Abstract
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) was invented by John Atanasoff and built with the assistance of his graduate student, Clifford Berry. It was a digital machine that was designed for a specific purpose (i.e., solving linear equations) rather than as a general-purpose computer, and the working prototype was one of the earliest electronic digital computers. It was tested and operational by 1942, and its historical significance is that it demonstrated the feasibility of electronic computing.
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Notes
- 1.
The ABC was ruled to be the first electronic digital computer in the Sperry Rand vs. Honeywell patent case in 1973. However, it was preceded by Zuse’s Z3 which was created in Germany in 1941.
- 2.
ENIAC is discussed in Chap. 23.
- 3.
Sperry-Rand held the patents for ENIAC (as they had been sold by Mauchly to Sperry-Rand).
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O’Regan, G. (2018). ABC Computer. In: The Innovation in Computing Companion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02619-6_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02619-6_2
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