There is actually little doubt that Mauchly was inspired by Atanasoff's work. In 1941
Atanasoff knew more about basic elements of electronic computation than Mauchly and
openly shared this knowledge. The ABC, with its several hundred vacuum tubes,
represented one of the most complicated electronic circuits at the time, and Mauchly,
with his then very limited experience, would have been impressed by its design. Still, the
ABC had been designed as a special purpose computer designed only to solve large
systems of
linear equations. Certain aspects of its design also precluded the ABC from
computing at truly electronic speeds. Upon arriving at the Moore School, Mauchly
gained access to many other sources of ideas not the least of which was the concept of
ganged adding machines proposed by the faculty member Irven Travis. The ENIAC was,
in other words, a combination of many different design ideas. Mauchly may have
continued to draw ideas from Atanasoff's further reflections on electronic computing, but
it was ultimately Mauchly who, working with Eckert, designed the first general-
purpose electronic computer. Whether Mauchly gave credit to Atanasoff's
contributions remains a separate historical question. |
 Four panels of ENIAC, with Betty Jennings and Frances Bilas (right) arranging the program settings
on the master programmer, 1946.
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