A Forgotten 1930s Machine that Changed the Course of Technology
In the 1930s, as the drumbeat of war grew in Europe and the Depression gripped economies, two determined inventors in an Iowa basement built a machine that would shape the unfolding Information Age.
Unbeknownst to even themselves at the time, physicist John Atanasoff and student Clifford Berry constructed the world‘s first electronic digital computer and solved problems many thought impossible. Though the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) was little known and long forgotten, its innovations inspired the foundation of digital computing as we know it today.
The Need for Speed: Computing before Computers
Today, we take for granted the staggering computing potential unlocked by integrated circuits and microchips powering our smartphones. But in the pre-digital 1930s, even basic data processing required exhaustive manual effort.
Most scientists relied on roomfuls of human "computers," predominantly women, to go through the laborious processes of completing mathematical tables vital for research in physics, ballistics, and more. These human workers ground through data processing tasks by hand, one painstaking arithmetic operation at a time with the aid of only paper and mechanical calculators.
Business data processing faced similar constraints. Services firm Arthur Andersen employed over 10,000 workers in the 1930s just to manage accounting and ledger book calculations for client firms. The capacity for number crunching grew only as fast as capacity for hiring more staff.
John Atanasoff observed these cumbersome analog processes first hand. As a physics professor researching quantum mechanics and acoustics problems at Iowa State University, he spent long hours with his graduate students tediously working through complex differential equations critical to their experiments.
He became determined to find a better way – an affordable, reliable machine system to accelerate their important mathematical work. But given limited funding and existing 1930s technology, creating such a machine would require reinventing almost every aspect of data processing.
A Eureka Moment Sets New Computational Foundations
After months studying the problem, the answer came in almost an instant. During a late night drive seeking inspiration in 1937, Atanasoff‘s unique background in physics, math, and electronics converged in an insight for a novel electronic computing machine. On a darkened Illinois roadhouse napkin, he mapped a new approach:
- Binary Base: Encode math in base-2 binary numbers instead of unwieldy decimal numbers
- Digital Processor: Use electronic logic and vacuum tubes instead of mechanical gears
- Regenerative Memory: Store data in capacitors and refresh periodically before they discharge
- Parallel Processing: Separate the memory from the arithmetic logic unit for faster operation
These key concepts underpin all electronic computing today. But at the time, they represented radical departures from contemporary approaches for the era‘s few existing computational devices.
Charles Babbage created early mechanical computers like the Analytical Engine in the 1840s relying purely on metal gears and levers. French inventor George Scheutz expanded on Babbage‘s diagrams to construct a complete Scheutzian calculation engine by 1856, though it could only process 4-digit numbers and four operations per minute.
In the early 1900s, advanced mechanical calculators like those from Odhner, Brunsviga, and Monroe started supporting direct multiplication and more complex math. Electronic companies even began connecting phone switching equipment to handle data processing applications.
But all these systems relied on the same familiar decimal numbers and physical gears for calculation constrained by mechanical limitations. Attanasoff envisioned utilizing new post-telephone age electronics to lift these restrictions through binary math encoded directly in on/off pulses.
Though husband and wife team Claude Shannon and Betty Shannon made some of the first advances towards this approach building an analog calculator at MIT in 1937, their machine was focused specifically on algebraic equations solvable in 0s and 1s.
It would take the partnership of Atanasoff and his intrepid graduate student Clifford Berry to fully realize a working electronic computer for generalized math purpose.
Serendipitous Meeting of Vision and Expertise
To manifest his ideas into reality, Atanasoff sought assistance from Dr. Harold Anderson, then head of Iowa State‘s electrical engineering department. Anderson recommended his star pupil – Clifford Berry, a restless prodigy seeking meaningful work beyond mundane student assignments.
Despite his youth, Berry was uniquely qualified to support Atanasoff‘s challenging compute vision. By age 27, he already held two electrical engineering degrees supporting years of radio repairs and electronics tinkering since his early teens. His sharp expertise across electronics, physics, and mathematics perfectly balanced Atanasoff‘s abstract scientific concepts and theories.
In 1939, the modest funding request Atanasoff and Anderson submitted to Iowa State College leadership was approved, and Berry eagerly came onboard. Very quickly Atanasoff came to fully appreciate Berry‘s talents. In addition to managing component engineering and hands-on build work with a small team, Berry also ably edited Atanasoff‘s invention drafts into lucid journal articles to attract future funding.
Atanasoff provided overall leadership, ideas, and debugging theories while Berry handled hourly hands-on operations. They fostered an integrated partnership combining Atanasoff‘s conceptual capabilities and Berry‘s practical know-how. This symbiotic relationship ultimately gave rise to the first digital electronic computer in history.
Bringing the Atanasoff Berry Computer to Life
For nearly 3 years, Atanasoff and Berry labored away with a handful of graduate students in the cramped basement of the Iowa State Physics building. Component by component using custom circuits and chassis, they brought the Atanasoff Berry Computer (ABC) to fruition through late 1939 and early 1940.
The ABC stood about the size of a desk, incorporating over 300 vacuum tubes, 280 ts, 31 thyratrons, kilometres of carefully wired interconnects, and over 1600 custom durable aluminium capacitors for regenerative random access memory (RAM). Atanasoff pioneered the usage of capacitors for electronic memory, though Magnetic core memory would later supplant capacitor RAM in the 1950s after capabilities scaled.
Atanasoff Berry Computer. (Courtesy: Iowa State University)
For processing, the ABC used electronics for direct logical calculation instead of mechanical gears. This was accomplished through a bank of 30 custom electronic adders purpose-built by Berry each capable of performing additions, subtractions, divisions, and multiplications encoded on Duranium card stock.
Input and output also utilized IBM punch card readers and integrated directly with the processor‘s adders and memory instead of human intervention. The system included separate I/O handling components were built specifically because Atanasoff innovated separated memory and processing – an architecture that defines computing today. All these cutting edge concepts were integrated to astonishing success.
By early 1941, the completed ABC system could reliably solve systems of up to 29 linear equations with 30 variables each – a feat thought impossible for the era predating silicon chips and programming languages. The ABC was shockingly advanced from a modern perspective as well considering the first general purpose stored program computers would not emerge until commissions like the EDVAC in 1949 and UNIVAC I in 1951 – over a decade after the ABC‘s debut.
World War II Delays Wider Adoption
With the advent of U.S. involvement accelerating in WWII, Atanasoff and Berry were forced to shelve their trailblazing efforts before dissolving their productive partnership. Much like Alan Turing‘s similarly secret computing work across the Atlantic for codebreaking, Atanasoff joined the Naval Ordnance Lab to lend his expertise to the Allied war effort.
Unfortunately, the human computers supporting the nitrocellulose munitions research Atanasoff contributed towards made minor miscalculations. These small mistakes compounded into significant overestimates summarised in Atanasoff‘s team reports regarding safe handling limits for the potent explosive mixtures. Men were badly injured in an oxygen combustion experiment mishap relying on the provided specifications and the research effort was cancelled.
Though tragic and unintended, the event highlighted the pressing need for automated computing that could accelerate research without such human fallibility. However, with no staff left to attend operation in Ames, Iowa State ultimately dismantled the one-of-a-kind ABC machine by 1948 with plans to reuse the valuable components for other electronics work.
Iowa State Meeting Discussing ABC Project Funding (October 1939)
Iowa State Meeting Discussing ABC Project Funding (October 1939) – Courtesy Iowa State Univ.
Over the next 30 years with both inventors focused elsewhere, knowledge of the ABC‘s groundbreaking innovations languished in obscurity. The pioneering advancements Atanasoff and Berry achieved towards the world‘s first digital computer went largely unknown.
While counterparts like Alan Turing and Jean Jennings Bartik did vital work on similar computing projects contemporaneously (and slightly later than ABC‘s 1941 completion date), the accomplishments of Atanasoff and Berry unfairly faded from attention.
Pioneering Approach Precedes ENIAC Innovations
That critical context changed in the 1970s when vagaries in ENIAC‘s computing history surfaced. The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) publicly debuted in 1946 at the University of Pennsylvania after extensive secret development during WWII begun in 1943.
ENIAC took over a 1,000 times more space, used 18,000 vacuum tubes instead of a few hundred, and was less energy efficient than Atanasoff‘s sleeker design – but it was fully Turing complete, programmable, and capable of tackling more generalized math. Led by Professor John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert Jr., ENIAC has long held recognition as the first general purpose electronic computer for its flexible architecture.
However, when Mauchly and Eckert attempted to finally patent ENIAC in 1964 after decades of use, Sperry Rand‘s acquisition of their company put ENIAC‘s provenance under the microscope. After extensive court testimony, it became clear that Mauchly had derived multiple ENIAC concepts from Atanasoff after he visited the ABC himself in June 1941 and discussed Atanasoff‘s ideas firsthand.
Mauchly even wrote Atanasoff in September 1941 asking if he could incorporate concepts from the ABC in his own computer efforts before leaving to join the ENIAC project – ideas ENIAC clearly implemented later. Though ENIAC pioneered programmable architecture critical to modern computing, the foundation of its core processor design relied upon Atanasoff‘s earlier insights.
Ultimately Judge Earl Larson ruled in 1973 that Atanasoff and Berry should be recognised as the creators of the world‘s first electronic digital computer for their innovative work on the ABC. Though they did not patent their ideas or receive the deserved fame of their contemporaries, their technical achievements pushing computing‘s frontiers stood the test of time.
Legacy: Recognizing Lasting Impact
In the 1990s, historians from Ames began reconstructing the ABC from Atanasoff‘s four decade old notes to revive its story. The replica ABC can now be seen at the Smithsonian Museum alongside pioneering machines like ENIAC that followed its breakthrough approach.
Iowa State also renamed their computer science building "Atanasoff Hall" after decades of achievements founded by the ABC‘s electronics computing precedent. Though neither Atanasoff or Berry patented their world-changing ideas pursued in academia, Atanasoff received multiple lifetime achievement awards before his passing in 1995 and Berry posthumously earned induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.
The foundational computing advancements seeded by Atanasoff and Berry’s ABC changed technology permanently. Electrical engineering curriculums reorganised cores to cover electronics after the capabilities demonstrated. Computer science as its own discipline took shape to nurture software for the new digital hardware.
And most consequentially, inventors worldwide reoriented around iterative development seeking to enhance this electronic computing model – a cycle of collective innovation still unfolding today with smartphones many orders of magnitude more powerful than room-sized supercomputers of just 30 years ago.
Atanasoff and Berry pioneered this paradigm shift that accelerated human progress. While theirABC machine was neither the first nor last achievement pushing computing milestones, it will remain one of the most revolutionary for introducing the enduring digital computing blueprintpowering modern society.
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