The first electronic computer with a binary number system. Forgotten ABC Project
Until the 70s, it was believed that the first electronic digital computer (ENIAC) was created by John Mockley and John P. Eckert as far back as 40 years. In 1973, the lawsuit between Sperry Rand and Honeywell for the authorship of the invention of an electronic computer was completed. Sperry Corporation acquired a patent for ENIAC and after that the company collected a percentage of other companies that were engaged in the development of computers. Honeywell did not want to pay, after which Sperry corporation sued them, but it was not there: a counterclaim was presented to them. Sperry was accused of using an invalid patent and thereby violating antitrust law. Honeywell representatives cited the Atanasoff computer design created before ENIAC. Atanasov was found that the most interesting, he was not familiar with the ENIAC device. The design features of his ABC computer were used in the ENIAC computer. John V. Atanasov - a scientist from Iowa, in 30 years he created the first electronic computer, which worked on the basis of the binary number system.
October 4, 1903 John Vincent Atanasov was born a few miles west of Hamilton, New York, on a farm that belonged to his grandfather, in a family of immigrants from Bulgaria. He was the first child in the family of John (Ivan) Atanasov (1876-1956) and Yves Lausen Pardy (1881-1983). His father was an engineer, and his mother was a math teacher at school. The family had nine children (one of them died): John, Ethelin, Margaret, Theodore, Avis, Raymond, Melva and Irving.
John wrote about his parents:
“My father was born on January 6 in 1876, our people were just preparing for an uprising against the Turks (the April anti-Ottoman uprising in Bulgaria took place April 18 - May 23, 1876 and was brutally suppressed by the Turks, it is considered the culmination of the Bulgarian national liberation movement against Ottoman oppression during the uprising killed from 25 to 50 thousand Bulgarians). People who lived in our village were asked to leave their homes with their families, after which the houses were burned. My grandmother ran with the child (my father) in the hands of my grandfather ... a shot sounded ... one of the Turkish soldiers shot my grandfather right in the chest, he fell dead, ricocheted a bullet hurt my father and left a scar for the rest of his life, as a terrible reminder of those events . Grandmother married a second time. At 15, my father arrived in the United States, at 15 he was left an orphan. Here he graduated from Colgate University (American College of Humanities in Hamilton, Madison State of New York). Later he married my American mother, my mother’s grandfather took part in the civil war between North and South. ”
with the mother The
incident that happened at that time is a documented fact in the history of the Bulgarian people (the so-called Massacre in the Boyadjik). On May 11, 1876, the Turkish army attacked and plundered the village of Boyadzhik, killing almost two hundred unarmed people, mostly women and children. Only a miracle saved Atanasov’s father from certain death.
"... hundreds, thousands of Bulgarians of all ages and both sexes died under the most terrible circumstances; the details of the atrocities committed are terrible; the entire population was massacred in Perushtitsa, Batak, Vetren. Recently, the village of Boyadzhik near Yambol experienced the same fate. as slaves, killed children, killed peasants fleeing when the troops approached, killed and those who stayed with them, killed those who hid, and those who donated weapons - because they had it, and those which he was not - because they were not his they were given; they were shooting cars on employees on the railway line ... armed gangs roam the country, taking all that can be taken away from the peasants, and regular troops appear with the slightest resistance to betray everything to fire and sword. "
Ivan Atanasov arrived in the USA with his uncle in 1889, the name Ivan was changed by the immigration service na - John. After graduating from Colgate University in 1890, Atanasov’s parents got married and moved to New Jersey, where his father got a job as an engineer. My father continued his studies in the evening and at night, attended courses, was fond of electrical engineering and electronics. After the birth of John, the family moved to Florida, where his father got a job in a new town Brewster as an engineer at a power station, at the moment it is a ghost town.
Brewster town
John graduated from elementary school here, already at that time he was interested in everything related to electricity. At 9 years old, he discovered a fault in the electrical wiring on the back porch and was able to repair it. By the way, his father was the first in the district to conduct electrical wiring in his house. John was developed beyond his years, learned to read early, and loved everything he could learn from books. He studied well, was a diligent student, was interested in sports, was especially fascinated by baseball. But baseball craze melted away like fog, after his father presented him with a slide rule, it is believed that before the advent of pocket calculators, this tool was simply indispensable for engineers in the calculations.
"This slide rule was my favorite toy, baseball was almost forgotten when I began to seriously study logarithms." At the age of 10 he studied physics and chemistry, was engaged in mathematics, somehow his mother gave him a book, which dealt with calculations in other number systems other than decimal.
While still in school, Atanasov mastered differential calculus, and his father took him to the factory and showed the work of the generator. This all determined his further choice. When the boy needed to go to high school, the family moved to a farm in Old Chicora, Florida. In two years at the age of 15, Atanasov graduated from Mulberry High School with honors in mathematical disciplines. He decided that to be a theoretical physicist was his vocation. But he had to work for a year in phosphate mines to earn money. In 1921, John entered the University of Florida at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering.
Atanasov spent much of his time in the university’s mechanical and foundry workshops. He graduated from a university in 1925 with a bachelor's degree with the best marks and received a scholarship to study for a master's degree in mathematics and physics from the state of Iowa. He was offered training at many higher educational institutions, such as Harvard, but he decided to continue his studies in Ames.
In the summer of 1925, John graduated from Iowa and received a degree in electrical engineering, he was immediately engaged in teaching and led two mathematical classes. In 1926, John married a young blue-eyed brunette Lure Mix from Oklahoma. A year later, they had a daughter, Elsie, and the family moved to Wisconsin, where Atanasov (May 1930) defended his doctoral dissertation. Two other children, twins Joan and John, were born a year later.
In March 1929, he became a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin and continued his studies in the field of theoretical physics. While working on his doctoral thesis, Atanasov had to do a lot of calculations, his topic was polarizing helium in an electric field, he spent hours doing calculations using the Monroe calculator, one of the most advanced computing devices of the time. At that time, analog solution methods using the Vannevar-Bush differential analyzer could no longer satisfy requests due to inaccuracies, and devices that would have implemented a digital approach simply simply did not exist. And so, at such moments, Atanasov understood that the time had come to develop something that could help make the calculations much faster, more precisely, he was not abandoned by the thought of automating the solution of large linear algebraic equations. Atanasov even tried to modify the IBM calculator.
Therefore, after returning to Iowa State College, where he worked as an assistant professor of mathematics and physics, he seriously began developing and creating a high-speed computer. He conducted experiments with vacuum tubes, radio, studied electronics. Atanasov studied many of the computing devices available at the time, and came to the conclusion that they can be divided into two classes of analog devices and computers (but the term "digital computer" began to be used later). In 1936, Atanasov tried to create a small analog calculator. In Iowa, no one except John was involved in the creation of new computers, here he calmly considered his ideas, but on the other hand there were no specialists with whom he could discuss his ideas on the spot, understand the technical and theoretical problems that have arisen. Such a lonely inventor.
John Atanasov originally thought of creating an analog device, something similar to his favorite slide rule, but the fact that the length of such linear films for the exact solution of linear algebraic equations would be hundreds of meters was obvious. The limitations of analog computing tools pushed the scientist to create something “revolutionary”. How to keep the numbers in the car - that was the first task that Atanasov tried to solve. This is how the term “memory” appeared to describe this function in a car. What types of memory just did not go through Atanasov and mechanical pins, and electromagnetic relays, and vacuum tubes. Since the electron tubes were expensive at the time, he decided to use capacitors. Capacitors themselves are small and inexpensive components that could for some time maintain an electric charge,
The second task that he had to solve was called the “computational mechanism”. For this mechanism, Atanasov decided to use electron tubes, which would be used as on / off switches with on / off functions. At this stage, a dilemma arose, what system of calculus to use in the car (even the calculus system with a base on a hundred seemed to the scientist promising). In the end, the binary number system was chosen.
Atanasov still had one passion - cars. He tried every year to buy a new one (it’s not known whether the previous ones sold). One of the winter evenings of 1937 in a roadside tavern, where Atanasov drove on a new Ford with a powerful V8 engine, he was visited by the idea and on what principles a new computing device should be created. The essence of these principles was formulated by him later, namely, that it consisted in the fact that electricity would be used for computer operation, and it would be based not on the usual decimal number system, but on the binary one.
"... once in the winter evening of 1937 I felt completely exhausted by the inability to find a solution to the problems associated with the design of the car. I got into the car, accelerated and drove for so long until I began to control my emotions. It was my habit - I did regain control of myself after driving along the road, concentrating on driving, but that night I was too exhausted and continued to rush until I crossed the Mississippi River and found myself in Illinois, 300 kilometers from where I got into the car ... (I went to the tavern and ordered a drink) I felt that I was not so nervous anymore, and my thoughts turned again to the computers. I don’t know why my head started working and why it didn’t work before but it was nice, cool and quiet. "
The principles of the future computing machine Atanasov sketched on a napkin, he thought about what the design of the regenerative memory would be, called it “discrete”, he came up with putting capacitors on rotating cylindrical drums (from under the cans of juice), every second they would come into contact with brushes (in the form of cables) and would charge. The memory consisting of capacitors would be “shaken” by the brushes when the rotating cylinders were rotated, and, if necessary, the old data would be removed and new data entered. The invented logical electronic circuit made it possible to read numbers from two different cylinders with capacitors.
Work has begun on a prototype. An assistant was needed, and in 1939 Atanasov got acquainted with Berry, who at that time was a graduate of the electrotechnical department, well versed in electronics.
The work on ABC (Atanasoff — Berry Computer) lasted three years, and the first prototype was demonstrated as early as 1939 and its goal was to solve a system of linear equations, the system could work with 29 variables, it processed two equations and removed one of the variables, and the resulting the equation would output on binary punch cards of sizes 8x11, after that maps with a simpler system of equations would be fed back to the machine, the process started anew. All this would reduce such calculations with 29 variables. On a calculator, this would take 10 weeks, and on a computer, only 7! days But still it would be a very long process.
ABC used binary arithmetic. The word length was 50 bits. Punched cards with intermediate results contained thirty 50-bit binary numbers. The car had two memorable devices, which consisted of rotating drums to which small capacitors were attached, connected to a brass contact on the surface of the drum.
5/6 of the peripheral surface of the drum was occupied by brass contacts, and 1/6 remained empty, which provided time for other operations. The speed of the contacts past the reading brush was 60 per second.
According to Berry:
"... the polarity of the charge on the capacitor indicated“ one ”or“ zero ”, and each capacitor was recharged immediately after reading, so that the charge never remained on it for more than one second. All words were processed in parallel, but inside each word the numbers were processed sequentially. that before designing the memory on capacitors, we seriously considered the idea of using magnetic drums, but we abandoned it because of the low level of signals. There were 30 identical arithmetic devices that They were essentially binary adders, each consisting of a series of direct-connected vacuum tubes (seven dual triodes) interconnected in such a way that they performed binary addition.
The conversion of decimal numbers into binary ones was carried out with the help of a rotating drum on which there were contacts representing binary equivalents of 1.2 - 9.10.20 - 9x14. At the output, the same apparatus in the reverse order transformed and gave the decimal result to the mechanical counter.
Atanasov published on 35 pages a description of such a machine in the hope of obtaining funding for this project. The expenses amounted to a little more than 5 thousand dollars, but he later received funding from a private foundation. The lawyer who was hired by the University of Iowa, for some reason, did not file a patent application.
In 1940, Atanassov and Berry invited Mokli (a physicist from Ursinus College) to Iowa “to help” after Atanasov listened to his lecture on “the possibility of using analog computers to solve meteorology problems” in Pennsylvania. In 1941, Mokli visited Atanasov’s house and the three of them talked about the ABC digital computer for 5 days, but Atanasov asked for the materials to be kept secret. So this fateful meeting of Atanasov and Mokli took place.
Wetlands
Mocli arrived on Friday evening June 13 from Washington. Atanasov was ready to show his partially assembled car, in spite of his wife’s warnings that Mokli seemed to her to be not a completely honest person, and ABC was not yet patented. Soaking impressed a couple of things - the idea of using capacitors in the memory unit and the method of replenishing their charge once a second, placing them on a rotating cylinder.
This is what Mokli recalled about this meeting and Berry’s car Atanasov:
“I thought that his car was much more cunning, but since it turned out to be partly mechanical, including rotating commuting switches, it did not look like what I meant. I was no longer interested in the details. The semi-mechanical nature of the Atanasov’s car made me rather frustrated. He had nothing in the plans that would make the machine more universal and would allow it to solve any other problems besides solving a system of linear equations. ”
“Therefore, when the trial for supremacy among electronic computers began, in his testimonies, Mokley said that this visit meant nothing to him than a visit to an exhibition in which he simply picked up some ideas.” The main difference between Mokli and Atanasov was his desire and ability to work in a team. As a result, Mokli and his talented team went down in history as the inventors of the first electronic computer. And then, as Mockley claimed, these were his ideas, which were supplemented by ideas, the experience of other talented scientists, during conversations with them, while visiting various exhibitions. After visiting Atanasov, Mocli was invited to take an electronics course at the University of Pennsylvania. All this encouraged him to create a computer and by the autumn of 1941, Mokley had completed his version of the computer. This is where the ENIAK story begins. The first is a fully electronic digital computer, which was assembled in strict secrecy for military purposes at the University of Pennsylvania.
Let's return to Atanasov and his car.
And so in three years, by 1942, the car was almost ready. The size of such a computer was from a desk, and such a machine consisted of 300 electron tubes. The problem was the mechanism for burning holes in punch cards with a spark (it worked through time).
1942 came, the war years forced Atanasov to postpone the work on the ABC project. He was called to serve in the navy and was appointed head of the Department of Acoustics at the Naval Artillery Laboratory (NOL) in Washington, Colombia. His salary was 10 thousand dollars and he worked here on the problem of acoustic mines, participated in the testing of the atomic bomb on the Bikini Atoll. At this time, Atanasov’s computer was gathering dust in the basement at the University of Iowa, was dismantled by some graduate student, as it occupied a lot of space. About her was forgotten. Neither Atanasov nor Berry was notified that their brainchild had been dismantled and only a third of it was preserved.
In 1949, Atanasov divorced his first wife. Lura moved with her children to Denver. That same year, John married Alice Grosby for the second time.
Even if ABC were remembered, this machine had limitations: the process was slowed down due to mechanically rotating memory cells and even the system of burning holes in the punched card slowed down the work of such a computer. In order to speed up the speed of such a computer, it was necessary to make it completely electronic and programmable.
In 1945, the Artillery Department appealed to John Atanasov with a request to assist in designing a computer for the Naval Artillery Laboratory. Atanasov refused the project, arguing that he could not simultaneously work on a computer project and finish work in the Department of Acoustics NOL.
After the war, Atanasov returned to computers. He regretted that he had thrown work on the creation of a computer, since his work was truly revolutionary. Until 1949 he was head of the NOL acoustics department. In 1950-1951, he was director of the NOL explosions program.
In 1952, John Atanasov opened the company "Artillery Engineering Corporation" in the city of Frederick, Maryland, later Atanasov worked as an automation consultant in a packaging company.
One fine day in 1954, a lawyer from IBM came to Atanasov, with a proposal to prove that it was Atanasov who was the first to create an electronic computer, and the ENIAC project was simply borrowed from the ABC project. Atanasov decided to fight for the championship of his project.
"... Atanasov became increasingly convinced that ENIAC was borrowed from his ABC and that this work should continue. Moreover, he was given strength by the recognition of his services in other countries, particularly in his ancestors' homeland, Bulgaria, which in 1970 awarded him the Order Cyril and Methodius I degree ".
The judge’s sentence was:
“Eckert and Mokley,” Judge Larson read, “did not themselves invent this automatic electronic digital computer, but instead borrowed this idea from Dr. John V. Atanasoff, and therefore the ENIAC patent is invalid.”
John Vincent Atanasov (after a heart beat in 1975) spent the rest of his life on his farm near Monroville, Maryland. He died on June 15 in 1995 at the age of 92.
Although Atanasov's machine was neither universal, nor programmable, nor fully electronic, the scientist deserves to be considered a pioneer, one who invented the first partially electronic digital computer.
October 4, 1903 John Vincent Atanasov was born a few miles west of Hamilton, New York, on a farm that belonged to his grandfather, in a family of immigrants from Bulgaria. He was the first child in the family of John (Ivan) Atanasov (1876-1956) and Yves Lausen Pardy (1881-1983). His father was an engineer, and his mother was a math teacher at school. The family had nine children (one of them died): John, Ethelin, Margaret, Theodore, Avis, Raymond, Melva and Irving.
John wrote about his parents:
“My father was born on January 6 in 1876, our people were just preparing for an uprising against the Turks (the April anti-Ottoman uprising in Bulgaria took place April 18 - May 23, 1876 and was brutally suppressed by the Turks, it is considered the culmination of the Bulgarian national liberation movement against Ottoman oppression during the uprising killed from 25 to 50 thousand Bulgarians). People who lived in our village were asked to leave their homes with their families, after which the houses were burned. My grandmother ran with the child (my father) in the hands of my grandfather ... a shot sounded ... one of the Turkish soldiers shot my grandfather right in the chest, he fell dead, ricocheted a bullet hurt my father and left a scar for the rest of his life, as a terrible reminder of those events . Grandmother married a second time. At 15, my father arrived in the United States, at 15 he was left an orphan. Here he graduated from Colgate University (American College of Humanities in Hamilton, Madison State of New York). Later he married my American mother, my mother’s grandfather took part in the civil war between North and South. ”
with the mother The
incident that happened at that time is a documented fact in the history of the Bulgarian people (the so-called Massacre in the Boyadjik). On May 11, 1876, the Turkish army attacked and plundered the village of Boyadzhik, killing almost two hundred unarmed people, mostly women and children. Only a miracle saved Atanasov’s father from certain death.
"... hundreds, thousands of Bulgarians of all ages and both sexes died under the most terrible circumstances; the details of the atrocities committed are terrible; the entire population was massacred in Perushtitsa, Batak, Vetren. Recently, the village of Boyadzhik near Yambol experienced the same fate. as slaves, killed children, killed peasants fleeing when the troops approached, killed and those who stayed with them, killed those who hid, and those who donated weapons - because they had it, and those which he was not - because they were not his they were given; they were shooting cars on employees on the railway line ... armed gangs roam the country, taking all that can be taken away from the peasants, and regular troops appear with the slightest resistance to betray everything to fire and sword. "
Ivan Atanasov arrived in the USA with his uncle in 1889, the name Ivan was changed by the immigration service na - John. After graduating from Colgate University in 1890, Atanasov’s parents got married and moved to New Jersey, where his father got a job as an engineer. My father continued his studies in the evening and at night, attended courses, was fond of electrical engineering and electronics. After the birth of John, the family moved to Florida, where his father got a job in a new town Brewster as an engineer at a power station, at the moment it is a ghost town.
Brewster town
John graduated from elementary school here, already at that time he was interested in everything related to electricity. At 9 years old, he discovered a fault in the electrical wiring on the back porch and was able to repair it. By the way, his father was the first in the district to conduct electrical wiring in his house. John was developed beyond his years, learned to read early, and loved everything he could learn from books. He studied well, was a diligent student, was interested in sports, was especially fascinated by baseball. But baseball craze melted away like fog, after his father presented him with a slide rule, it is believed that before the advent of pocket calculators, this tool was simply indispensable for engineers in the calculations.
"This slide rule was my favorite toy, baseball was almost forgotten when I began to seriously study logarithms." At the age of 10 he studied physics and chemistry, was engaged in mathematics, somehow his mother gave him a book, which dealt with calculations in other number systems other than decimal.
While still in school, Atanasov mastered differential calculus, and his father took him to the factory and showed the work of the generator. This all determined his further choice. When the boy needed to go to high school, the family moved to a farm in Old Chicora, Florida. In two years at the age of 15, Atanasov graduated from Mulberry High School with honors in mathematical disciplines. He decided that to be a theoretical physicist was his vocation. But he had to work for a year in phosphate mines to earn money. In 1921, John entered the University of Florida at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering.
Atanasov spent much of his time in the university’s mechanical and foundry workshops. He graduated from a university in 1925 with a bachelor's degree with the best marks and received a scholarship to study for a master's degree in mathematics and physics from the state of Iowa. He was offered training at many higher educational institutions, such as Harvard, but he decided to continue his studies in Ames.
In the summer of 1925, John graduated from Iowa and received a degree in electrical engineering, he was immediately engaged in teaching and led two mathematical classes. In 1926, John married a young blue-eyed brunette Lure Mix from Oklahoma. A year later, they had a daughter, Elsie, and the family moved to Wisconsin, where Atanasov (May 1930) defended his doctoral dissertation. Two other children, twins Joan and John, were born a year later.
In March 1929, he became a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin and continued his studies in the field of theoretical physics. While working on his doctoral thesis, Atanasov had to do a lot of calculations, his topic was polarizing helium in an electric field, he spent hours doing calculations using the Monroe calculator, one of the most advanced computing devices of the time. At that time, analog solution methods using the Vannevar-Bush differential analyzer could no longer satisfy requests due to inaccuracies, and devices that would have implemented a digital approach simply simply did not exist. And so, at such moments, Atanasov understood that the time had come to develop something that could help make the calculations much faster, more precisely, he was not abandoned by the thought of automating the solution of large linear algebraic equations. Atanasov even tried to modify the IBM calculator.
Therefore, after returning to Iowa State College, where he worked as an assistant professor of mathematics and physics, he seriously began developing and creating a high-speed computer. He conducted experiments with vacuum tubes, radio, studied electronics. Atanasov studied many of the computing devices available at the time, and came to the conclusion that they can be divided into two classes of analog devices and computers (but the term "digital computer" began to be used later). In 1936, Atanasov tried to create a small analog calculator. In Iowa, no one except John was involved in the creation of new computers, here he calmly considered his ideas, but on the other hand there were no specialists with whom he could discuss his ideas on the spot, understand the technical and theoretical problems that have arisen. Such a lonely inventor.
John Atanasov originally thought of creating an analog device, something similar to his favorite slide rule, but the fact that the length of such linear films for the exact solution of linear algebraic equations would be hundreds of meters was obvious. The limitations of analog computing tools pushed the scientist to create something “revolutionary”. How to keep the numbers in the car - that was the first task that Atanasov tried to solve. This is how the term “memory” appeared to describe this function in a car. What types of memory just did not go through Atanasov and mechanical pins, and electromagnetic relays, and vacuum tubes. Since the electron tubes were expensive at the time, he decided to use capacitors. Capacitors themselves are small and inexpensive components that could for some time maintain an electric charge,
The second task that he had to solve was called the “computational mechanism”. For this mechanism, Atanasov decided to use electron tubes, which would be used as on / off switches with on / off functions. At this stage, a dilemma arose, what system of calculus to use in the car (even the calculus system with a base on a hundred seemed to the scientist promising). In the end, the binary number system was chosen.
Atanasov still had one passion - cars. He tried every year to buy a new one (it’s not known whether the previous ones sold). One of the winter evenings of 1937 in a roadside tavern, where Atanasov drove on a new Ford with a powerful V8 engine, he was visited by the idea and on what principles a new computing device should be created. The essence of these principles was formulated by him later, namely, that it consisted in the fact that electricity would be used for computer operation, and it would be based not on the usual decimal number system, but on the binary one.
"... once in the winter evening of 1937 I felt completely exhausted by the inability to find a solution to the problems associated with the design of the car. I got into the car, accelerated and drove for so long until I began to control my emotions. It was my habit - I did regain control of myself after driving along the road, concentrating on driving, but that night I was too exhausted and continued to rush until I crossed the Mississippi River and found myself in Illinois, 300 kilometers from where I got into the car ... (I went to the tavern and ordered a drink) I felt that I was not so nervous anymore, and my thoughts turned again to the computers. I don’t know why my head started working and why it didn’t work before but it was nice, cool and quiet. "
The principles of the future computing machine Atanasov sketched on a napkin, he thought about what the design of the regenerative memory would be, called it “discrete”, he came up with putting capacitors on rotating cylindrical drums (from under the cans of juice), every second they would come into contact with brushes (in the form of cables) and would charge. The memory consisting of capacitors would be “shaken” by the brushes when the rotating cylinders were rotated, and, if necessary, the old data would be removed and new data entered. The invented logical electronic circuit made it possible to read numbers from two different cylinders with capacitors.
Work has begun on a prototype. An assistant was needed, and in 1939 Atanasov got acquainted with Berry, who at that time was a graduate of the electrotechnical department, well versed in electronics.
The work on ABC (Atanasoff — Berry Computer) lasted three years, and the first prototype was demonstrated as early as 1939 and its goal was to solve a system of linear equations, the system could work with 29 variables, it processed two equations and removed one of the variables, and the resulting the equation would output on binary punch cards of sizes 8x11, after that maps with a simpler system of equations would be fed back to the machine, the process started anew. All this would reduce such calculations with 29 variables. On a calculator, this would take 10 weeks, and on a computer, only 7! days But still it would be a very long process.
ABC used binary arithmetic. The word length was 50 bits. Punched cards with intermediate results contained thirty 50-bit binary numbers. The car had two memorable devices, which consisted of rotating drums to which small capacitors were attached, connected to a brass contact on the surface of the drum.
5/6 of the peripheral surface of the drum was occupied by brass contacts, and 1/6 remained empty, which provided time for other operations. The speed of the contacts past the reading brush was 60 per second.
According to Berry:
"... the polarity of the charge on the capacitor indicated“ one ”or“ zero ”, and each capacitor was recharged immediately after reading, so that the charge never remained on it for more than one second. All words were processed in parallel, but inside each word the numbers were processed sequentially. that before designing the memory on capacitors, we seriously considered the idea of using magnetic drums, but we abandoned it because of the low level of signals. There were 30 identical arithmetic devices that They were essentially binary adders, each consisting of a series of direct-connected vacuum tubes (seven dual triodes) interconnected in such a way that they performed binary addition.
The conversion of decimal numbers into binary ones was carried out with the help of a rotating drum on which there were contacts representing binary equivalents of 1.2 - 9.10.20 - 9x14. At the output, the same apparatus in the reverse order transformed and gave the decimal result to the mechanical counter.
Atanasov published on 35 pages a description of such a machine in the hope of obtaining funding for this project. The expenses amounted to a little more than 5 thousand dollars, but he later received funding from a private foundation. The lawyer who was hired by the University of Iowa, for some reason, did not file a patent application.
In 1940, Atanassov and Berry invited Mokli (a physicist from Ursinus College) to Iowa “to help” after Atanasov listened to his lecture on “the possibility of using analog computers to solve meteorology problems” in Pennsylvania. In 1941, Mokli visited Atanasov’s house and the three of them talked about the ABC digital computer for 5 days, but Atanasov asked for the materials to be kept secret. So this fateful meeting of Atanasov and Mokli took place.
Wetlands
Mocli arrived on Friday evening June 13 from Washington. Atanasov was ready to show his partially assembled car, in spite of his wife’s warnings that Mokli seemed to her to be not a completely honest person, and ABC was not yet patented. Soaking impressed a couple of things - the idea of using capacitors in the memory unit and the method of replenishing their charge once a second, placing them on a rotating cylinder.
This is what Mokli recalled about this meeting and Berry’s car Atanasov:
“I thought that his car was much more cunning, but since it turned out to be partly mechanical, including rotating commuting switches, it did not look like what I meant. I was no longer interested in the details. The semi-mechanical nature of the Atanasov’s car made me rather frustrated. He had nothing in the plans that would make the machine more universal and would allow it to solve any other problems besides solving a system of linear equations. ”
“Therefore, when the trial for supremacy among electronic computers began, in his testimonies, Mokley said that this visit meant nothing to him than a visit to an exhibition in which he simply picked up some ideas.” The main difference between Mokli and Atanasov was his desire and ability to work in a team. As a result, Mokli and his talented team went down in history as the inventors of the first electronic computer. And then, as Mockley claimed, these were his ideas, which were supplemented by ideas, the experience of other talented scientists, during conversations with them, while visiting various exhibitions. After visiting Atanasov, Mocli was invited to take an electronics course at the University of Pennsylvania. All this encouraged him to create a computer and by the autumn of 1941, Mokley had completed his version of the computer. This is where the ENIAK story begins. The first is a fully electronic digital computer, which was assembled in strict secrecy for military purposes at the University of Pennsylvania.
Let's return to Atanasov and his car.
And so in three years, by 1942, the car was almost ready. The size of such a computer was from a desk, and such a machine consisted of 300 electron tubes. The problem was the mechanism for burning holes in punch cards with a spark (it worked through time).
1942 came, the war years forced Atanasov to postpone the work on the ABC project. He was called to serve in the navy and was appointed head of the Department of Acoustics at the Naval Artillery Laboratory (NOL) in Washington, Colombia. His salary was 10 thousand dollars and he worked here on the problem of acoustic mines, participated in the testing of the atomic bomb on the Bikini Atoll. At this time, Atanasov’s computer was gathering dust in the basement at the University of Iowa, was dismantled by some graduate student, as it occupied a lot of space. About her was forgotten. Neither Atanasov nor Berry was notified that their brainchild had been dismantled and only a third of it was preserved.
In 1949, Atanasov divorced his first wife. Lura moved with her children to Denver. That same year, John married Alice Grosby for the second time.
Even if ABC were remembered, this machine had limitations: the process was slowed down due to mechanically rotating memory cells and even the system of burning holes in the punched card slowed down the work of such a computer. In order to speed up the speed of such a computer, it was necessary to make it completely electronic and programmable.
In 1945, the Artillery Department appealed to John Atanasov with a request to assist in designing a computer for the Naval Artillery Laboratory. Atanasov refused the project, arguing that he could not simultaneously work on a computer project and finish work in the Department of Acoustics NOL.
After the war, Atanasov returned to computers. He regretted that he had thrown work on the creation of a computer, since his work was truly revolutionary. Until 1949 he was head of the NOL acoustics department. In 1950-1951, he was director of the NOL explosions program.
In 1952, John Atanasov opened the company "Artillery Engineering Corporation" in the city of Frederick, Maryland, later Atanasov worked as an automation consultant in a packaging company.
One fine day in 1954, a lawyer from IBM came to Atanasov, with a proposal to prove that it was Atanasov who was the first to create an electronic computer, and the ENIAC project was simply borrowed from the ABC project. Atanasov decided to fight for the championship of his project.
"... Atanasov became increasingly convinced that ENIAC was borrowed from his ABC and that this work should continue. Moreover, he was given strength by the recognition of his services in other countries, particularly in his ancestors' homeland, Bulgaria, which in 1970 awarded him the Order Cyril and Methodius I degree ".
The judge’s sentence was:
“Eckert and Mokley,” Judge Larson read, “did not themselves invent this automatic electronic digital computer, but instead borrowed this idea from Dr. John V. Atanasoff, and therefore the ENIAC patent is invalid.”
John Vincent Atanasov (after a heart beat in 1975) spent the rest of his life on his farm near Monroville, Maryland. He died on June 15 in 1995 at the age of 92.
Although Atanasov's machine was neither universal, nor programmable, nor fully electronic, the scientist deserves to be considered a pioneer, one who invented the first partially electronic digital computer.