Iowa State professor John Atanasoff liked fast cars and scotch, according to interviews he gave. After driving to a bar in Illinois, he had a few drinks and sketched out on a napkin a concept out for an electronic device that could perform math functions with signals from vacuum tubes. The ABC Computer was built in 1941. It could perform multiplication, but worked stopped on the project after the attack on Pearl Harbor and Atanasoff never returned to it.
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- Thanks to Gazzzman for the link to Colossus. As an aside, there's a nice (historical fiction) tale of Bletchley Park in Neal Stephenson's book "Cryptonomicon"... (Read the rest)
- Posted by: dstitt@... Posted on: 02/27/09 You are currently: a Guest | Log in | Terms of Use
RE: Birth of the first computer
bfilipiak@... | 09/19/08
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RE: (Images: Birth of the first computer)
gazzzman | 10/24/08
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Article on Colossus
dstitt@... | 02/27/09
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