Who is the inventor of electronic computer?
Professor John Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry built the world’s first electronic-digital computer at Iowa State University between 1939 and 1942. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer represented several innovations in computing, including a binary system of arithmetic, parallel processing, regenerative memory, and a separation of memory and computing functions. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly were the first to patent a digital computing device, the ENIAC computer. A patent infringement case (Sperry Rand Vs. Honeywell, 1973) voided the ENIAC patent as a derivative of John Atanasoff’s invention. Atanasoff was quite generous in stating, “there is enough credit for everyone in the invention and development of the electronic computer.” Eckert and Mauchly received most of the credit for inventing the first electronic-digital computer. Historians now say that the Atanasoff-Berry computer was the first.
