THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 17, 1995 TAG: 9506170384
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: MONROVIA, MD. LENGTH: Short : 43 lines
John V. Atanasoff, who waited more than 30 years to receive credit for developing the first electronic computer, has died at age 91.
Atanasoff, who died of a stroke Thursday at his Maryland farmhouse, conceived of the idea for a computer while a professor at Iowa State University, and his prototype was completed in 1939.
But his work was overshadowed by the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, a machine built in 1945 in Pennsylvania that was credited as the first computer.
Atanasoff's work was finally recognized when a federal judge voided Sperry Rand's patent on the ENIAC in 1973, saying it had been derived from Atanasoff's invention.
The Smithsonian Institution exhibited Atanasoff's work in 1989, and President Bush gave him the National Medal of Technology in 1990.
In 1937, Atanasoff was working on ways to help graduate students complete lengthy calculations when he decided to clear his mind with a long drive. After 189 miles, he stopped at a roadside bar in Illinois, where he developed the concepts behind modern computing over several bourbons, his wife, Alice, said in a 1990 interview.
His machine was the first to use the binary system in electronic computing, researcher Allan Mackintosh wrote in 1988 in Scientific American magazine. It used vacuum tubes and could solve equations containing 29 variables.
ENIAC was built by John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert Jr. in Philadelphia in 1945. Mauchly had visited Atanasoff in 1941 and examined his computer.
Besides his wife, survivors include two daughters and a son, four sisters and three brothers, 10 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. A memorial service is scheduled for Monday.
KEYWORDS: DEATH OBITUARY by CNB