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poiuytrewq0987
05-25-2012, 11:42 PM
http://www.mamadomia.eu/img/john-atanasov.jpg

he 1973 decision of the patent suit Honeywell v. Sperry Rand named him the inventor of the first automatic electronic digital computer. His special-purpose machine has come to be called the Atanasoff–Berry Computer.

The son of a Bulgarian immigrant who became an electrical engineer, Atanasoff held positions as a teaching professor, a governmental wartime research director, and a corporate research executive before being recognized in the 1970s and 1980s for digital electronic computer research he conducted at Iowa State College in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Partly due to the drudgery of using the mechanical Monroe calculator, which was the best tool available to him while he was writing his doctoral thesis, Atanasoff began to search for faster methods of computation. At Iowa State, Atanasoff researched the use of slaved Monroe calculators and IBM tabulators for scientific problems. In 1936 he invented an analog calculator for analyzing surface geometry. The fine mechanical tolerance required for good accuracy pushed him to consider digital solutions.

According to Atanasoff, several operative principles of the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) were conceived by the professor in a flash of insight during the winter of 1937–1938 after a drive to Rock Island, Illinois. With a grant of $650 received in September 1939 (the equivalent of $8403 in 2010) and the assistance of his graduate student Clifford Berry, the ABC was prototyped by November of that year.

The key ideas employed in the ABC included binary math and Boolean logic to solve up to 29 simultaneous linear equations. The ABC had no central processing unit (CPU), but was designed as an electronic device using vacuum tubes for digital computation. It also used separate regenerative capacitor memory that operated by a process still used today in DRAM memory.

Geminus
05-26-2012, 02:09 PM
Well, every nation claims to be the first inventor of something but have you heard of this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse

Archduke
08-25-2012, 04:38 PM
Well, every nation claims to be the first inventor of something but have you heard of this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse


John Vincent Atanasoff (ataˈnasɔf; October 4, 1903 – June 15, 1995) was an American physicist and inventor.
The 1973 decision of the patent suit Honeywell v. Sperry Rand named him the inventor of the first automatic electronic digital computer. His special-purpose machine has come to be called the Atanasoff–Berry Computer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Vincent_Atanasoff

Geminus
08-25-2012, 08:58 PM
Konrad Zuse (German: [ˈkɔnʁat ˈtsuːzə]; 1910–1995) was a German civil engineer, inventor and computer pioneer. His greatest achievement was the world's first functional program-controlled Turing-complete computer, the Z3, which became operational in May 1941.

Insuperable
08-25-2012, 09:08 PM
Atanasoff-Berry computer was the first ELECTRONIC digital computer ( first advanced mechanism to separate data processing from memory, capacitators for hold the charge for memory...) while Zuse's Z3 was the first programmable Turing complete computer and Zuse is the inventor of the first programming language.
Atanasoff-Berry computer was not programmable while Z3 was not electronic.
The first PROGRAMMABLE ELECTRONIC computer was Colossus computer.

Anusiya
08-25-2012, 10:33 PM
Computers are pretty much all-human. They reflect logic, only this time implemented with electric components, instead of shafts and tubes.

Geminus
08-26-2012, 11:32 AM
Computers are pretty much all-human. They reflect logic, only this time implemented with electric components, instead of shafts and tubes.

Modern computers indeed share some interesting characteristics with the human brain for example short- and long-term memory (RAM and HDD) and several other things.

poiuytrewq0987
08-26-2012, 12:21 PM
Modern computers indeed share some interesting characteristics with the human brain for example short- and long-term memory (RAM and HDD) and several other things.

Well, the only difference is probably the fact we're organic and the machines aren't. Technology will continue to evolve to a point it gets hard to tell whether the machines are any different from conscious organic beings.

Lithium
08-26-2012, 12:28 PM
Atanasov''s achievements clearly proves the fact that this could happen in Bulgaria, if we have a better budjet to invest in science and technology. We have a lot of scientists with a great potential and a zero support from Bulgaria.

poiuytrewq0987
08-26-2012, 12:37 PM
Atanasov''s achievements clearly proves the fact that this could happen in Bulgaria, if we have a better budjet to invest in science and technology. We have a lot of scientists with a great potential and a zero support from Bulgaria.

Yes, it's a sordid matter. Bulgaria is a small country compared to Germany or Spain so it should rather emphasize its intellectual might rather than direct, militaristic might. Conquer through knowledge.