Atanasoff–Berry computer

Atanasoff–Berry computer (ABC)

Atanasoff–Berry computer replica at Durham Center, Iowa State University
Developer	John Vincent Atanasoff with help of graduate student Clifford Berry
Release date	1942; 82 years ago (1942)
Units sold	1
CPU	More than 300 vacuum tubes @ 60 Hz
Memory	3000 bits
Display	Decimal, via a front panel display
Input	Decimal, via standard IBM 80-column punched cards
Mass	700 pounds (320 kg)

The Atanasoff–Berry computer (ABC) was the first automatic electronic

Its unique contribution was to make computing faster by being the first to use vacuum tubes to do the arithmetic calculations. Prior to this, slower electro-mechanical methods were used by Konrad Zuse's Z1 computer, and the simultaneously developed Harvard Mark I. The first electronic, programmable, digital machine,^[3] the Colossus computer from 1943 to 1945, used similar tube-based technology as ABC.

Overview

Conceived in 1937, the machine was built by

Atanasoff and Berry's computer work was not widely known until it was rediscovered in the 1960s, amid patent disputes over the first instance of an electronic computer. At that time ENIAC, that had been created by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert,^[7] was considered to be the first computer in the modern sense,^{[citation needed]} but in 1973 a U.S. District Court invalidated the ENIAC patent and concluded that the ENIAC inventors had derived the subject matter of the electronic digital computer from Atanasoff. When, in the mid-1970s, the secrecy surrounding the British World War II development of the Colossus computers that pre-dated ENIAC, was lifted^[8][9] and Colossus was described at a conference in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in June 1976, John Mauchly and Konrad Zuse were reported to have been astonished.^[10]

Design and construction

According to Atanasoff's account, several key principles of the Atanasoff–Berry computer were conceived in a sudden insight after a long nighttime drive to Rock Island, Illinois, during the winter of 1937–38. The ABC innovations included electronic computation, binary arithmetic, parallel processing, regenerative capacitor memory, and a separation of memory and computing functions.^[11] The mechanical and logic design was worked out by Atanasoff over the next year. A grant application to build a proof of concept prototype was submitted in March 1939 to the Agronomy department, which was also interested in speeding up computation for economic and research analysis. $5,000 of further funding (equivalent to $110,000 in 2023) to complete the machine came from the nonprofit Research Corporation of New York City.^{[citation needed]}

The ABC was built by Atanasoff and Berry in the basement of the physics building at

The machine was, however, the first to implement:

1. Using vacuum tubes, rather than wheels, ratchets, mechanical switches, or telephone relays, allowing for greater speed than previous computers
2. Using capacitors for memory, rather than mechanical components, allowing for greater speed and density

The memory of the Atanasoff–Berry computer was a system called regenerative capacitor memory, which consisted of a pair of drums, each containing 1600 capacitors that rotated on a common shaft once per second. The capacitors on each drum were organized into 32 "bands" of 50 (30 active bands and two spares in case a capacitor failed), giving the machine a speed of 30 additions/subtractions per second. Data was represented as 50-bit binary fixed-point numbers. The electronics of the memory and arithmetic units could store and operate on 60 such numbers at a time (3000 bits).

The alternating current power-line frequency of 60 Hz was the primary clock rate for the lowest-level operations.

The arithmetic logic functions were fully electronic, implemented with vacuum tubes. The family of logic gates ranged from inverters to two- and three-input gates. The input and output levels and operating voltages were compatible between the different gates. Each gate consisted of one inverting vacuum-tube amplifier, preceded by a resistor divider input network that defined the logical function. The control logic functions, which only needed to operate once per drum rotation and therefore did not require electronic speed, were electromechanical, implemented with relays.

The ALU operated on only one bit of each number at a time; it kept the carry/borrow bit in a capacitor for use in the next AC cycle.^[14]

Although the Atanasoff–Berry computer was an important step up from earlier calculating machines, it was not able to run entirely automatically through an entire problem. An operator was needed to operate the control switches to set up its functions, much like the electro-mechanical calculators and unit record equipment of the time. Selection of the operation to be performed, reading, writing, converting to or from binary to decimal, or reducing a set of equations was made by front-panel switches and, in some cases, jumpers.

There were two forms of input and output: primary user input and output and an intermediate results output and input. The intermediate results storage allowed operation on problems too large to be handled entirely within the electronic memory. (The largest problem that could be solved without the use of the intermediate output and input was two

Intermediate results were binary, written onto paper sheets by electrostatically modifying the resistance at 1500 locations to represent 30 of the 50-bit numbers (one equation). Each sheet could be written or read in one second. The reliability of the system was limited to about 1 error in 100,000 calculations by these units, primarily attributed to lack of control of the sheets' material characteristics. In retrospect, a solution could have been to add a parity bit to each number as written. This problem was not solved by the time Atanasoff left the university for war-related work.

Primary user input was decimal, via standard IBM 80-column punched cards, and output was decimal, via a front-panel display.

Function

The ABC was designed for a specific purpose – the solution of systems of simultaneous linear equations. It could handle systems with up to 29 equations, a difficult problem for the time. Problems of this scale were becoming common in physics, the department in which John Atanasoff worked. The machine could be fed two linear equations with up to 29 variables and a constant term and eliminate one of the variables. This process would be repeated manually for each of the equations, which would result in a system of equations with one fewer variable. Then the whole process would be repeated to eliminate another variable.

George W. Snedecor, the head of Iowa State's Statistics Department, was very likely the first user of an electronic digital computer to solve real-world mathematics problems. He submitted many of these problems to Atanasoff.^[15]

Patent dispute

On June 26, 1947,

Campbell-Kelly and Aspray conclude:^[18]

The extent to which Mauchly drew on Atanasoff's ideas remains unknown, and the evidence is massive and conflicting. The ABC was quite modest technology, and it was not fully implemented. At the very least we can infer that Mauchly saw the potential significance of the ABC and that this may have led him to propose a similar, electronic solution.

The case was legally resolved on October 19, 1973, when U.S. District Judge Earl R. Larson held the ENIAC patent invalid, ruling that the ENIAC derived many basic ideas from the Atanasoff–Berry computer. Judge Larson explicitly stated:

Eckert and Mauchly did not themselves first invent the automatic electronic digital computer, but instead derived that subject matter from one Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff.

Herman Goldstine, one of the original developers of ENIAC wrote:^[19]

Atanasoff contemplated storing the coefficients of an equation in capacitors located on the periphery of a cylinder. He apparently had a prototype of his machine working "early in 1940". This machine was, it should be emphasized, probably the first use of vacuum tubes to do digital computation and was a special-purpose machine. This machine never saw the light of day as a serious tool for computation since it was somewhat premature in its engineering conception and limited in its logical one. Nonetheless it must be viewed as a great pioneering effort. Perhaps its chief importance was to influence the thinking of another physicist who was much interested in the computational process, John W. Mauchly. During the period of Atanasoff's work on his linear equation solver, Mauchly was at Ursinus College, a small school in the environs of Philadelphia. Somehow he became aware of Atanasoff's project and visited him for a week in 1941. During the visit the two men apparently went into Atanasoff's ideas in considerable detail. The discussion greatly influenced Mauchly and through him the entire history of electronic computers.

Replica

The original ABC was eventually dismantled in 1948,^[20] when the university converted the basement to classrooms, and all of its pieces except for one memory drum were discarded.

In 1997, a team of researchers led by

• History of computing hardware
• List of vacuum-tube computers
• Mikhail Kravchuk

References