Subject: Re: Atanasoff/Berry computer... Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 18:17:22 -0600 From: John Gustafson To: Tom Jennings Tom, I just realized I never answered your question: >Sorry, I forgot one item. > >Why did Atanasoff disappear from the computer development forefront? >Clearly he had a clue. I don't believe Atanasoff was ever one to start a business of his own. He made a lot of money in real estate, but he never incorporated anything or hired people in the way you'd associate with entrepeneurs. He loved the puzzle aspect of every problem that he stumbled on, but having solved one puzzle, he'd move to the next one and forget all about the one he'd just solved. He had about 30 patents when he died, and a lot of them have obvious commercial possibilities... a way to test the freshness of eggs without breaking them, a windmill-powered sailboat, and a binary encoding scheme that was far ahead of its time in being able to communicate in any human language, a lot like Unicode. Sometimes he didn't even PUBLISH his inventions, but he patented them and then moved on. Also, in the particular case of the computer, I can understand why no one got super-excited about a great big heavy thing that cost about $300,000 in present dollars and could only do about one operation every 15 seconds (including all overhead and human operator time). And back then, no one had voiced "Moore's Law" that computers would double in performance every 18 months or so. I have to give Mauchly and Eckert credit for one thing: They could see the business potential of electronic computing, and pursued it with a vengeance. Even IBM didn't figure that out until about 1949. You'll notice that Atanasoff left Iowa State University for the war effort, but then didn't come back. None of the histories have dealt with this fact, and I think it's key to understanding what happened. The deep dark secret is this: ISU didn't treat Atanasoff very well. They gave him zero respect while he was at ISU, and zero respect after he left. Only after Clark Mollenhoff managed to convince a lot of people about Atanasoff's contribution did ISU gradually own up to the accomplishments of their erstwhile physics professor. That's a VERY big part of the reason the ABC was never patented... ISU even told Atanasoff he'd have to pay the $100 to have it patented out of his own pocket, and $100 was a fair chunk of change back then! I spent 10 years at ISU as an adjunct professor, and sad to say, ISU is still doing this to its talent. They lost Pulitzer-prize winning Jane Smiley, for example, and some world-class scientists that they didn't even give tenure to (so they left and started companies and became rich). I don't know why ISU is so reluctant to recognize the worth of its own faculty, but from the Atanasoff story I know this has been going on at least 60 years. Maybe it has to do with being a state-funded school. Anyway, I hope that answers your question. Feel free to write anytime! -John Gustafson