Short for Atanasoff-Berry Computer, the ABC started being developed by Professor John Vincent Atanasoff and graduate student Cliff Berry in 1937 and continued to be developed until 1942 at the Iowa State College (now Iowa State University). On October 19, 1973, US Federal Judge Earl R. Larson signed his decision that the ENIAC patent by Eckert and Mauchly was invalid and named Atanasoff the inventor of the electronic digital computer.
See our ABC dictionary definition for additional information about this computer.
The ENIAC was invented by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania and began construction in 1943 and was not completed until 1946. It occupied about 1,800 square feet and used about 18,000 vacuum tubes, weighing almost 50 tons. Although the Judge ruled that the ABC computer was the first digital computer many still consider the ENIAC to be the first digital computer.
See our ENIAC dictionary definition for additional information about this computer.
Because of the Judge ruling and because the case was never appealed like most we consider the ABC to be the first digital computer. However, because the ABC was never fully functional we consider the first functional digital computer to be the ENIAC.
