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    The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer
    Unavailable
    The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer
    Unavailable
    The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer

    Written by Jane Smiley

    Narrated by Kathe Mazur

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From one of our most acclaimed novelists, a  David-and-Goliath biography for the digital age.

    One night in the late 1930s, in a bar on the Illinois-Iowa border, John Vincent Atanasoff, a professor of physics at Iowa State University, after a frustrating day performing tedious mathematical calculations in his lab, hit on the idea that the binary number system and electronic switches, com­bined with an array of capacitors on a moving drum to serve as memory, could yield a computing machine that would make his life and the lives of other similarly burdened scientists easier. Then he went back and built the machine. It worked. The whole world changed.

    Why don't we know the name of John Atanasoff as well as we know those of Alan Turing and John von Neumann? Because he never patented the device, and because the developers of the far-better-known ENIAC almost certainly stole critical ideas from him. But in 1973 a court declared that the patent on that Sperry Rand device was invalid, opening the intellectual property gates to the computer revolution.

    Jane Smiley tells the quintessentially American story of the child of immigrants John Atanasoff with technical clarity and narrative drive, making the race to develop digital computing as gripping as a real-life techno-thriller.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateOct 19, 2010
    ISBN9780307751140
    Unavailable
    The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer
    Author

    Jane Smiley

    Jane Smiley is a novelist and essayist. Her novel A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992, and her novel The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton won the 1999 Spur Award for Best Novel of the West. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1987. Her novel Horse Heaven was short-listed for the Orange Prize in 2002, and her novel, Private Life, was chosen as one of the best books of 2010 by The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post.

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    Reviews for The Man Who Invented the Computer

    3.5/5

    38 ratings6 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Wonderful clarification of the actual origins of the first computer and the decades long fight to credit the actual inventor.
    • 5/5
      gud book
    • 3/5
      An interesting book about a computing pioneer I had never heard of. The Author weaves John Atanasoff's computer creation story in parallel with the other computer creators of the time: Alan Turing, Tommy Flowers, Max Newman, John Mauchly, Presper Eckert, Konrad Zeus and John von Neumann. She shows most of these individuals had a strong need to solve some heavy calculation problems. These individuals stood out also as very creative people with traits like: self-confidence, independence, high energy, willingness to take risks, above-average intelligence, openness to experience, and preference for complexity. Including a key component of a creative mind, what R. Keith Sawyer's (creativity expert) calls "problem finding"—that is, the ability to productively formulate a problem so that the terms of the problem lead to a solution.
      John Atanasoff certainly appears to have been the first to get a computer going in the USA, neck and neck with Konrad Zeus in Germany. But he is visited by John Mauchly who understands more than John realises. With WWII intervening and patients not being file, it is only resolved years later in 1973 that John Atanasoff ideas had been used in the UNIVAC. The book runs out of steam at the end getting too involved with the patent dispute and court case.
    • 2/5
      Interesting story, but the focus was upon the legal and patent issues involved with proving Atanastoff to be the first inventor of a working computer. One gets lost between all the maneuvering of the principals and companies. The best part of the book is a clear exposition of the basic principles of a digital computer.
    • 3/5
      So far (p. 28) Smiley has asserted a couple of head-scratchers: "The measurement required by an analog calculator would be replaced by counting. Since this is similar to the way a child counts on his fingers, this came to be known as digital calculation."

      This is more the early cross-pollination that led to computers rather than the biography of a single man; the title is misleading but the book is interesting so that's okay.
    • 5/5
      Jane Smiley has written a facinating account of the early history of computer developments. While she has focused on the story of John Atansoff, the whole history of these early inventors, particularly in US, is interwoven. She does an excellent job of portraying the various personalities for each of them are real "characters".This book does well in answering the question, who invented the computer? While most students are aware the ancient Babbage computing engine and the most war ENIAC, the real answer to this question is not a simple one. Nearly simultaneous developments, both theoretical and practical, were underway in Iowa (John Atanasoff), England (Alan Turing), and Germany (Konrad Zuse). Then, as Jane explains so well, all of these efforts were over come by the events of World War II.In the US, John Atanasoff's efforts were side tracked by is assignment to other research efforts. World War II also brings John von Neumann and the John Mauchly/ J. Presper Eckhart (ENIAC) team to the forefront. In England, Alan Turing becomes a principal in the use of computers at Bletchley Park to break the Enigma code. Also, in England, we see the more advanced Colossus computer developed by Thomas Flowers (though less well known) to break the more complex Tunny used by German high command. Finally, in Germany, Konrad Zuse is overcoming war time shortages, bureaucratic indifference, and finally Allied bombing raids to continue his developments.In summary, Jane Smiley has succeeded in clarifying some the most important events of the computer's early history and its colorful characters.