WHO INVENTED THE COMPUTER

K9APE’S BOOKSHELF

Sheldon L. Epstein

WHO INVENTED THE COMPUTER?:

THE LEGAL BATTLE THAT CHANGED COMPUTER HISTORY

Alice Burks

‘Necessity’ is said to be the mother of invention. But, who is the father? Lacking DNA samples, Alice Burks, wife of an early computer engineer Arthur Burks, claims to have established paternity by analyzing documents and reviewing oral testimony for her 2003 book entitled ‘Who Invented The Computer?: The Legal Battle That Changed Computer History’. She concluded that the father of the electronic computer is John Vincent Atanasoff – not J. Prespert Eckert and John W. Mauchly, who are named as inventors of Patent No. 3,120,606 for ‘Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer’ (ENIAC) that issued in 1964 based on a 1947 filing date. By the way, I do not suggest downloading the patent from www.uspto.gov as it contains 91 sheets of drawings and 207 pages. You can get a flavor of it by reading the following claim:

1. Means for producing electric pulses in sequence, electronic means for alternately transmitting certain ones of said pulse as recurrent differential groups, electronic means for selecting particular pulses from one another of said differential groups to represent certain qualitative values, reading means responsive to pulses representing both the qualitative and quantitative values for reading data to be processed upon command of at least one of said qualitative pulses, sorting the data thus read, and making the data available in the form of data pulses in response to at least one other of said qualitative pulses, and electronic means for receiving said data pulses and responsive thereto for performing electrical switching operations of a nature determined by selected ones of said qualitative values and of a degree determined by select ones of said quantitative values.

This –and other claims– were the subject of a patent suit brought by patent owner Sperry Rand Corp. against Honeywell, Inc. and Control Data Corp. in 1971 that was to determine whether the ‘606 patent would dominate commercial computer development in the USA until the patent expired in 1981. The answer, in short, was that Sperry Rand lost its suit and the ‘606 patent was found invalid and unenforceable because Eckert and Mauchly claimed inventions of Atanasoff. Twenty-four other Sperry Rand patents and applications were also held invalid or unenforceable because of false claims of priority to inventions of Atanasoff, John von Neumann and others. Yes, it helps to be an Electrical Engineering patent attorney –which I am– when reading this book; but, there is more in it than engineering and law.

The book comprises four different stories; namely, a) the invention of the first electronic computer in 1941 by Atanasoff at Iowa State University, b) the patent infringement lawsuit; c) the continuing public debate over priority claims made by Eckert and Mauchly and d) the influence of corporate sponsorship by Sperry Rand and other computer companies on the Smithsonian Institution and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) on their telling of the history of invention of the electronic computer.

So having outlined Burks’ book, I would like to take you back to the beginning of the story of John V. Atanasoff and his invention of the electronic computer during the years 1939 - 1942. This review is necessarily space-limited; however, you can delve into detail by typing ‘Who is John Vincent Atanasoff?’ into the www.google.com search engine or going directly to www.lib.iastate.edu/arch/jva.html .

Atanasoff was Associate Professor of Physics at Iowa State University in 1939. He was preoccupied with problems that required solutions to as many as 30 simultaneous equations. In those days ‘computers’ were not machines; but, were humans who performed calculations needed for such solutions on mechanical calculators. Atanasoff and others contemplated mechanical systems for ganging together calculators; but, none of these configurations proved practical. Atanasoff conceived the need for an electronic computing machine incorporating vacuum tubes, which in those days were used for analog – not digital applications.

Atanasoff, with the help of graduate student Clifford E. Berry, then embarked on a program to build an electronic computer that could solve 30 simultaneous equations. Burks enumerates Atanasoff’s inventions as the first to:

Build a complex electronic switching system

Use electronic digital computation

Use binary code in electronic computation

Convert decimal numbers to binary representation and back again

Separate memory and arithmetic in an electronic computer

Build a rotating memory drum

Use capacitor memory elements to represent a linear equation in memory

Use regeneration to refresh memory

Use serial binary adders interacting with a rotating memory

Combine thirty such adders in parallel to obtain vector processing

Compute based on logical rather that counting principals

Develop a novel variation of Gauss’ algorithm that did not require division for

solving simultaneous equations.

Use sign detection and shifting mechanisms for a non-restoring arithmetic

procedure

Obtain automatic sequencing and coordination of operations through a central

clock

Use replaceable modular computing units.

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) actually worked in 1942 (see photos of ABC at www.scl.ameslab.gov/ABC/Progress.html); however, there was a reliability problem with the mechanism that read programs and data into the computer. Perhaps because of that problem and more likely because of the intervention of World War II and the lack of support for ABC by Iowa State University, Atanasoff broke off work on it and joined the Naval Ordinance Laboratory (NOL) in Maryland. Some time after Atanasoff went to NOL, the university scrapped ABC.

Atanasoff tried to patent his inventions; but, without success. Part of his problem was his relationship with his university. It offered him 10% of any future royalties with nothing for Berry. Atanasoff demanded 50% (he promised 20% of his share to Berry), which he finally negotiated; but, that caused bad feelings with the administration which apparently lost interest in obtaining a patent. A second obstacle was that his Chicago patent attorney did not understand the inventions and lost some of the patent drawings. As a result, no patent application was filed even though Atanasoff and Berry had reduced their inventions to practice by 1942.

While Atanasoff strove to keep his invention secret for patenting reasons, he did make what he claimed was a reasonably complete and enabling disclosure to Mauchly in 1941. Mauchly was a professor at Ursinus College near Philadelphia where he was conducting research on periodicity in weather patterns. Like Atanasoff, he needed a machine that could solve simultaneous equations and wondered whether such a machine could be built with electronics. The two men met at a 1940 physics convention held in Philadelphia where Atanasoff told Mauchly that he had built an electronic computer for solving simultaneous equations. Atanasoff invited Mauchly to Iowa where Mauchly was allowed to read –but not copy– Atanasoff’s written description of the ABC. By this time, Mauchly had moved from Ursinus College to the Moore School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania where he met Eckert and they proceed to build their ENIAC with university support, Army funding and inventions contributed by von Neumann and others.

Mauchly and Eckert left Moore School of Engineering at the end of World War II to commercialize the ENIAC and patent what they claimed were their inventions. The company that they founded for this purpose soon became part of Sperry Rand.

In the trial that was to follow, Atanasoff testified that he had a working computer in 1941 and that he made a detailed disclosure to Mauchly that would enable Mauchly to understand fully the nature of Atanasoff’s inventions. Mauchly would testify that he learned little or nothing of value during his visit with Atanasoff in Iowa that Eckert or he could use to build ENIAC or later machines.

The trial was held before U.S. District Court Judge Earl R. Larson in Minneapolis. Larson did not have a background in engineering or computers; but, he retained experts to help him understand and evaluate evidence. Burks takes the reader through important points of Larson’s opinion, which I will not do here. Basically, Larson concluded that Atanasoff was a more credible witness that Mauchly and that Mauchly and Eckert had filed claims in the ‘606 patent application that covered inventions of Atanasoff, von Neumann and others. He also found that Mauchly and Eckert had failed to include others at the university who also contributed their inventions now claimed by Eckert and Mauchly in their other patents and applications. As a result, Larson held that all of those patents and applications were unenforceable. Sperry Rand chose not to appeal and, instead, paid $3 million to Honeywell and Control Data Corp. to settle the case.

Having lost their infringement suit in large measure because of the priority of Atanasoff’s inventions, one would expect that Eckert and Mauchly would concede the question of priority since they no longer had enforceable patents. Wrong! The patentees and Sperry Rand then embarked on what we would now call a public relations campaign to discredit Judge Larson and his opinion and to erase the public’s memory of Atanasoff and his contributions. They were aided in this goal by the coincidence of Judge Larson’s opinion being published the day before President Richard Nixon’s resignation following disclosure of the Watergate scandal.

The question of priority, however, did not disappear – it lay dormant in occasional papers published in computer and science journals by Arthur and Alice Burks and others who had personal knowledge of the ENIAC program. Some wrote in support of Eckert and Mauchly and some (including the Burkses) in support of Atanasoff. Then, in the 1980s, the Smithsonian Institution started work on an exhibit to commemorate the invention of the computer. Because it lacked funds to proceed on its own, the Smithsonian solicited and received computer industry funding. One of the more prominent contributors was Sperry Rand.

The Smithsonian Institution took the position that contributions from Sperry Rand and other supporters of Mauchly and Eckert would not influence the content of its exhibit. Nevertheless, the exhibit as originally conceived did not contain any reference to Atanasoff’s inventions or to Judge Larson’s opinion. Instead the Smithsonian Institution credited Eckert and Mauchly with invention of the electronic computer. Atanasoff’s supporters strenuously objected and had some limited success in getting a very small portion of the exhibit allocated to Atanasoff’s inventions. That same problem was to reappear a few years later when PBS produced a program – financed by many of the same contributors – on the invention of computers. And, the argument for priority continues to this day.

The book is an enlightening but heavy read, even for this patent attorney. Part of its problem is Mrs. Burks’ redundant writing style, which repeatedly references back to facts that she had previously described. Another problem is Mrs. Burks’ obsession with telling her own story of her difficulties in setting the Atanasoff record straight. Nevertheless, I heartily recommend that you read the book. To assist you in understanding it, I strongly suggest that you start at ‘Chapter Twelve – As It Happened’, which is an abstract of the story that should have been Chapter One.

Replica of the Atanasoff – Berry Computer