I just finished reading the book "The Man Who Invented The Computer, The
Biography of John Atanosoff" By Jane Smiley. (I picked up the book on
E-bay for under 7 dollars) This is a very interesting book. (Though the
technical discussion on vacuum tube electronics leaves a lot to be
desired.)
J Atanosoff was a physics professor at Iowa State College who along with
a student assistant Clifford Berry produced an electronic Digital (Base
2) computer using a capacitor drum memory. It had 30 parallel
processors! It was very efficient as it only used 600 tubes and was the
size of an office desk. ABC stands for Atanosoff Berry Computer.
Atanosoff came up with the ideas for this in the late 30s. In fact the
ENIAC patents were invalidated in 1973 due to Atanosoff's prior work. I
remember reading a little about the ABC many years ago in I think,
Scientific American Magazine.
Look up John Gustafson and ABC on the Internet. John and others built a
working replica in the 1990s.
Also look up Konrad Zuse a German digital computer pioneer. His digital
computers were relay based he started in the mid 30s.
The book I cited above covers the inventors and builders of ABC, ENIAC,
Colossus, Z1 etc. It is a very interesting book.
Tim Laing
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