperry Rand]]'' named him the inventor of the first automatic electronic digital computer. His special-purpose machine has come to be called the [[Atanasoff–Berry Computer]].
'''John Vincent Atanasoff''' ({{IPA|ataˈnasɔf}}; October 4, 1903 – June 15, 1995) was an American physicist and inventor. The 1973 decision of the patent suit ''[[Honeywell v. Sperry Rand]]'' named him the inventor of the first automatic electronic digital computer. His special-purpose machine has come to be called the [[Atanasoff–Berry Computer]]. prena jaki is gay


The son of a [[Bulgaria]]n immigrant who became an [[electrical engineer]], Atanasoff held positions as a teaching professor, a governmental wartime research director, and a corporate research executive before being recognized in the 1970s and 1980s for digital [[electronic computer]] research he conducted at [[Iowa State University|Iowa State College]] in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
The son of a [[Bulgaria]]n immigrant who became an [[electrical engineer]], Atanasoff held positions as a teaching professor, a governmental wartime research director, and a corporate research executive before being recognized in the 1970s and 1980s for digital [[electronic computer]] research he conducted at [[Iowa State University|Iowa State College]] in the late 1930s and early 1940s. p


==Early life and education==
==Early life and education==

Revision as of 15:52, 7 March 2011

John Vincent Atanasoff
Born(1903-10-04)October 4, 1903
Hamilton, New York
DiedJune 15, 1995(1995-06-15) (aged 91)
Frederick, Maryland
CitizenshipAmerican
Known forAtanasoff–Berry Computer
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics

John Vincent Atanasoff (ataˈnasɔf; October 4, 1903 – June 15, 1995) was an American physicist and inventor. The 1973 decision of the patent suit Honeywell v. Sperry Rand named him the inventor of the first automatic electronic digital computer. His special-purpose machine has come to be called the Atanasoff–Berry Computer. prena jaki is gay

The son of a Bulgarian immigrant who became an electrical engineer, Atanasoff held positions as a teaching professor, a governmental wartime research director, and a corporate research executive before being recognized in the 1970s and 1980s for digital electronic computer research he conducted at Iowa State College in the late 1930s and early 1940s. p

Early life and education

John Atanasoff was born on October 4, 1903 in Hamilton, New York to an electrical engineer and a school teacher. Atanasoff's father, Ivan Atanasoff was born in 1876 in the village of Boyadzhik, Ottoman Empire (present-day Bulgaria). While Ivan was still an infant, Ivan's own father was killed by Turkish soldiers after the April Uprising.[1] In 1889, Ivan Atanasoff emigrated to the United States with his uncle. John Vincent Atanasoff's mother, Iva Lucena Purdy, was a teacher of mathematics.

Atanasoff was raised by his parents in Brewster, Florida. At the age of nine he learned to use a slide rule, followed shortly by the study of logarithms, and subsequently completed high school at Mulberry High School in two years. In 1925, Atanasoff received his bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Florida, graduating with straight A's.

He continued his education at Iowa State College and in 1926 earned a master's degree in mathematics. He completed his formal education in 1930 by earning a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with his thesis, The Dielectric Constant of Helium. Upon completion of his doctorate, Atanasoff accepted an assistant professorship at Iowa State College in mathematics and physics.

Computer development

1997 replica of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer at Durham Center, Iowa State University

Partly due to the drudgery of using the mechanical Monroe calculator, which was the best tool available to him while he was writing his doctoral thesis, Atanasoff began to search for faster methods of computation. At Iowa State, Atanasoff researched the use of slaved Monroe calculators and IBM tabulators for scientific problems. In 1936 he invented an analog calculator for analyzing surface geometry. The fine mechanical tolerance required for good accuracy pushed him to consider digital solutions.

According to Atanasoff, several operative principles of the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) were conceived by the professor in a flash of insight during the winter of 1937–1938 after a drive to Rock Island, Illinois. With a grant of $650 received in September 1939 ($8403 in 2010 dollars) and the assistance of his graduate student Clifford Berry, the ABC was prototyped by November of that year.

The key ideas employed in the ABC included binary math and Boolean logic to solve up to 29 simultaneous linear equations. The ABC had no central processing unit (CPU), but was designed as an electronic device using vacuum tubes for digital computation. It also used separate regenerative capacitor memory that operated by a process still used today in DRAM memory.

Patent dispute

For a more detailed account, see Honeywell v. Sperry Rand.

Between 1954 and 1973, Atanasoff was a witness in legal actions brought by various parties to invalidate electronic computing patents issued to John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, which were owned by computer manufacturer Sperry Rand. In the 1973 decision of Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, a federal judge named Atanasoff the inventor of the electronic digital computer.

Atanasoff first met Mauchly at the December 1940 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Philadelphia, where Mauchly was demonstrating his "harmonic analyzer", an analog calculator for analysis of weather data. Atanasoff told Mauchly about his new digital device and invited him to see it. (During the Philadelphia trip, Atanasoff and Berry also conducted a patent search at the Patent Office in Washington, D.C.)

In June 1941 Mauchly visited Atanasoff in Ames, Iowa for four days, staying as his houseguest. Atanasoff and Mauchly discussed the prototype ABC, examined it, and reviewed Atanasoff's design manuscript. In September 1942 Atanasoff left Iowa State for a wartime assignment as Chief of the Acoustic Division with the Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOL) in Washington, D.C.; no patent application for the ABC was subsequently filed by Iowa State College.

Mauchly visited Atanasoff multiple times in Washington during 1943 and discussed computing theories, but did not mention that he was working on a computer project himself until early 1944.[2]

By 1945 the U.S. Navy had decided to build a large scale computer, on the advice of John von Neumann. Atanasoff was put in charge of the project, and he asked Mauchly to help with job descriptions for the necessary staff. However, Atanasoff was also given the responsibility for designing acoustic systems for monitoring atomic bomb tests. That job was made the priority, and by the time he returned from the testing at Bikini Atoll in July 1946, the NOL computer project was shut down due to lack of progress, again on the advice of von Neumann.

In June 1954 IBM patent attorney A.J. Etienne sought Atanasoff's help in breaking an Eckert-Mauchly patent on a revolving magnetic memory drum, having been alerted by Clifford Berry that the ABC's revolving capacitor memory drum may have constituted prior art. Atanasoff agreed to assist the attorney, but IBM ultimately entered a patent-sharing agreement with Sperry Rand, the owners of the Eckert-Mauchly memory patent, and the case was dropped.[3]

Atanasoff was deposed and testified at trial in the later action Honeywell v. Sperry Rand. In that case's decision, Judge Earl R. Larson found that "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".

Postwar life

Following World War II Atanasoff remained with the government and developed specialized seismographs and microbarographs for long-range explosive detection. In 1952 he founded and led the Ordnance Engineering Corporation, selling the company to Aerojet General Corporation in 1956 and becoming Aerojet's Atlantic Division president.

In 1960 Atanasoff and his wife Alice moved to their hilltop farm in New Market, Maryland for their retirement. In 1961 he started another company, Cybernetics Incorporated, in Frederick, Maryland which he operated for 20 years. He was gradually drawn into the legal disputes being contested by the fast growing computer companies Honeywell and Sperry Rand. Following the resolution of Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, Atanasoff was warmly honored by Iowa State College, which had since become Iowa State University, and more awards followed.

Atanasoff died in 1995 of a stroke at his home after a lengthy illness. He is buried in Pine Grove Cemetery in Mount Airy, Maryland.

Honors and distinctions

Monument to John Atanasoff in Sofia, in his ancestral Bulgaria

Atanasoff's first national award for scientific achievements was the Order of Saints Cyril and Methodius, First Class, Bulgaria's highest scientific honor bestowed to him in 1970, before the 1973 court ruling.[4]

In 1990, President George H. W. Bush awarded Atanasoff the United States National Medal of Technology, the highest U.S. honor conferred for achievements related to technological progress.[5]

Other distinctions awarded to Atanasoff include:

Named after Atanasoff

See also

Sources

  1. ^ Atanasoff, J.V. The Beginning. Sofia: Narodna Mladezh Publishers, 1985. (Bulgarian version of his 1984 paper) Foreword in English
  2. ^ Mollenhoff, pages 62–66.
  3. ^ Mollenhoff, pages 81–86.
  4. ^ a b Prof. Kiril Boyanov. John Vincent Atanasoff – The Inventor of the First Electronic Digital Computing.
  5. ^ "Honoring Dr. John Atanasoff on the One Hundredth Anniversary of His Birth". Congressional Record – Extensions of Remarks. October 30, 2003. pp. E2159–2160. Retrieved May 15, 2009.
  6. ^ a b Yambol Province Government. Website (in Bulgarian)
  7. ^ SCAR Composite Antarctic Gazetteer entry
  8. ^ Minor Planet Names: Alphabetical List
  9. ^ Lutz D. Schmadel. Dictionary of Minor Planet Names. Springer-Verlag Telos, 2000. 1319 pp. ISBN 978-3540662921
  10. ^ National Military University Website (in Bulgarian)
  11. ^ John Atanasoff Award
  12. ^ Bestowing the 2005 John Atanasoff Award. Iowa State University website.
  13. ^ John Atanasoff Technical College. Website
  14. ^ The 7th John Atanasoff Tournament. Darik News website (in Bulgarian)
  15. ^ John Atanasoff Professional High School of Electronics, Stara Zagora. Website
  16. ^ John Atanasoff Professional High School of Electronics, Sofia. Website
  17. ^ John Atanasoff Chitalishte, Sofia.
  18. ^ John Atanasoff Chitalishte, Boyadzhik.
  19. ^ Prof. John Atanasoff Primary School, Sofia. Picture
  20. ^ John Atanasoff Private High School, Blagoevgrad. Website
  21. ^ John Atanasoff Professional Technical High School, Kyustendil.
  22. ^ John Atanasoff Professional High School of Economic Informatics, Targovishte. Website
  23. ^ John Atanasoff University Student Computer Club, Plovdiv University. Website
  24. ^ John Atanasoff Street, Yambol addressee.
  25. ^ John Atanasoff Street, Sofia addressee.

References

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