Top Document: soc.culture.bulgaria FAQ (monthly posting) (part 7/10) Previous Document: News Headers See reader questions & answers on this topic! - Help others by sharing your knowledge 17-1 Who is John Atanasoff (by Luben Boyanov) The name John Atanasoff is not very well known but this is the man who has created the modern digital computer. 50 years have passed since John Atanasoff has created the first digital computer. President Bush has awarded the 1990 National prize for Technical achievement, - the highest American Technical award (I've used non-English text to translate the name of the prize so the correct name of the award may be a different one) to Prof. John Atanasoff. For long time it has been considered that the first electronic digital computer was ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) and one can find that name in almost any Computer Science books as the first example of the first generation digital computer systems. ENIAC was built at the University of Pennsylvania under the direction of John Mauchly and J. P. Eckert. Work on ENIAC began in 1943 and it was completed in 1946. However, in the early seventies it was proven that the ideas behind ENIAC were taken from the ABC (Atanasoff-Berry Computer) computer. John Atanasoff was born in Hamilton, New York in 1903. He was educated at the University of Florida, Iowa State College, and the University of Wisconsin (PhD, physics, 1930). With the help of Clifford Berry, Atanasoff built a working model of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) in 1942. The ABC computer was a special-purpose machine for solving simultaneous linear equations. It was a serial, binary, electro-mechanical machine, and employed various new techniques that Atanasoff invented, including novel uses of logical circuitry and regenerative memory. Only recently has Atanasoff achieved recognition as one of the "fathers" of the digital computer. During his last visit in Bulgaria to the birth-place of his father - an emigrant orphan from the April Uprising against the Turks, John Atanasoff said: "Like a Bulgarian I am also a restless and creative person and the Slav root in my blood has helped me a great deal in life". John Atanasoff - junior, president of "Cybernetics Products, Inc" has also visited Bulgaria recently. He considers as good the chances of cooperation between his company and the newly emerging Bulgarian private businesses. It's not bad to remember that the inventor of the first modern digital computer is of Bulgarian origin. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 17-2 Who is John Atanasoff (by John Bell), last updated: 19-Jun-1995 John V. Atanasoff, 91, who invented the first electronic computer in 1939 and later saw others take credit for his discovery, died of a stroke June 15 at his home in Monrovia, Md. Dr. Atanasoff, whose pioneenng work ultimately was aclmowledged during lengthy patent litigation in the 1970s, never made money off bis invention, which was the first computer to separate data processing from memory. It heads the famiky tree of today's personal computers and mainframes. Two other scientists, J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly, drew on Dr. Atanasoff's research. In the mid-1940s, they were the first to patent a digital computing device, which they called the ENIAC (electronic numerical integrator and computer). They said they had worked out the concept over ice cream and coffee in a Philadelphia restaurant. For many years, they were acclaimed as the fathers of modern computing. But a court battle 20 years ago between two corporate giants, Honeywell and Sperry Rand, directed the spotlight to Dr. Atanasoff. He said the idea in fact, had come to him over bourbon and water in a roadhouse in Illinois in 1937. He was out on a drive >from Iowa State University, in Ames, where he taught mathematics and physics, and had stopped to think about the computing devices he had been working on since 1935. He needed a machine that could do the complex mathematicat work he and his graduate students had been trying on desk calculators. He and two others at Iowa State already had build an analog catculator called a laplaciometer, which analyzed the geometry of surfaces. It was that evening in the tavern, he said, that the possibility of regenerative memory and the concept of logic circuits came to him. The machine he envisioned was different from anything conceived before. It would be electronically operated and would use base-two (binary) numbers instead of the traditional base-10 numbers. It would have condensers fro memory and a regenerative process to preclude loss of memory from electrical failures. It would use direct logical action for computing rather than the counting system used in analog processes. Within months, he and a talented graduate student, Clifford Berry, had developed a crude prototype of an electronic computer. Although it used a mechanical clock system, the computing was electronic. It had two rotating drums containing capacitors, which held the electrical charge for the memory. Data were entered using punch cards. For the first time, vacuum tubes were used in computing. The project, which cost $1,000, was detailed in a 35- page manuscript, and university lawyers sent a copy to a patent lawyer. The next year, Mauchly, a physicist at Ursinus College, near Philadelphia, whom Dr. Atanasoff had met at a conference, came to see Dr. Atanasoff's work. Mauchly stayed several days at the Atanasoff home, where he was briefed extensively about the computer project and saw it demonstrated. He left with papers describing its design. That same year, Dr. Atanasoff tried to interest Remington Rand in his invention, saying he believed it could lead to a "computing machine which will perform all the operations of the standard tabulators and many more at much higher speeds," but the company turned him down. Years later, it would eagerly seek his assistance. Dr. Atanasoff had hoped to file a patent for his computer, but he was called away to Washington at the start of World War II to do physics research for the Navy. And there were complications with Iowa State, which held rights to his work but had discontinued efforts to secure a patent. By the time the computer industry was off and running, Dr. Atanasoff was involved with other areas of defense research and out of touch with computer development. The Iowa State prototype had been dismantled while he was away working for the Navy. But he had kept his research papers. He later said he "wasn't possessed with the idea I had invented the first computing machine. If I had knovn the things I had in my machine, I would have kept going on it." The Atanasoff prototype finally was recognized as the father of modern computing when, in a patent infringement case Sperry Rand brought against Honeywell, a federal judge voided Sperry Rand's patent on the ENIAC, saying it had been derived from Dr. Atanasoff's invention. It was "akin to finding a new father of electricity to replace Thomas Edison," said a writer on the computer industry. The decision made news in the industry, but Dr. Atanasoff, th this time retired, continued to live in relative obscurity in Frederick County. Later, in 1988, two books about his work were published: "The First Electronic Computer: The Atanasoff Story," by Alice R. Burns and Arthur W. Burns, and "Atanasoff, Forgotten Father of the Computer," by Clark R. Mollenhoff. Other articles were published in the Annals of the History of Computing, Scientific American and Physics Today. In 1990, President George Bush acknowledged Dr. Atanasoff's pioneering work by awarding him the National Medal of Technology. John Vincent Atanasoff was born in Hamilton, N.Y. He was an electrical engineering graduate of the University of Florida and received a master's degree in mathematics from Iowa State University, where he taught for 15 years. He received a doctorate in physics from the Uni- versity of Wisconsin. Dr. Atanasoff left Iowa State in the early 1940s to become director of the underwater acoustics program at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory at White Oak, now the Naval Surface Weapons Center, where he worked largely with mines, mine countermeasures and depth charges. He participated in the atomic weapons tests at Bikini Atoll after World War II and became chief scientist for the Army Field Forces, at Fort Monroe, Va., in 1949. He re- turned to the ordnance laboratory after two years to be director of the Navy Fuze programs, and in 1952 he began his own company, Ord- nance Engineering Corp. That company was sold to Aerojet Engineering Corp. in 1956, and Dr. Atanasoff was named a vice president. After he retired in 1961, he was a consultant and continued to work in computer education for young people. He also developed a phonetic alphabet for computers. His honors included the Navy's Distinguished Civilian Service Award, five honorary doctorates, the Computer Pioneer Medal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the Holley Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Distinguished Achievement Citation of Iowa State University. He was a member of the Iowa Inventors Hall of Fame. Dr. Atanasoff, whose father was born in Bulgaria, also was awarded Bulgaria's highest science award and was a member of the Bulgarian Academy of Science. He was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa, Pi Mu Epsilon and Tau Beta Pi honorary societies and the Cos- mos Club. Dr. Atanasoff's marriage to Lura Meeks Atanasoff ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife, Alice Crosby Atanasoff of Monrovia; three children from his first marriage, Elsie A. Whistler of Rockville, Joanne A. Gathers of Mission Viejo, Calif., and John V. Atanasoff II of Boulder, Colo.; four sisters; three brothers; 10 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 17-3 Elias Kaneti (by Konstantin G. Zahariev) Chetiri dni sled smyrtta mu germanski izdateli sqobshtiha za smqrtta i pogrebenieto na rodeniya v Bqlgaria svetovnoizvesten pisatel Elias Kaneti. Toy e pochinal v shveycarskiya grad Cyurih na 89-godishna vqzrast i e bil pogreban v sryada v mestnoto grobishte Flunteri do groba na genialniya irlandski pisatel Djeims Djoys, sqobshti izdatelstvo "Karl Hanser". Spored gradskiya sqvet v Cyurih Kaneti e pochinal vnezapno. Predpolaga se, che vqzpomenatelnata ceremoniya za konchinata mu shte se sqstoi na 25 Septemvri v mestniya gradski teatqr. Kaneti e Nobelov laureat za 1981 i vchera Lars Gilensten - sekretar na komiteta, koyto vrqchva nagradite, nareche pisatelya klyuchiva figura v centralnoevropeyskata kultura i literatura. "Toy beshe gigant kato Franc Kafka", zayavi Gilensten. Kaneti e priznat za edin ot nay-golemite pisateli, tvoryashti na nemski ezik, i prez 1972 poluchava nagradata "Georg Byuhner" - nay-visokoto otlichie v nemskata literatura. Sred nay-izvestnite mu proizvedeniya sa romanite "Zaslepenieto", "Spaseniyat ezik", "Istoriyata na edno detstvo", "Fakel v uhoto" i dr. Toy e roden prez 1905 v Ruse v semeystvo na ispanski evrei, prez 1911 semeystvoto mu se prehvqrlya v Manchestqr, a dve godini po-kqsno - vqv Viena. Progonen ot nacistkata okupaciya na Avstriya prez 1938 toy otiva v London, kqdeto poluchava britansko grajdanstvo, koeto zapazva do kraya na dnite si. -- Drago -- Drago User Contributions:Top Document: soc.culture.bulgaria FAQ (monthly posting) (part 7/10) Previous Document: News Headers Part0 - Part1 - Part2 - Part3 - Part4 - Part5 - Part6 - Part7 - Part8 - Part9 - Single Page [ Usenet FAQs | Web FAQs | Documents | RFC Index ] Send corrections/additions to the FAQ Maintainer: radev@tune.cs.columbia.edu (Dragomir R. Radev)
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