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The Atanasoff–Berry computer (ABC) was the first automatic electronic digital computer. [1] The device was limited by the technology of the day. The ABC's priority is debated among historians of computer technology, because it was neither programmable , nor Turing-complete . [ 2 ]
1997 replica of the Atanasoff–Berry Computer at Durham Center, Iowa State University. Partly due to the drudgery of using the mechanical Monroe calculator, which was the best tool available to him while he was writing his doctoral thesis, Atanasoff began to search for faster methods of computation.
Clifford Berry was born April 19, 1918, in Gladbrook, Iowa, to Fred and Grace Berry. [1] His father owned an appliance repair shop, where he was able to learn about radios. [ 1 ] He graduated from Marengo High School in Marengo , Iowa, in 1934 as the class valedictorian at age 16. [ 2 ]
The Atanasoff–Berry computer, a prototype of which was first demonstrated in 1939, is now credited as the first vacuum-tube computer. [1] However, it was not a general-purpose computer, being able to only solve a system of linear equations, and was also not very reliable. The Colossus computer at Bletchley Park
Atanasoff and Berry completed a special-purpose calculator for solving systems of simultaneous linear equations, later called the 'ABC' ('Atanasoff–Berry Computer'). This had 60 50-bit words of memory in the form of capacitors (with refresh circuits—the first regenerative memory) mounted on two revolving drums.
The decision held, in part, the following: 1. that the ENIAC inventors had derived the subject matter of the electronic digital computer from the Atanasoff–Berry computer (ABC), prototyped in 1939 by John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry, 2. that Atanasoff should have legal recognition as the inventor of the first electronic digital computer and 3.
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In December 1939 John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry completed their experimental model to prove the concept of the Atanasoff–Berry computer (ABC) which began development in 1937. [40] This experimental model is binary, executed addition and subtraction in octal binary code and is the first binary digital electronic computing device.