I’m a bit late with a comment, but just read this now and it reminder me of a post I just put up a few days ago about my proposed solution for “obvious” patents or benevolent inventors:

http://www.tallent.us/CommentView.aspx?guid=06d2ed56-6e64-480d-81e7-b4e7b41d074a

Colussus was not a complete general-purpose computer. It was not possible to reprogram it for general computation, as it was built for breaking codes. ENIAC achieved a programming system because you could program it with repluggable cables. Certainly there are ideas in common between the systems we are discussing, but Colussus was not a complete digital computer.

Eckert and Mauchly created a general-purpose digital computer with the basic essentials, including a programming system. Atanasoff, by his own admission, failed to do this. Atanasoff’s history of rejection and that he admits his computer did not work ends the discussion of whether his computer was first. The prior art claim is suspiscious on these grounds. As for why the patent was overturned, it is hard to say, we can only speculate. The decision was never appealed, despite Eckert and Mauchly’s wish to do so. It was not their decision. Whether it was a social good that the patent was overturned, given the industrial monopoly at the heart of the issue is a separate question, upon which I have no comment.

Were there other ideas and work that were relevant to what Eckert and Mauchly did and the evolution of comptuer science than ENIAC? Yes. Did someone else create a working general-purpose digital computer with a prorgamming system before ENIAC? No. That was Eckert and Mauchly’s invention and innovation.

I was watching a Discovery Channel documentary on the how great the NSA is. They mentioned the great computers they had to do codebreaking for the British in the second world war. This computer was named Colossus. They failed to mention how they got this computer in the first place. It all sounded as if the British had no idea what they were doing and needed the Americans to help them out. Sigh…

Interestingly also is the failure of mentioning in any documentary on the allied code breaking efforts that the allied’s own codes were so terrible that intercepting transmission was a walk in the park for the Germans…

Uh, Bryan, there remains the awkward question of how these two great innovators, without whom we could never have had electronic computers if we are to believe your comment, managed to lose so badly in court. As for how original the innovation was… the British seem to have stumbled upon most of the same ideas two years earlier at Bletchley Park.

The book “ENIAC” by Scott McCartney examines the same period of history. McCartney acknowledges that Mauchly was influenced by Atanasoff, but raises interesting questions and finds different conclusions.

McCartney finds documented evidence that Mauchly tried to work with Atanasoff and encouraged him to apply to the Moore School in 1941. Atanasoff did not take action on this invitation. Atanasoff also tried to get his computer working for the Navy in competition to ENIAC. The Navy rejected Atanasoff’s work because it didn’t work. Atanasoff also rejected ENIAC and went in a different but unsuccesful direction in further development. The net of this is that Atanasoff had some good concepts and ideas, but Eckert and Mauchly were the first people to get a digital computer truly working for real applications and customers. Moreover, it isn’t clear at all that Mauchly did not independently develop the same ideas of Atanasoff. Moreover, Atanasoff’s work is questionable from a prior art perspective because it didn’t work.

Atanasoff made his own attempts in 1940 to obtain a patent on his computer and to work with RAND and IBM. Atanasoff also attempted to get a working programming system for the ABC. All of these attempts were unsuccessful. Atanasoff’s patent application was rejected because his computer did not work. Mauchly kept up communication with Atanasoff and gave him progress reports on ENIAC. Mauchly asked Atanasoff what had happened to his computer, but Atanasoff said he abandoned it. Atanasoff has further gone on historical record admitting he abandoned his work and never saw it through to completion.

Atanasoff had no programming system. He tried for a patent and was told his work was too incomplete for a patent. Eckert and Mauchly achieved a complete workable computing system. Atanasoff did not, and he declined to work with Mauchly to complete his ideas.

Your point about timing should be turned around to a point about perseverance. Atanasoff should not have given up so easily and should have accepted efforts to work with Mauchly.

Your point about innovation is wrong. ENIAC was a great innovation by virtually any definition. It was the world’s first digital computer. It was Eckert and Mauchly’s invention. All inventions and research are influenced by others. That does not mean that it is not the province of a particular group of individuals to complete the theory or invention and make it work. Innovation requires that the idea work, not to just have an idea, fail at it, and then try to take credit for it. Just as Edison built on scientific ideas to invent the lightbulb, so too did Eckert and Mauchly.

Interesting to the point of Atanasoff not getting credit, McCartney makes a case that Mauchly and Eckert are often ignored and not given proper credit for computers; IBM, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs apparently seem to get all the credit .

http://www.zib.de/prospekt/zuse/index.en.html

Actualy, Google found this, interesting overview, page, which strangely doesn’t seem linked to from anywhere on that site…

http://www.microcomputerhistory.com/f14rfish.htm

A quick Google came up with this: http://www.microcomputerhistory.com/index.html

You write: “1968-70 the Air Force funded a fairly powerful 20-bit microprocessor project…which worked but was kept secret” Can you supply some more references for this? It sounds like an interesting story.

Ironically, all of Intel’s successful microprocessors are direct descendants of the 4004. The attempts Intel has made to deviate from that linage (the i432, 860, Itanium) have flopped.