Atanasoff – Berry Computer replica at 1st floor of Durham Center, Iowa State University

According to Atanasoff's account, several key principles of the Atanasoff – Berry Computer were conceived in a sudden insight after a long nighttime drive during the winter of 1937 – 38.

The ABC was built by Dr. Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry in the basement of the physics building at Iowa State College during 1939 – 42.

The memory of the Atanasoff – Berry Computer was a pair of drums, each containing 1600 capacitors that rotated on a common shaft once per second.

Although the Atanasoff – Berry Computer was an important step up from earlier calculating machines, it was not able to run entirely automatically through an entire problem.

The case was legally resolved on October 19, 1973 when U. S. District Judge Earl R. Larson held the ENIAC patent invalid, ruling that the ENIAC derived many basic ideas from the Atanasoff – Berry Computer.

In 1997, a team of researchers led by John Gustafson from Ames Laboratory ( located on the Iowa State campus ) finished building a working replica of the Atanasoff – Berry Computer at a cost of $ 350, 000.

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* Atanasoff – Berry Computer, an early electronic digital computer

Machines such as the Z3, the Atanasoff – Berry Computer, the Colossus computers, and the ENIAC were built by hand using circuits containing relays or valves ( vacuum tubes ), and often used punched cards or punched paper tape for input and as the main ( non-volatile ) storage medium.

Atanasoff – Berry Computer replica at 1st floor of Durham Center, Iowa State University

In 1939, John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry of Iowa State University developed the Atanasoff – Berry Computer ( ABC ), The Atanasoff-Berry Computer was the world's first electronic digital computer.

* 1903 – John Vincent Atanasoff, American computer pioneer ( d. 1995 )

Atanasoff – Berry Computer replica at 1st floor of Durham Center, Iowa State University

* The Atanasoff-Berry computer is considered the first electronic digital computing device built by John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry at Iowa State University during 1937 – 1942.

* January 15 – John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry describe the workings of the Atanasoff – Berry Computer in print.

* October 4 – John Vincent Atanasoff, American computer engineer ( d. 1995 )

* The American Atanasoff – Berry Computer ( ABC ) ( shown working in summer 1941 ) was the first electronic computing device.

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For a variety of reasons ( including Mauchly's June 1941 examination of the Atanasoff – Berry Computer, prototyped in 1939 by John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry ), US patent 3, 120, 606 for ENIAC, granted in 1964, was voided by the 1973 decision of the landmark federal court case Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, putting the invention of the electronic digital computer in the public domain and providing legal recognition to Atanasoff as the inventor of the first electronic digital computer.

The ABC was dismantled by Iowa State University, after John Atanasoff was called to Washington, D. C. to do physics research for the U. S. Navy.

The federal judge who presided over the case ruled that " the subject matter was derived " from the earlier Atanasoff – Berry Computer ( ABC ).

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.

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.

However, its intermediate result storage mechanism, a paper card writer / reader, was unreliable, and when inventor John Vincent Atanasoff left Iowa State College for World War II assignments, work on the machine was discontinued.

Atanasoff and Clifford Berry's computer work was not widely known until it was rediscovered in the 1960s, amidst conflicting claims about the first instance of an electronic computer.

At that time, the ENIAC was considered to be the first computer in the modern sense, but in 1973 a U. S. District Court invalidated the ENIAC patent and concluded that the ENIAC inventors had derived the subject matter of the electronic digital computer from Atanasoff ( see Patent dispute ).

The mechanical and logic design was worked out by Dr. Atanasoff over the next year.

This problem was not solved by the time Atanasoff left the university for war-related work.

However, upon seeing how bad the footage of the video was, Perry threw up, Larriva threatened to quit, and Atanasoff was not seen around for days.

Letters he wrote to Atanasoff show that he was at one time at least considering building on Atanasoff's approach.

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 ".

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.

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 ".

In 1903, John Vincent Atanasoff, creator of the first digital electronic computer, was born in Hamilton.

* John V. Atanasoff with Clifford Berry successfully test the Atanasoff – Berry Computer, the first electronic digital computing device.

In 1988 he wrote a biography of John Vincent Atanasoff, the Iowa State College professor who invented the first electronic digital computer in 1939.

* Atanasoff – Berry Computer – electronic digital computer – 1942

Between 1954 and 1973, Atanasoff was a witness in the 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.