Washington Post Obituary

OBITUARIES - John V. Atanasoff Dies at Age 91 Invented First Electronic Computer

The Washington Post, June 19, 1995, FINAL Edition

By: Claudia Levy, Washington Post Staff Writer

Section: METRO, p. B04

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 pioneering work ultimately was acknowledged during lengthy patent litigation in the 1970s, never made money off his invention, which was the first computer to separate data processing from memory. It heads the family 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 abut the computing devices he had been working on since 1935.

He needed a machine that could do the complex mathematical work he his graduate students had been trying on desk calculators. He and two others at Iowa State already had built an analog calculator 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 for 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 was entered using punched 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 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 for the Navy. And there were complications with Iowa State, which held rights to his work but discontinued efforts to secure a patent.

By the time the computer industry was off and running, Dr. Atanasoff was involved in 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 known 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, by 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. [Burks] and Arthur W. [Burks], 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 Metal 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 University of Wisconsin.

Dr. Atanasoff left Iowa State in the early 1940s to become director of the underwater acoustics program at the Naval Ordinance 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 a chief scientist for the Army Field Forces, at Fort Monroe, Va., in 1949. He returned to the ordinance laboratory after two years to be director of the Navy Fuze programs, and in 1952 he began his own company, Ordinance Engineering Corp.

The 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 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. 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 Cosmos 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.