John Vincent Atanasoff

John Vincent Atanasoff (IPA: [ata'nasɔf]) (October 4, 1903 – June 15, 1995) was an American physicist. The 1973 decision of the patent suit Honeywell v. Sperry Rand named him the inventor of the first automatic electronic digital computer, a special-purpose machine that has come to be called the Atanasoff–Berry Computer. The son of a Bulgarian immigrant who became an electrical engineer, Atanasoff held positions as a teaching professor, a governm... more

John Vincent Atanasoff (IPA: [ata'nasɔf]) (October 4, 1903 – June 15, 1995) was an American physicist. The 1973 decision of the patent suit Honeywell v. Sperry Rand named him the inventor of the first automatic electronic digital computer, a special-purpose machine that has come to be called the Atanasoff–Berry Computer. The son of a Bulgarian immigrant who became an electrical engineer, Atanasoff held positions as a teaching professor, a governmental wartime research director, and a corporate research executive before being recognized in the 1970s and 1980s for digital electronic computer research he conducted at Iowa State College in the late 1930s and early 1940s. John Atanasoff was born on October 4, 1903 in Hamilton, New York to an electrical engineer and a school teacher. Atanasoff's father, Ivan Atanasoff was born in 1876 in the village of Boyadzhik, Ottoman Empire (present-day Bulgaria). While Ivan was still an infant, Ivan's own father was killed by Turkish soldiers after the... less