John Vincent Atanasoff

Mathematician

• Born: October 4, 1903
• Birthplace: Hamilton, New York
• Died: June 15, 1995
• Place of death: Monrovia, Maryland

Cocreator of the first electronic digital computer

Born: October 4, 1903; Hamilton, New York

Died: June 15, 1995; Frederick, Maryland

Primary Field: Computer science

Specialty: Computer hardware

Primary Company/Organization: Iowa State College

Introduction

One of the fathers of the computer, John Vincent Atanasoff was an Iowa State College professor whose work in the 1930s and 1940s culminated in the first electronic digital computer: the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC), designed with his student Clifford E. Berry. The ABC included numerous features that would become synonymous with computing, although it lacked a central processing unit (CPU). ABC's significance was not immediately recognized; it was only through a later patent case, showing that the patent sought actually derived from Atanasoff's work, that Atanasoff's seniority in the burgeoning field was established. Atanasoff was later placed in charge of designing a large-scale computer for the Naval Ordnance Laboratory and designed systems for the Navy's Operation Crossroads, a series of atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll.

Early Life

John Vincent Atanasoff was born in Hamilton, New York, on October 4, 1903, to John Atanasoff and Iva Lucena Atanasoff (née Purdy). The elder Atanasoff's name had been anglicized from Ivan Atanasov at Ellis Island when he had emigrated from Bulgaria in 1889. After studying philosophy at Colgate College, the elder Atanasoff married Purdy, an English teacher, and took a job as an industrial engineer. The family relocated to Brewster, Florida, after John's birth, where his father had accepted a job as an electrical engineer. The Atanasoffs encouraged John's education and intellectual development, indulging his fascination with diverse subjects and his gift for mathematics. His mother introduced him to number bases, while his father gave him a slide rule, which helped John with mathematical studies beyond what the local school offered, including differential calculus.

Atanasoff finished high school at fifteen, although he waited until shortly before his eighteenth birthday to begin college at the University of Florida in 1921. He was interested in theoretical physics, but the school did not offer a physics major; he therefore majored in electrical engineering instead, the most theory-heavy offering. Graduating with straight As in 1925 led to fellowship offers from numerous graduate programs, including Harvard's. He chose Iowa State College on the strength of its engineering and science programs. While working on his master's degree in mathematics and teaching, he met his future wife, Lura Meeks of Oklahoma, through the Dixie Club, an organization for southern students. They married in 1926, shortly after he finished his degree; two years later they relocated to Madison, where John pursued his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Wisconsin. It was in Madison that he first worked with a computer. Computing fascinated him and would become a large part of his work when he returned to Iowa in 1930 as a member of the faculty: assistant professor in mathematics and physics.

Life's Work

The significance of Atanasoff's work is sometimes lost on laypersons because of the distinctions involved; Atanasoff did not invent the first computing machine (machines in the nineteenth century, if not earlier devices, could lay claim to that title), nor did he coin the term digital computer. He differentiated instead between the analog computers to which he had been exposed in Madison, and which represented the field at the time, and “proper computing machines” that would be free of the flaws he perceived in analog devices. He started by trying to improve analog computing devices. In 1936, he and Iowa State College physics professor Glen Murphy built the Laplaciometer, which calculated the geometry of surface areas. Although it was no worse than other machines of its time, the Laplaciometer frustrated Atanasoff with its limited accuracy.

The leap in his computer designs came in 1937. By his account, he drove aimlessly for miles, consumed in thought, and finally pulled over 200 miles later at a roadhouse, where he drank bourbon and Coca-Cola and brainstormed ideas on cocktail napkins. The core innovations of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) project were developed that night, including the use of a binary numeric system for its computational processes, electrical rather than mechanical power, and what Atanasoff later called regenerative memory, similar in functionality to today's dynamic random access memory (DRAM). With a grant from the college, Atanasoff purchased parts and hired Clifford E. Berry, an electrical engineering student. The two worked on their new computer from 1939 to 1941, although the work was frequently interrupted as Atanasoff began work for the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington, D.C., in the fall of 1939. The United States' entrance into World War II at the end of 1941 ended work on the ABC. Atanasoff and Berry had succeeded in its design and construction, but a patent application was never submitted, perhaps because they had intended to continue refining it.

At the Naval Ordnance Laboratory—established for the research and development of technology for the Navy—Atanasoff was placed in charge of developing a large-scale general-purpose computer for the Navy. When the war ended with the detonation of nuclear devices over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, atomic bombs became a higher priority, and Atanasoff was assigned to work designing systems in support of Operation Crossroads, the code name used for both atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Other government projects in which Atanasoff was involved included long-range explosive detection and seismography. In 1949, he left the Naval Ordnance Laboratory to work for the Army Field Forces for a year, returning to the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in 1950 to direct the Navy Fuse Program for a year. Despite his original intentions of returning to Iowa State College (now Iowa State University) to teach after his military work, he transitioned to the private defense sector instead, founding the Ordnance Engineering Corporation in 1952. The company was soon sold to Aerojet General Corporation, for which he worked from 1957 to 1960, first as Atlantic division manager and later as vice president. Upon his “retirement” in 1961, he founded Cybernetics Incorporated, which he oversaw for the next twenty years.

The ABC's fame and acknowledgment of Atanasoff's and Berry's roles as the fathers of the digital computer came about because of the patent application filed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly for their Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, ENIAC, the first electronic digital general-purpose computer. (The ABC was designed specifically to solve linear equations.) ENIAC was built during World War II, and its patent was held by the Sperry Rand Corporation, which in 1967 sued the Honeywell Corporation for infringing that patent, simultaneous with Honeywell's countersuit for fraud and antitrust violations. Among other claims, Honeywell maintained that the ENIAC patent was invalid because the work was not unique. Mauchly had earlier examined the ABC.

The patent was eventually ruled invalid, though for more technical reasons relating to patent law rather than the originality or lack thereof of Mauchly and Eckert's design. However, based on the testimony of Atanasoff, after a six-year legal battle the U.S. District Court ruled in 1973 that the ABC had been the first electronic digital computer. Furthermore, because the ENIAC patent was invalid, the electronic digital computer itself (general-purpose or otherwise) was deemed to be in the public domain. This conclusion had the long-term salutary impact of accelerating the development of the computer industry.

Personal Life

Atanasoff and his wife Lura met when she was majoring in home economics at Iowa State College. She briefly taught in Montana in the fall of 1926 to save money toward finishing her degree, but she broke her contract in order to return to her husband and soon gave birth to Elsie, their eldest child. The younger children, Joanne and John, were born after the family's relocation to Madison, where John Sr. earned his doctorate.

Atanasoff's long separation from his family during World War II and the postwar years, while working for the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington, D.C., as the family remained in Ames, Iowa, took a toll on his relationship. In 1949, he and Lura divorced, and he married Alice Crosby, moving with her to Fort Monroe, Virginia, to take the chief scientist job for the Army Field Forces. Lura and the children moved to Denver.

Atanasoff and Alice moved to New Market, Maryland, in 1961, ostensibly retiring, although Atanasoff continued to work for another twenty years, albeit at a slower pace than in the previous decades. He died of a stroke in 1995.

Bibliography

Atanasoff, John V. “Advent of the Electronic Digital Computing.” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 6.3 (1984): 229–82. Print. Atanasoff's own account of the ABC, problems encountered, reasons for the design choices he and Berry made, and the later patent cases in which he testified.

Burks, Alice Rowe. Who Invented the Computer? The Legal Battle That Changed Computing History. New York: Prometheus, 2003. Print. An account of the Honeywell v. Sperry Rand case, which established Atanasoff and Berry as the fathers of the digital computer.

Gleick, James. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. New York: Pantheon, 2011. Print. A history of the information revolution, placing Atanasoff's work in a broader context.

Mooers, Calvin N. “The Computer Project at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory.” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 23.2 (2001): 51–67. Print. Focuses on the Naval Ordnance Laboratory's abandoned large-scale computer project.

Smiley, Jane. The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer. New York: Doubleday, 2010. Print. An engaging biography of Atanasoff by the acclaimed fiction writer.