Atanasoff: Father of the Computer

This inspired Canadian documentary from filmmakers Mila Aung-Thwin and Daniel Cross tells the story of the dawn of electronic computing as a legal drama. In 1971, Honeywell Corporation, seeking a foothold in information technology, filed to overturn tightly held Sperry Rand/IBM computer patents tied to the development of the famous WWII-era "electronic brain" called ENIAC—a vacuum-tube giant filling an entire room at the University of Pennsylvania. Relevant books, however, alluded to an earlier device, the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (or ABC) at Iowa State College. Lawyers thus sought out the obscure John Vincent Atanasoff, a physicist and inventor who said he was brooding in a roadside honky-tonk when he envisioned an electronic, binary-counting machine with a capacitor-based memory—using electrons in place of the mechanical moving parts of customary adding machines. From 1939 to 1940 he worked on his $5,000 project—a machine the size of a desk—at the school. The ABC had enough ties to ENIAC that courts ultimately found for Honeywell, although this bombshell news that changed the computer field was completely overshadowed by the Watergate scandal. Before his death in 1995, however, Atanasoff gained belated recognition as an unsung pioneer of computing (although a few rival trailblazers here still grumble about the level of his contribution). Presenting an interesting and untold slice of technological history, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)