The first digital electronic calculator is a debated topic. In 1937, John Atanasoff and Cliff Berry invented the ABC computer, capable of solving simple equations. The ENIAC, built in 1946, was programmable and exhibited true logic-based multi-branching computational capability. A lawsuit in 1973 ruled that the ABC computer was the first electronic digital computer under US law. However, most historians consider the ENIAC as the first due to its programmability and operational history.
The identity of the first digital electronic calculator is a question frequently debated by technology historians and computer enthusiasts. In 1937, Iowa State College professor and graduate student John Atanasoff and Cliff Berry invented and built the first electronic digital computing device. Known as the ABC computer, after the two men, it was not a programmable device but was designed to solve simple equations. In 1946, two researchers from the University of Pennsylvania finished work on the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC), which received the first patent for a digital electronic computing device.
The ABC computer was the size of a desk and could only solve a series of linear equations. It wasn’t fully programmable in the way that the general purpose computers that came after it were, but it was a purpose-built device capable of only one function. This leads some to deny its status as a true computer. Part of this controversy stems from different definitions of the word “computer.”
For many years, the work of Presper Echert and John Mauchly on the ENIAC computer was regarded as having produced the first digital electronic computer. The ENIAC was surely the first device of its kind to be both programmable and to exhibit something called Turing completeness, a criterion of true logic-based multi-branching computational capability. In 1964, Echert and Mauchly received a patent for their device, which was built and funded by the US Department of Defense.
In 1973, after a lawsuit filed by the Honeywell company, a US federal court issued a decision ruling that the ENIAC patent was invalid and derived from Atanasoff and Berry’s earlier work on the ABC computer. This made the ABC computer the first electronic digital computer, at least under US law. An earlier device, made in Germany, had similar capabilities, but operated on an electromechanical basis and was not a true digital device.
Historians recognize both the ABC computer and the ENIAC computer as the progenitors of modern computers. History shows, and the law has ruled, that, technically, the ABC computer was the first digital electronic computer. Most modern historians of technology and computing, however, believe that its lack of programmability relegates it to a status of nothing more than the forerunner of what many consider, due to its programmability and operational history, the very first digital electronic computer, ENIAC.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
