The Atanasoff-Berry Computer In Operation

[Recorded: 1999]
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) occupies a special place in the history of computing in part for its technical accomplishments but also for being at the center of a landmark legal case. It was built by Iowa physics professor John Vincent Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry.

Technically, the ABC was an electronic equation solver. It could find solutions to systems of simultaneous linear equations with up to 29 unknowns, a type of problem encountered in Atansasoff's physics work. Construction of the ABC began in 1938 at Iowa State College (now University) in Ames, Iowa. It was about the size of a large desk, weighed 750 lbs, computed 0.06 operations per second (sustained) and had 0.37 KB of memory. It could also do 30 add/subtract operations per second. While not a computer in the modern sense (since it did not store its own program), it pioneered various techniques in digital computer design including binary arithmetic, parallel processing, and electronic (vacuum tube) switching elements. The device was completed in 1942 and worked, although its spark-gap printer mechanism needed further development.

The legal dimension to the ABC story involves a lawsuit between two computer makers, Honeywell and Sperry-Rand. In 1967, Honeywell sued Sperry over their ENIAC patents using the ABC as evidence of prior art. (ENIAC was an early digital electronic calculator completed in 1946). After years of proceedings, on October 19, 1973 the judge in the case, Earl R. Larson, agreed with Honeywell that some of the ideas in the ENIAC, which had been considered the 'world's first computer,' in fact came from Atanasoff during a four-day visit ENIAC designer John Mauchly made to Atanasoff at Iowa State before ENIAC was designed. There was also months of correspondence between the two in which Mauchly expressed his desire to build a similar device. The net result of this judgment was that no one owned the patent on the computer: it was free to be developed by all. Gordon Bell has called this the 'dis-invention of the computer.'

In 1993, Iowa State University began a historically-accurate reconstruction of the ABC, which it finished in 1997. The project cost $360,000 and involved about a dozen people in its realization. This film shows the ABC Reconstruction in operation, solving a simple algebra problem.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Computer
• History
• Museum
• John
• Vincent
• Atanasoff
• Clifford
• Berry
• Iowa
• State
• University
• vacuum
• tube
• ENIAC
• patent
• equation
• solver
• Gustafson
• Charles
• Shorb

[Ratznium]

Now that they have it running stable, they ought to overclock it to 1.5 Hz.

[sbalogh53]

Wow! That is a primitive computer, but amazing never-the-less. It seems to be very complicated for what it does. Was there no attempt to simplify the operation of the machine, or is this the end result of some simplifications?

[constructivist6]

Windows 8 looks confusing :(

[9223342]

bob4o99.....Last time I checked , America was a nation of immigrants!.........greetings from America smart guy lol.

[tomicdesu]

@tomicdesu the first stored-program (eg. modern) was SSEM (aka "Baby") (british) and the first real, as in routinely usable machine, with software libraries, symbolic linking, etc was EDSAC, british also, 1948 i think.



[tomicdesu]

@sbalogh53 lol, that WAS the simplified hardware! the history of early computing machinery is very cool -- what's coolest ot me is, the designers of this shit could hold a modern idea of a stored-program computer in their heads and dreams as they built god-awful hardware with difficult and unreliable radio parts, basically. it's not so much that it was a "GOOD" computer, but that it was one at all. (though ABC isn't stored-program, its a calculator...)

[laputahayom]

@VYD239

it was not that bad.

[Quaaludedude714]

0MG :) QC

[GenoSkill]

can i put linux on this

[armkenz1]

that guy looks like michle j fox

[frosty956]

@andyrccar ok when youve finished solving a 20 by 20 system of equations let me know.

[zacheryandersen]

@mattitheowl Collosus wasn't in prototype form until 1943, the ABC was working in 1942.