John Vincent Atanasoff

John Vincent Atanasoff was an American physicist who designed the Atanasoff–Berry Computer with Clifford Berry, an early electronic digital computing machine.

Atanasoff–Berry Computer: An early electronic digital computer designed by John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry at Iowa State College. It was the machine Atanasoff conceived and built with Clifford Berry.
Electronic logic: The use of electronic circuits to represent and manipulate logical values. The ABC used electronic circuits to carry out binary operations.
John Mauchly: An American physicist who co-designed the ENIAC and co-founded the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation. Mauchly’s earlier access to Atanasoff’s ideas became central to the ENIAC patent dispute.
Computer history: The historical study of computing devices, theories, institutions, and practices. Atanasoff’s work complicates accounts that credit later machines as the first electronic digital computers.
Clifford Berry: An American engineer who collaborated with John Atanasoff on the Atanasoff–Berry Computer. Berry helped translate Atanasoff’s design into a working machine.
Capacitor: An electrical component that stores energy in an electric field. The ABC stored binary digits as charge on capacitors mounted on rotating drums.
Presper Eckert: An American electrical engineer who co-designed the ENIAC with John Mauchly. Eckert and Mauchly’s patent claim was later invalidated in litigation involving Atanasoff’s work.
ENIAC: An electronic general-purpose digital computer completed at the University of Pennsylvania in 1945. Its patent history was challenged using evidence about Atanasoff’s earlier machine.
Digital computer: A machine that represents and processes information using discrete values, commonly binary digits. The ABC’s arithmetic and data storage used discrete binary values.
Regenerative memory: A memory system that periodically restores stored information before it fades or is lost. The ABC refreshed capacitor-stored bits as its drums rotated.

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