Few would deny that the invention of the computer has revolutionized society or that the world of today would look quite different without computers. In the relatively short span of time that has elapsed since the world's first electronic digital computer was invented in 1939, computers have become universal tools that are an integral part of modern life. Yet, comparatively few people know that John Atanasoff, the genius who invented the first computer and initiated the computer revolution, was of Bulgarian ancestry. John Atanasoff was a prominent American inventor who took pride in his Bulgarian heritage and maintained strong ties to his ancestral home of Bulgaria.
John Atanasoff's father, Ivan Atanasoff, was born in the village of Boyadjick, Bulgaria. Ivan Atanasoff had lost his own father in 1876, when the latter was brutally killed in the April Uprising of the Bulgarians against the Ottoman Empire. In 1889, when Ivan Atanasoff was thirteen years old, he emmigrated to the United States accompanied by an uncle. He later married Iva Lucena. John Vincent Atanasoff was born in the town of Hamilton, New York on October 4, 1903.
It was recognized early that John Atanasoff had both a passion and talent for mathematics. His youthful interest in baseball was quickly forgotten once his father showed him the logarithmic slide rule he had bought for facilitating engineering calculations. The slide rule completely captivated the nine-year-old boy, who spent hours studying the instructions and delighting in the fact that this mathematical tool consistently resulted in correct solutions to problems.
John Atanasoff completed his high school course in two years, with excellence in both science and mathematics. He graduated from the University of Florida in Gainesville in 1925, with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering. He received his Master's degree in mathematics from the Iowa State College in Ames, Iowa in 1926. After completing his graduate studies, Atanasoff accepted a position teaching physics and mathematics at Iowa State College. He was then accepted into the doctoral program at the University of Wisconsin, and received his doctoral degree (Ph. D.) in theoretical physics from Wisconsin in 1930. Atanasoff was required to do many complicated and time consuming computations. Although he utilized the Monroe mechanical calculator, one of the best machines of the time, to assist in his tedious computations, the shortcomings of this machine were painfully obvious and motivated him to think about the possibility of developing a more sophisticated calculating machine. After receiving his Ph. D. in theoretical physics in July 1930, John returned to the staff of Iowa State College and began his work on developing a better and faster computing machine.
In the late 1930s, John Atanasoff was still trying to develop ways to facilitate the process of calculating solutions to the extended systems of linear algebraic equations that were applicable to his research work. He became convinced that the digital approach offered considerable advantages over the slower and less accurate analog machines. In December of 1939, working with his graduate student Clifford Berry, John Atanasoff developed and built the prototype of the first electronic digital computer, which would be fully completed in 1942. This prototype of the first computer included four significant and entirely novel operating principles in its operation: The binary system, regenerative data storage, logic circuits as elements of a program, and electronic elements as data carrying media
"After the prototype had started working, we were convinced we could build a computer capable of calculating whatever we would like to", wrote Atanasoff. Having demonstrated the viability of the four major principles, the prototype unequivocally opened the way for all present day computers.
In their history of the ENIAC computer, Alice R. Burks and Arthur W. Burks summarize the Atanasoff achievement as follows: "He invented a new type of a serial storage module, applicable to digital electronic computing. He formulated, developed and proved the major principles involved in electronic circuits for digital computing, principles that included arithmetical operations, control, transition from one to another number base systems, transfer and storage of data, and synchronized clocking of the operations. Having applied that data storage and those principles, he constructed a well-balanced electronic computer with centralized architecture, including storage, and arithmetically controlled input/output devices. He had invented the first-ever specialized electronic computer with such a degree of multi-aspect applicability."
The ABC computer would have been fully operative by 1943, had the efforts of John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry not been interrupted by World War II. In September of 1942, Atanasoff was conscripted into the military and was forced to set aside his work on the computer. He began working at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOL), a research laboratory at the Armed Forces Ordnance Administration, where, as a theoretical physicist, he was put in charge of testing acoustic mines, depth charges, and other similar projects.
A significant event had occurred in 1941, when Atanasoff received a colleague, John W. Mauchly, into his home as a guest. Mauchly had expressed great interest in the work Atanasoff was doing relating to computer technology and had enthusiastically accepted Atanasoff's invitation. It is important to ask exactly what transpired during this visit between Atanasoff and Mauchly, since the events that resulted from the time they spent together are now etched in history. The facts were examined in detail at a judicial hearing 26 years later, when the courts had to decide whether John W. Mauchly and John P. Eckert had unlawfully made use of Atanasoff's invention when they developed the ENIAC computer between 1942 and 1946. Before this time, the ENIAC had been recognized as the first electronic computer, but the facts of the case would prove otherwise.
On October 19, 1973, Judge Earl R. Larson made public his ruling on the ENIAC case. According to the US statutory judicial procedure, Justice Larson issued a court ruling on the merits of the evidence, a summation, and a court verdict, which resulted in a total of 420 pages of material. The court verdict said: "With this Verdict the Court has ruled that the Patent of ENIAC - US Patent, Serial No. 3 120 606, issued to the Illinois Scientific Developments Incorporated, is hereby declared null and void."
The Federal Judge ruled that Mauchly derived the basic ideas for an electronic digital computer from the Atanasoff-Berry computer. He also ruled that John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry were the first to have constructed an electronic digital computer at the Iowa State College in the years between 1939 and 1942. In addition, the judge ruled that John Mauchly and John Eckert, who had for over 25 years been the recipients of recognition and admiration as co-inventors of the first electronic digital computer, had, in fact, lost all rights to the patent upon which all of the praise had been based. "Eckert and Mauchly had not invented the first automated electronic digital computer, but had derived the basic ideas for it by John Atanasoff." (Excerpt of the Summation of the Court in Minneapolis, 1973).
"The principles of John Atanasoff's computer, though seemingly outdated today, are the basis of the thousands of millions of computers, without which modern society cannot exist. Every Bulgarian knows and prides in the holy brothers, St. Cyrille and St. Methodius, who created the alphabet of most Slavonic peoples. Similarly, John Atanasoff, a man of Bulgarian extraction, opened the road to the world information society." (Acad. Blaghovest Sendov - 20 April 2001).
"Devoting this version of my memoirs to the people of my fatherland, I feel great excitement. I need to tell my Bulgarian readers too many things but words do not come easily.
My father was born on January 6, 1876, at the time of the preparation of our people for an uprising against the Turks. Before the outbreak of the uprising, the Turkish governors forced the people of the village of Boyadjik (present Boyadjik, Yambol Region) to leave their houses and then they burnt them. As my grandfather ran with his son in his hands, followed by my grandmother, a group of Turkish soldiers shot him in the chest. The bullet, which killed him, left a scar on the forehead of my father for the rest of his life.
My grandmother married twice more after that. My father was 13 years old when he arrived in the United States and at 15 he became an orphan. After this incredible start in his life, he finished the Colgate University and married my mother, an American whose grandfather fought in the Civil War between the North and the South.
I have always felt that the heritage of the two peoples in my blood has kept my spirit. And now, as I am growing old, I am even happier for my good fortune. My father's people have met me warmly and have given me a high prize the Cyrille and Methodius Order (First Class). I was elected a foreign member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and I am in touch with many friends in Bulgaria."