The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer | By Jane Smiley | Doubleday | 256 pages, $25.95
In The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer, Jane Smiley explores the origin story of a tool so ubiquitous that it can at times feel inevitable. As computers get smaller, faster, and ever more disposable, they seem to develop exponentially on their own. It is sometimes easy to forget that computers have not always existed, did not evolve alongside humanity in some parallel virulent strain. As this book reminds us, the first computer developed in the 1930s was a simple calculator: the means to an end. One wonders what the original pioneers of this technology would think, seventy-odd years later, of Facebook, YouTube, and (gasp) Chatroulette.
Smiley’s book focuses on the work of a thirty-four-year-old physics professor at Iowa State College. John Atanasoff was patient with his students, teaching them quantum mechanics with a kind of Socratic method. But he was impatient with the limitations of the current methods of calculation. “By the 1930s, solving mathematical equations with large numbers of variables was becoming a serious obstacle to progress not only in education and science, but also in industry, government, and the military,” Smiley writes. Atanasoff, with his knack for practical solutions, was up to the task: in one telling anecdote, the young inventor rigged up an electric laundry-wringer so it could shell his family’s soybean crops.
Atanasoff experimented with several different hypothetical calculating machines until inspiration struck one night at a tavern, and he scribbled the outlines of a new concept on a cocktail napkin. His idea was to fabricate a closed system in which “capacitors and vacuum tubes would charge one another, in a feedback loop,” Smiley writes. “What is especially intriguing, and even moving, about Atanasoff’s story is that the machine he was trying to create was intended to mimic the brain—it was to be a self-organizing system….” Atanasoff made many false starts before he transformed theory into reality, and that circuitous transformation is at the heart of Smiley’s book.
Smiley also weaves in a “gallery of odd ducks”—the other engineers and physicists working on concurrent (and sometimes collaborative) computer projects. There’s the Princeton mathematician Alan Turing, perhaps the most famous of these absent-minded professors. Konrad Zuse, working alone in Berlin, built a computer prototype so big that it took up almost the entirety of his parents’ apartment. The young and ambitious physicist John Mauchly serves as the book’s villain. After listening to Atanasoff describe his early experiments, and studying a prototype he had constructed in 1941, Mauchly (in Smiley’s account of events) secretly built upon those innovations for his own work.
In 1946, Mauchly unveiled ENIAC, which was later hailed as the world’s first digital computer. Atanasoff only then learned that his employer, Iowa State College, had never filed the patent applications for his own ideas of the late 1930s and early 1940s, so he had no way to defend his intellectual property. Meanwhile, the computer revolution rolled on and left him behind. Decades later, in 1973, a long-fought patent case did give Atanasoff credit for having invented the first automatic electronic computer (called the Atanasoff-Berry Computer or ABC). Still, he never got the acclaim he deserved from his colleagues, let alone from the public.
As a piece of history, this is an important book; one man’s story that has not yet been adequately told. It is not, however, a breezy read: don’t expect the emotional weight and glimmering sentences of Smiley’s A Thousand Acres. Too often, what drives The Man Who Invented the Computer is the chronology of events, rather than a particular theme, or the arc of a character’s development. Smiley does a good job of explaining the particulars of the various prototypes, and who did what, when. But the story could stand to lose some of the dry details in favor of a smoother narrative. A book with such a technical topic must be infused with, and shaped by, the excitement of discovery.
There are major problems with taking this book as history. As you point out, most of her sources are already published. Note that though she writes at length about Mauchly and his supposed subterfuge, ill intentions, etc., she utlizes but one source that was written about him; all the rest of her "information" comes from sources that were written in support of Atanasoff, and those sources, or Smiley herself, do a lot of "filling in the gaps" with speculation. E.g., she questions how Mauchly gained access to Atanasoff's lab at NOL in the 1940s. Noting that Mauchly's father was an "emininent scientist in D.C." she insinuates that the elder Mauchly somehow arranged for his son to get clearance. Without much research, she could have discovered that 1) Mauchly was hired by von Neumann to be a consultant on the project, and 2) Mauchly's father died in 1928, leaving one to wonder how he could have arranged security clearance for his son during a War that started 13 years after his death. In Smiley's book, Mauchly is indeed a villain, because she made him one, relying on her Iowa State sources and her own imagination. If she had consulted a variety of sources, we might consider this a history. Instead, it is "historical fiction" kind of like the things we've seen lately about Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth ... only not as well researched.
#1 Posted by Gini Calcerano, CJR on Wed 24 Nov 2010 at 05:50 PM
Smiley has not done her homework. This book is a rehash of several biased accounts, which do not square well with the historical record. The available primary sources would support a much more even-handed treatment. Such a treatment has in fact been written by Rocco Martino, but has so far aroused no interest among publishers.
One serious flaw is that Smiley glosses over Atanasoff's abject failure to build a digital computer when he was actually put in charge of a very well funded Navy project to do just that, in 1945-46. According to eyewitness accounts, he provided no effective leadership, technical or otherwise, and the project was canceled after 18 months for lack of progress. That does not sound to me like the expected behavior of the "real inventor of the computer".
It is too bad that the legend of the honest farm boy inventor duped by evil tricksters from the big city has so much popular appeal. It is hardly appropriate in this case, at least as applied to Eckert and Mauchly as the bad guys -- it would be nearer the mark to say that Atanasoff was a dupe of Honeywell's lawyers.
The real story is even more interesting than Smiley's fictional one, and awaits an investigative journalist who is prepared to do it justice.
#2 Posted by Tom Sharpless, CJR on Thu 25 Nov 2010 at 01:19 PM
Gini Calcerano should identify herself--her name in Gini Mauchly Calcerano. Since the publication of The Man Who Invented the Computer, she has been attacking Atanasoff's claims once again, as the Mauchly-ites have attacked those claims since the court case was decided in 1973. They have said over and over for 37 years that they have material that proves Mauchly developed his ideas independently of his visit to Ames and Atanasoff's computer, but they have never produced that material. not even for Scott McCartney, who wrote ENIAC, a book conceived and written to defend Mauchly. And perhaps Tom Sharpless should get to work on his investigative journalism, since he knows the real story.
#3 Posted by Jane Smiley, CJR on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 01:28 PM
I have no problem owning my name, but please don't call me a "Mauchly-ite" as if we were a camp dedicated to trying to crush Atanasoff and his claims. In response to your points, I would note:
1 - Scott McCartney's book was not "conceived and written to defend Mauchly." In fact, Mr. McCartney started with an open question, "Who invented the computer" and did voluminous research before even deciding that he wanted to focus on Mauchly and Eckert. His book reflects his well-researched and thought-out conclusion that the ENIAC was the machine that really brought the world into the computer age. It was never intended to be a defense of Mauchly; it was intended to be fair and even-handed. If that ends up making Mauchly a sympathetic character instead of charlatan and thief, it is not because Mr. McCartney was aiming to prove as much.
2 - No one is saying the ABC was not an extraordinary effort for its time. However, I beg you to show me what items of the ABC show up in the ENIAC. While ABC is binary, ENIAC was decimal. ABC used electronic components, but not in a way to make use of their electronic speeds; it was electro-mechanical in its functioning, and was proved to be so through exhaustive testimony from 3rd party expert witnesses in the Honeywell Trial. The ABC was no faster than anything else at the time. The ENIAC, taking advantage of electronic pulses WITHIN the vacuum tubes, was 5,000 times faster than any other machine at the time. The "smoking gun" capacitor drum ... there wasn't any in the ENIAC, so what's all that about?
I am not trying to dismiss Atanasoff. I am trying to understand why Mauchly has to be made into a villain and a cad for your story to work. The people in Iowa have been yelling loudly and repeatedly about this for a long while, and each time around, the voices become more shrill, and Mauchly becomes more evil.
In fact, Mauchly was a gentle person, an inspirational teacher, and constitutionally incapable of deception. This whole thing with Atanasoff saddened and confused him, as Mauchly thought of him as a scientific colleague.
Any legitimate history of an important subject should include more sources from a wider spectrum of thought than you have consulted. Beyond that, it should not include speculation, insinuation or acts of imagination. Why e.g. do you say that Mauchly's presence at the NOL was a "mystery" and the "visits went on for years"? Consulting the records would have answered that for you without all the nefarious speculation that Mauchly was spying on Atanasoff.
I go on too long. Feel free to contact me personally. I would love to understand why you wrote what you did.
#4 Posted by Gini Calcerano, CJR on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 08:26 PM
As a follow-up to Ms. Smiley’s post, she should identify herself – she received two degrees from the University of Iowa (according to Wikipedia), the same place where Atanasoff (The Man Who Invented the Computer) developed his machine. Had she attended the University of Pennsylvania, as I did, when there were still people around who actually knew the kind of man Mauchly was…would she have cast him as a thief? Doubtful. My major objection to Ms. Smiley’s book (and it seems the objection of several others) is the bias in her references and her cavalier characterization of Eckert and Mauchly as villains. You can do this in novels, but not in a biography. Bravo to Ms. Calcerano for sticking up for her family. I am disappointed in Ms. Smiley’s choice to try to discredit Ms. Calcerano (because she is a Mauchly) rather than address the points she raises.
Additionally, I don’t think Mr. Sharpless, in his post, was claiming he knows some secrets about the invention of the computer (as Ms. Smiley implied in her post), rather I believe he was referring to the wealth of literature in computer history (e.g. the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing) that Ms. Smiley seemed to ignore in her book. I believe his point was that if an investigative journalist, as opposed to a novelist, were to write the story, it would be quite different from Ms. Smiley’s book but equally as interesting.
#5 Posted by D Moberg, CJR on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 08:42 PM
With respect to the Atansoff-Mauchly controversy, an even-handed and thorough treatment may be found in Saul Rosen's 1990 paper, which may be found by Googling "origins of modern computing saul rosen" if the below hyperlink is filtered out.
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/research/technical_reports/1990/TR%2090-1013.pdf
Rosen's simple and elegant refutations are 20 years old, yet Smiley does not address them in her book, but instead copies ham-handedly and affectively from other long-available secondary sources. Smiley's re-rendition is not a useful complement to the history of computing scholar's shelf, and she has done a disservice to lay readers by corrupting the story to a melodrama and reducing real people to thin stereotypes. It is unfitting of them, and no more befitting of her talents as a writer.
#6 Posted by Robert K S, CJR on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 08:49 PM
I grew up on Jolly Road with the Univac building in my front yard. Many of my parent's friends worked there. In the past weeks I've had the chance to share some of Smiley's prose with them. While I wasn't there, they were. The consensus is her knowledge of technology is, at best lacking. As if she was trying to say the inventor of the cathode ray tube stole the idea from the inventor of the Etch-a-Scetch. Sure they both draw lines across a screen but this is a far a one can draw the comparison. ENIAC was not based on a slow capacitor drum, it functioned at electronic speeds and was programable. Her comparison is not only in error, akin to comparing a helicopter to a fixed wing aircraft, she comes off sounding as a shrill, the Ann Coulter of technology.
#7 Posted by richard babillis, CJR on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 08:58 PM
I grew up on Jolly Road with the Univac building in my front yard. Many of my parent's friends worked there. In the past weeks I've had the chance to share some of Smiley's prose with them. While I wasn't there, they were. The consensus is her knowledge of technology is, at best lacking. It is as if she was trying to say the inventor of the cathode ray tube stole the idea from the inventor of the Etch-a-Scetch. Sure they both draw lines across a screen but this is a far a one can draw the comparison. ENIAC was not based on a slow capacitor drum, it functioned at electronic speeds and was programable. Her comparison is not only in error, akin to comparing a helicopter to a fixed wing aircraft, she comes off sounding as a shrill, the Ann Coulter of technology.
#8 Posted by richard babillis, CJR on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 08:59 PM
Dear Ms. Smiley,
I congratulate you on your ability to use the internet to find out who these "attackers " might be. However, it really doesn't matter WHO is pointing out your glaring errors. The main point everyone has been making is that you haven't tried to use primary sources, and instead rely on your imagination which has served you so well in your fiction writing. You have come under attack previously for your inability to get history right , so you would think Random House would try to get you to be more careful. I am sorry that Random House didn't think to provide you with a fact checker, or access to primary sources, such as the transcripts of depositions, or the artifacts of Mauchly's projects at Ursinus.
I am not a scientist, but I can understand the difference between electro- mechanical speeds and electronic speeds. If you are not capable of understanding the technology, or of understanding the difference between history and historical fiction you shouldn't have written the book.
#9 Posted by Eva Mauchly Moos, CJR on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 09:38 PM
I'm shocked that Jane Smiley knew how my book ``ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer'' was conceived when she has never contacted me or inquired. I'm equally surprised that she tries to discount my reporting and analysis with her own false assumptions.
My book was based on extensive reporting with surviving participants, personal papers of participants, the extensive federal court record, company archives, Army records, previous books, academic articles and oral histories. It began with a simple question when I was covering the computer industry for The Wall Street Journal: Who invented the computer? I believe the book presents a fair and important history. For Jane Smiley to suggest otherwise is simply wrong.
--Scott McCartney
The Wall Street Journal
#10 Posted by Scott McCartney, CJR on Sun 28 Nov 2010 at 11:26 PM
(To Lauren Kirchner))In the above review, you mention "his (Atanassoff's) legal battles with his peers."
I can't find mention of any such legal battles on wikipedia or in the book you describe. The trial described in the book is one in which Atanassoff was used as a witness by Honeywell. Whether or not he was paid for his testimony, Honeywell compensated him by creating the first working model of the machine.(His had never been completed ) It was not HIS legal battle, nor that of Mauchly or any other witness.. It was a battle between two large corporations in which this man was used as a pawn (and possibly compensated) for the strategy of the big corporation with the most to lose or gain by the outcome.
If, as you say, the book is an important piece of history, you also should be accurate in writing about it.
#11 Posted by Eva M Moos, CJR on Mon 29 Nov 2010 at 09:05 AM
Smiley's book makes much of the trial between Sperry and Honeywell. She relies heavily on the rulings of Judge Larson as evidence of the invention of computers by John Atanasoff. That reliance is incorrect. Had she studied the trial in detail, she would have realized that the trial is a travesty of injustice.
In 1972, Honeywell launched a countersuit on Sperry Rand in an attempt to avoid paying significant royalties based on the ENIAC patents assigned to Sperry Rand by Eckert and Mauchly. Through a series of strange convolutions, the trial was moved to Minnesota, a state where Honeywell was one of the largest employers. The ten-month trial was heard in Federal Court without a jury by Judge Earl R. Larson, who had no knowledge of computers and who apparently asked no questions during the proceedings. Judge Larson declared John Atanasoff the inventor of the computer, invalidated the Sperry Patents, and dismissed Honeywell’s complaint against Sperry for unfair trade practices.
As plaintiff rather than defendant, and as the largest employer in the State of Minnesota, Honeywell could present itself as the seriously aggrieved party before a judge who would look beyond the law for factors more in the line of his notion of “justice” than in the letter of the law. In that regard, Honeywell opted for a strategy of characterizing itself as the hapless victim of a blatant attempt at monopoly by Sperry Rand. This allegation cited an earlier cross-licensing agreement between Sperry and IBM as a conspiracy to control the fledgling industry. Honeywell further opted for a strategy of inundating the court with a myriad of documents that would both smother Sperry’s documents and inhibit the ability to extract the truth from the avalanche of material. Judge Larson was presented with over 32,000 exhibits, 26,000 from Honeywell. Some of these documents contained several hundred pages. The trial transcript was over 20,000 pages.
One byproduct of Honeywell’s victory was the unfortunate pall cast upon invention that has affected the computer industry to this day.
Larson's final ruling was well crafted. He dismissed the anti-trust charges which satisfied Sperry; and he cancelled the ENIAC patents which satisfied Honeywell. Mauchly and Atanasoff were collateral aspects to both.
None of this is covered in Smiley's book. That is unfortunate. She wrote a fine novel. It is not completely factual history.
These comments are copyright 2010 by Rocco Leonard Martino, and contain excerpts from his book "People, Machines and Politics of the Cyber Age Creation"
#12 Posted by Rocco Martino, CJR on Mon 29 Nov 2010 at 10:10 AM
As a member-by-marriage of the Mauchly family I am perhaps biased, but two points should be made that have not. First, Dr. Mauchly never really profited from his invention in any significant financial sense. If he were such a villain, wouldn't he have seen to that? Second, I have read Jane Smiley's other books and found them to be contrived and silly. That her "biography" is such should not be a surprise to anyone.
#13 Posted by Bill moos, CJR on Mon 29 Nov 2010 at 11:44 AM
The story of Atanasoff was first reported in Clark Mollenhoff's biography, Atanasoff, the forgotten father of the computer, twenty two years ago,(Ames, Iowa State University Press, 1988) Since nobody has mentioned this book, I would like it noted.
Clark Mollenhoff was both an investigative reporter and a lawyer. He was one of the few reporters to win the Pulitzer Prize twice.
#14 Posted by David Reno, CJR on Tue 30 Nov 2010 at 03:40 PM
In fact, Mr. Mollenhoff's biography of Atanasoff is one of the books upon which Ms. Smiley based hers. One wonders why another had to be written. I have heard, though I cannot verify this, that Mr. Mollenhoff wrote this book at the request of the City of Ames, IA, and or Iowa State Univ. Not exactly "investigative."
#15 Posted by Gini Calcerano, CJR on Tue 30 Nov 2010 at 06:52 PM
Indeed, Mollenhoff is an Iowa native, and his book on Atanasoff was published by the Iowa State University Press. May I presume that other publishers thought it was not well enough researched, biased, or bordering on libel?
#16 Posted by Gini Mauchlyite Calcerano, CJR on Tue 30 Nov 2010 at 06:58 PM
Mollenhoff also publishes with Doubleday. Is this getting incestuous yet?
#17 Posted by Gini Mauchlyite Calcerano, CJR on Tue 30 Nov 2010 at 07:00 PM
For the record, D. Moberg is right: though my father helped build ENIAC, I don't have any secret information. Indeed I knew very little about l'affaire Atanasoff until I started getting Bill Mauchly's e-mails about Jane Smiley. Had read Alice Burks' book, of course, but was not much convinced by it. Have since learned more, from the many sources available online.
The investigative journalist I had in mind would not be writing about Atanasoff vs Mauchly, but about Honeywell vs Sperry, the Travesty of the Century.
#18 Posted by Tom Sharpless, CJR on Tue 30 Nov 2010 at 09:49 PM
In case it isn't obvious, I am the John Gustafson who led the reconstruction of the ABC, just to indicate which "camp" I fall in. As long as this discussion sticks to facts, I think it can be constructive.
Jane Smiley obtained her M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. That is not the school where Atanasoff developed the computer (Iowa State College, now Iowa State University). Equating the University of Iowa with Iowa State University (D Moberg's posting) is like equating USC and UCLA, since both have California in their names.
Computer historians are in broad agreement that many people contributed to the invention of the computer. That point is made throughout Smiley's book; the 1930s and 1940s had a flurry of activity by many people in many countries, and she gives credit to all of them, using primary sources.There is no shortage of primary source material, and perhaps the most revealing are the letters and writings of the inventors themselves. Mollenhoff did an excellent job of bringing those to light to show the ABC-ENIAC part of the story. Smiley's book brings in Turing, Zuse, Aiken, Flowers, von Neumann and thus completes the picture. It does not vilify Mauchly, but it certainly makes obvious that anyone claiming that Mauchly and Eckert deserve all the credit for developing electronic computing is seeing only a very small and carefully selected part of the history.
#19 Posted by John Gustafson, CJR on Mon 6 Dec 2010 at 02:21 AM
John Gustafson writes that "anyone claiming that Mauchly and Eckert deserve all the credit for developing electronic computing is seeing only a very small and carefully selected part of the history." I agree. But the title of Smiley's book suggests that Atanasoff deserves all the credit -- a claim even more myopic.
#20 Posted by Ken McLean, CJR on Mon 6 Dec 2010 at 01:16 PM
Ken McLean's comment confirms one of my suspicions: That many people who are posting have read only the title of Jane Smiley's book, and not its contents. The contents do not give sole credit to Atanasoff as the title implies.
#21 Posted by John Gustafson, CJR on Tue 7 Dec 2010 at 01:06 AM
John Gustafson suspects that many critics of the book have read only the title. I for one have read the entire book. I have also read the Burks' book and Alice Burk's later book, Scott McCartney's book, Nancy Stern's history, Saul Rosen's paper and many other more general works on computer history. I believe most of the critical posts have got it right -- the book grossly exaggerates Atanasoff's contributions to computing. The title of a book is usually indicative of its purpose. If Smiley did not intend to annoint Atanasoff as THE inventor of the computer why did't she call her book "The Men Who Invented the Computer" and remove Atanasoff's picture from its cover?
#22 Posted by Ken McLean, CJR on Tue 7 Dec 2010 at 04:36 PM
John Gustafson makes many good points. I agree that the 1930s and 1940s were a time that was ripe for electronic invention, and that many people made contributions on the road to modern computing. I admired the way Smiley brought in the stories of so many people doing that early work, whether or not the work was known at the time.
But he says the book "does not vilify Mauchly," I am sorry to say that it DOES. Mauchly is the only one of the computer pioneers about whom it is said he was "unable" to have any original ideas, and must have taken everything from Dr. Atanasoff. The book relies heavily on the transcripts of the Honeywell Trial, as if all the facts were presented in it, when in fact, much was withheld from the testimony because it wouldn't not have helped one side or the other.
Sperry had no interest in showing the variety of sources that influenced Mauchly, from his own need for high-speed computing to process his sun-spot data, to his visits to Swarthmore to see how electronic tubes could be utilized, to other influences at Penn, professional conferences, G. Stibitz, etc..
Honeywell certainly had no interest in airing the fact that Art Burks was extremely unhappy that he was not included in the ENIAC patents, and had told Mauchly in the 1960s that bad things would happen to him and his reputation in the future, if he didn't agree to adding his name.
Neither side was interested in showing that Dr. Atanasoff and Dr. Mauchly enjoyed a collegial friendship for years....that is before Honeywell decided that they could save themselves millions of dollars by making a case out of Atanasoff's early work.
Every review I have read refers to this book as a "gripping read" or even "techno-thriller" citing the "villain in the story" as John Mauchly. Smiley herself (following Mollenhoff) makes a "plot" out of the fact that Mauchly is a deceptive and nefarious character. (See my comments above.) Why is he the ONLY computer pioneer who can't have his own thoughts, but must steal them from others?
Gustafson also says Smiley used primary sources, but the bibliography of the book shows hardly any. Is he counting her interview with Kirwan Cox, not a primary source, but at least someone who has done some poking around into sources beyond those that come out of Iowa? There is plenty of data at Iowa State, but it appears she took it "pre-packaged" from Mollenhoff and Burks. There is also plenty of data and the complete Mauchly papers at the University of Pennsylvania archives. But it does not appear she consulted that at all.
Indeed, she uses basically one or two sources per pioneer. That's fine for individuals about whom she writes a few pages. That is not sufficient in the case of Mauchly, who is cited more times in the book than anyone but Atanasoff himself, and about whom unfounded claims are made about his character, intentions and personality. If half the book is about Mauchly, then half her research should have been as well.
#23 Posted by Gini Calcerano, CJR on Wed 8 Dec 2010 at 10:20 AM
Indeed, Mr. Gustafson, re: villifying Mauchly, the very review we are commenting on says: "The young and ambitious physicist John Mauchly serves as the book’s villain." Okay right off the bat, Mauchly was only 4 years younger than Atanasoff, and not really an ambitious type, as anyone who knew him would attest. But Smiley has made him somehow a young guy with no ideas, rather than a Johns Hopkins PhD; made him ambitious for fame and fortune, rather than keenly interested in solving problems that required loads of data to be processed.
The reviewer continues, "After listening to Atanasoff describe his early experiments, and studying a prototype he had constructed in 1941, Mauchly (in Smiley’s account of events) secretly built upon those innovations for his own work." The reviewer knows nothing of John Mauchly's other preparation for building a computer, because Smiley didn't describe it, except to refer to the trial where it was mentioned in dismissive terms and never really explored.
Thus is Mauchly made into a thief and a villain. One review even had him caricatured as a bandit with a sack of loot.
I am not trying to say Mauchly and Eckert operated in a vacuum. But I am saying they were ethical, hard working, and smart. Jane Smiley's saying otherwise in a national forum, where her well-known name will attract readers who don't know any better than to believe her, is a serious problem.
#24 Posted by Gini Calcerano, CJR on Wed 8 Dec 2010 at 10:34 AM
I am happy to see Dr. Gustafson the ABC expert, in the conversation. After watching the demonstration of the reconstructed ABC on youtube, I am curious to hear an opinion on this aspect. Comparing the ABC to the ENIAC seems to be like comparing a wringer washer to an automatic one. A person is required to enter each item one by one, then process each thing one by one, then complete the process, item by item. There is no time saving. Using a program and electronic (rather than electromechanical) speeds are BIG ideas that were not in the ABC. Can someone name something in the ENIAC that WAS taken from the ABC? And doesn't 5000 times faster count as a pretty important innovation? No one is discounting that Atanasoff was brilliant, or that he had a great idea. He just isn't the only one.
#25 Posted by Eva Mauchly Moos, CJR on Wed 8 Dec 2010 at 01:14 PM
We're drifting a bit both from Smiley's book and the review of it, but I'm happy to answer this technical questions. The Youtube example uses such small integers that it's easy to forget that the ABC did everything in 50-bit precision, equivalent to about 15 decimals on a base ten computer. If you've ever tried multiplying two 15-decimal numbers by hand, I think you'd be doing well to finish one such operation in under 20 minutes and lucky to get the right answer. The ABC did a multiply-add on 30 15-decimal numbers in less than a minute, and very reliably. That's hundreds of times faster than a human, or even a human with a desk calculator of that era, and maybe it's modest compared with later computers but it was pretty spectacular at the time. Atanasoff used the 60 Hz clock cycle of AC line current to simplify his design, since after all he was cost-constrained and didn't have 18,000 vacuum tubes like the ENIAC. He used only a few hundred vacuum tubes.
Like other computers, then and now, someone has to enter the data and someone has to receive the result. I'm typing this note into a computer by pushing buttons on a laptop that contains a motor that spins its hard disk... I guess that means my MacBook Pro is an "electromechanical computer." So the ABC is in pretty good company, don't you think? The term "electromechanical" is usually applied to relays, where an electrical signal is converted into mechanical motion as part of the operation. There was no such use of mechanics in the ABC; the logic was 100% electronic, and the motor simply kept the memory spinning just like it does on a hard disk. Aiken's Mark I, Zuse's Z3, and Alt's Bell Labs machine were electromechanical.
The ENIAC used punch cards also, and it required that constants be entered manually by rotating decimal dials. Setting up a computation required manually setting three thousand switches on the function tables! (See J. Kopplin's "Illustrated History of Computers, Part 4" at http://www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/HistoryPt4.htm for more details of the vast amount of manual work needed to use the ENIAC). That doesn't count roughly seventy hours to "program" the ENIAC by removing and reattaching wires between functional units. Once set up with all that manual effort, it could compute ballistic tables in a few seconds that would have taken single person twenty hours to do with a hand calculator.
I would love to see an equivalent Youtube of the ENIAC used for solving two equations in two unknowns like in the ABC video, showing all the manual steps needed. The manual steps would similarly make the overall speed unimpressive.
To answer your question about what in the ENIAC was taken from the ABC, it was the concept of electronic digital computing. Primary sources make quite clear that Mauchly only was thinking of analog computing until he met Atanasoff. Driving vacuum tubes to saturation to represent logic states that could be composed to represent arithmetic operations to any precision needed... that was Atanasoff's innovation.
To come back to the subject at hand, Smiley's book credits Atanasoff with that concept, and she also credits Mauchly and Eckert for commercializing electronic digital computing. And she credits Flowers and Turing with inventing code-cracking electronics that helped win World War II. Somehow, we have to get this discussion away from arguments about whose computer was better or faster or bigger or less primitive. Smiley's book is about dramatic events, fascinating personalities, and how they interplay and ultimately have led to the computing technology we enjoy today. I hope people read her book, not these posts, and make up their own minds about Smiley's work.
#26 Posted by John Gustafson, CJR on Wed 8 Dec 2010 at 11:40 PM
Dr. G: You say "Primary sources make quite clear that Mauchly only was thinking of analog computing until he met Atanasoff." Apparently some primary sources are being ignored. Evidence (that either was not entered into the Honeywell Trial testimony or that has been deliberately ignored) shows that Mauchly was already thinking about digital devices in the mid-1930s at Ursinus. People point to his Harmonic Analyzer as if it were the only thing he worked on before meeting Atanasoff. But Mauchly was already investigating digital solutions utilizing electronic counting before the two met. Mauchly's comments on same were the reason Atanasoff went up to him at the AAAS meeting in Phila. (cf Mauchly's visits to Swarthmore in 1938 and Dartmouth in 1940, e.g.)
Lastly, about the "fascinating personalities." Fascinating, but not historical. How she has portrayed Mauchly's personality is so far off-base, I hesitate to take her word on anyone else's character. Even Atanasoff was not the curmudgeon she makes him out to be.
#27 Posted by Gini Calcerano, CJR on Thu 9 Dec 2010 at 12:33 AM
Dr. Gustafson is correct in pointing out my error attributing Jane Smiley’s “potential for bias” to her time at the University of Iowa. Her “potential for bias” would more correctly be attributed to the 15 years she spent teaching at Iowa State University (according to Wikipedia) where Atanasoff worked and where Dr. Gustafson led the reconstruction of the ABC.
I apologize for this incorrect fact in my prior post, however, I believe the intent of the post is still valid.
#28 Posted by D Moberg, CJR on Thu 9 Dec 2010 at 08:37 AM
I am not related to anyone in this controversy, and I never met Mauchly. I did interview Eckert (and others) extensively and published a long article on his early life in IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. My only strong bias is a belief that history should be depicted as accurately as possible. I have read all parts of the Smiley book concerning American computer developments and found them to be superficially researched, riddled with factual errors, and totally biased—nothing short of a publishing scandal.
Smiley’s thesis is entirely borrowed from previous writers on one side of the issue. It is that Atanasoff, a brilliant scientist at Iowa State (where Smiley taught for more than a decade), invented “the computer,” later called the ABC. Then his ideas were stolen by Mauchly (“a space case”) who shared them with Eckert at Penn. Eckert merely “followed through,” making sure that Mauchly’s designs “were properly executed” during World War II in developing the ENIAC computer for the Army. By contrast, many serious computer historians argue that Eckert, who worked closely with Mauchly and others, should be seen as the master engineer of the computer age.
The portions of Smiley’s work dealing with the American developments rely overwhelmingly on just three second- or third-hand book treatments and an interview with a filmmaker. She directly quotes no documents and offers only one quote from any of the dozens of relevant oral histories--and this one derives from a secondary source. (The only portions of her book that add anything to the record are the oral and written contributions by computer scientist Gustafson.)
No wonder, then, that Smiley’s limited research produces well over a dozen factual errors. For example, the two ENIAC leaders met while Eckert was a lab assistant in a prewar crash course in electronics in which physicist Mauchly was a student. Smiley, however, treats them as “lab partners” in a course “in computing theory”--a subject which essentially did not exist in 1941. She says Eckert only had a bachelor’s degree by age 27, when he actually had a master’s by age 24. She incorrectly states that Mauchly “had run the UNIVAC division” until 1959”, when he only ran an applications center within it. She twice cites a statement about the two men’s characteristics, once attributing it to Mauchly’s widow and once to Eckert’s. There are many, many more such errors, along with some frightfully biased innuendos and interpretations. Feel free to ask me for a list.
Over three decades Annals has published dozens of relevant articles. Smiley cites only two--and only one directly. If she had bothered to look, she would have found, for example, two articles by Calvin Mooers. He was a top assistant to Atanasoff when, shortly after the war, the Navy gave him the responsibility and resources to develop a new, post-ENIAC computer. Mauchly was a part-time consultant, and the working engineers welcomed his “advanced technological ideas,” especially since they were “not getting intellectual support” or “leadership of any credible sort” from Atanasoff. When pressed for a decision, he would invariably go off on long digression on topics like the health benefits of goats’ milk. After a year the Navy gave up on the project, which contributed nothing. Smiley shows no awareness that such evidence even exists. Indeed, she alleges that Atanasoff, “because of his energy, organizational skills, and persistence,” had a long life of “mastering everything he tried.”
Atanasoff was undoubtedly an ingenious man, and this is reflected in his design of the ABC. However, when Smiley adopts for her title, “The Man Who Invented the Computer”, it must be difficult for her to allow for any nuance or embarrassing contradictions his story. This is a book that should never have been commissioned (by the Sloan Foundation), written (by novelist Smiley) or published (by Doubleday). Sloppy, sloppy, sl
#29 Posted by Peter Eckstein, CJR on Wed 22 Dec 2010 at 12:27 AM
They doth protest too much. All around the internet, the various ENIAC defenders are pouring out their guts trying to convince us that Eckert and Mauchly were the real inventors the electronic computer. Meanwhile, it appears that the British and maybe even the Germans beat them to it. In any event, the patent was lost, since it was anticipated by Atanasoff and information had passed to Eckert and Mauchly. The important roles of Van Neumann and Turing are also downplayed by the defenders. They should cool their jets. Hats off to Smiley and Sloan for getting an important story out.
#30 Posted by Andrew Beveridge, CJR on Sun 26 Dec 2010 at 11:42 PM
While we're at it, let's debunk the notion that the Wright brothers invented the airplane, and flew one at Kittyhawk. The 1903 "Wright Flyer" flew only a few hundred feet, with the "pilot" lying down and steering with his hips. That was little or no improvement over a stagecoach.
No, I think the first true plane was Igor Sikorsky's 1913 Ilya Muromets (Sikorsky S-22). It "had an insulated passenger saloon, comfortable wicker chairs, a bedroom, a lounge and even the first airborne toilet. The aircraft also had heating and electrical lighting."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_Ilya_Muromets
Now that's what I call a real airplane.
#31 Posted by John Judge, CJR on Mon 27 Dec 2010 at 12:06 PM
Alas, no, Mr. Beveridge. If you read my posts you will see that I am "pouring out my guts" not because of credit given to Atanasoff. Most people acknowledge that the time was ripe for electronic computing, and that many contributed. It is true that I will tell you not to base your notions of true computer history on the outcome of a trial, waged by corporations for profit. My complaint here (and apparently "all across the internet" although I don't know what you or Jane Smiley are referring to here, as this is the only place I have posted) is that John Mauchly is portrayed in the book as a space cadet, an idiot, a thief, and a liar. If the laws of slander applied to the deceased, I would be suing. This characterization is completely unfounded and breaks my heart. If you want to know more about John Mauchly, see www.the-eniac.com and read a few things written by people who knew him. It is more than enough to counter the personality invented by Mollenhoff and elaborated on by Smiley. If this were done to your father in print, wouldn't you protest?
#32 Posted by Gini Calcerano, CJR on Mon 27 Dec 2010 at 01:36 PM
Atanasoff's ideas were not original. He grafted them, as he let slip in interviews. The flip-flop, digital electronic counters and switches were known for at least a decade before Atanasoff used them. He found out about these by reading and discussion.
#33 Posted by chuck white, CJR on Thu 30 Dec 2010 at 08:56 PM
Disclaimer: I'm from Iowa, but graduated from the OTHER school, just like Smiley did :-).
You and I and others might disagree (probably in different ways) with Smiley's conclusions, but you and I and others aren't writing an Atanasoff biography.
#34 Posted by Tim Shoppa, CJR on Mon 24 Jan 2011 at 10:12 AM
In fact, it's not Ms. Smiley's conclusions I disagree with. She is welcome to write a biography of Dr. Atanasoff, and say what she wants about him. She is NOT welcome to manhandle the reputations of others in order to make the plot move forward. It is not her conclusions, but her methods, I disagree with, primarily the remaking of a brilliant, beloved and creative person into a conniving thief and charlatan. Her characterization of Mauchly as such is completely invented, as she has done no research on Mauchly, except to read what a few Atanasoff supporters have said about him. Were Mauchly still living, he would have grounds to sue for libel. Telling the story of Atanasoff does not require demonzing someone else.
#35 Posted by Gini Calcerano, CJR on Sun 30 Jan 2011 at 11:53 PM
I came across this page after hearing this week's WHYY radio show about Philadelphia and the celebration of "ENIAC Day."
In the first part of the show, Marty Moss-Coane interviewed Mitch Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania, who explained some of the technical differences between early computing machines.
In contrast, the second part of the show featured a followup interview with author Jane Smiley. In it, the author sounded as though she did not really understand what the machines did, and defers responsibility of her book title to the publisher. When asked about Mauchly's contributions, Smiley's response was only that Mauchly gave Atanasoff "interest and attention." That seems to be somewhat mean spirited, and does not make me want to read her book.
#36 Posted by Jonathan Spear, CJR on Sat 19 Feb 2011 at 10:48 PM
One does have to wonder what kind of publicist at Doubleday is giving Jane Smiley advice about doing interviews. She keeps blaming the publisher for the title. She can't answer questions about what she wrote, because she never knew enough about it , even when writing it. Apparently someone has told her that if you are interviewed on the phone and the questions get hard and you can't dodge them, just hang up!
#37 Posted by Eva Mauchly Moos, CJR on Mon 21 Feb 2011 at 12:36 PM