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Holiday 2014 / 2015 Tempus-Magazine.com 76 tronic digital computer, but it was only partly electron- ic. Its add-subtract mechanism used vacuum tubes, but its memory and data retrieval involved mechanical ro- tating drums. Its other main drawback, in terms of being considered the frst modern computer, was that it was not programmable nor general purpose; instead it was hard-wired for the special task of solving linear equa- tions. Also, Atanasoff never got it fully operational, and it disappeared into a basement at Iowa State. Bletchley Park's Colossus I, completed in December 1943 by Max Newman and Tommy Flowers (with input from Alan Turing), was the frst digital computer that was fully electronic, programmable, and operational. It was not, however, a general-purpose or Turing-com- plete machine; it was geared to the specifc purpose of breaking Germany's wartime codes. Howard Aiken's Harvard Mark I, built with IBM and put into operation in May 1944, was programmable, as we will see in the following chapter, but it was electro- mechanical rather than electronic. ENIAC, completed by Presper Eckert and John Mauch- ly in November 1945, was the frst machine to incorpo- rate the full set of traits of a modern computer. It was all-electronic, superfast, and could be programmed by plugging and unplugging the cables connecting its dif- ferent units. It was capable of changing paths based on interim results, and it qualifed as a general-purpose Turing-complete machine, meaning it could in theory tackle any task. Most important, it worked. "Tat's a big thing with an invention," Eckert later said, contrast- ing their machine with Atanasoff 's. "You have to have a whole system that works."75 Mauchly and Eckert got their machine to do some very powerful calculations, and it was in constant use for ten years. It became the basis for most subsequent computers. Tat last attribute is important. When we ascribe credit for an invention, determining who should be most noted by history, one criterion is looking at whose contribu- tions turned out to have the most infuence. Invention implies contributing something to the fow of history and affecting how an innovation developed. Using his- toric impact as a standard, Eckert and Mauchly are the most noteworthy innovators. Almost all computers of the 1950s trace their roots to ENIAC. Te infuence of Flowers, Newman, and Turing is somewhat trickier to assess. Teir work was kept top-secret, but all three men were involved in the British computers built after the war. Zuse, who was isolated and under bombardment in Berlin, had even less infuence on the course of computer development elsewhere. As for Atanasoff, his main infu- ence on the feld, perhaps his only infuence, came from providing a few inspirations to Mauchly when he visited. Te issue of what inspirations Mauchly gleaned dur- ing his four-day visit with Atanasoff in Iowa in June 1941 turned into a protracted legal dispute. Tat raised an- other criterion, more legalistic than historical, in assess- ing credit for invention: Who, if anyone, ended up with the patents? In the case of the frst computers, nobody did. But that outcome was due to a controversial legal battle that resulted in the patents of Eckert and Mauchly being nullifed.76 Te saga began in 1947, when Eckert and Mauchly, after leaving Penn, applied for a patent on their ENIAC work, which was fnally granted (the patent system be- ing rather slow) in 1964. By then the Eckert-Mauchly company and its patent rights had been sold to Rem- ington Rand, which became Sperry Rand; it began pres- suring other companies to pay it licensing fees. IBM and Bell Labs made deals, but Honeywell balked and start- ed looking for a way to challenge the patents. It hired a young lawyer, Charles Call, who had an engineering degree and had worked at Bell Labs. His mission was to upend the Eckert-Mauchly patent by showing that their ideas weren't original. Pursuing a tip from a Honeywell lawyer who had gone to Iowa State and read about the computer that Atanasoff had built there, Call paid a visit to Atanasoff at his home in Maryland. Atanasoff was charmed by Call's knowledge of his computer and somewhat resentful that he had never gotten much credit for it, so he handed over hundreds of letters and documents that showed how Mauchly had derived some ideas from his visit to Iowa. Tat evening Call drove to Washington to sit in the back of a lecture Mauchly was giving. In answer to a question about Atanasoff 's machine, Mauchly claimed he had barely examined it. Call realized that if he could get Mauchly to say this in a deposition, then he could discredit him at a trial by producing Atanasoff 's documents. When Mauchly found out a few months later that Atanasoff might be helping Honeywell challenge his patents, he made his own visit to Atanasoff 's Maryland home, bringing with him a Sperry Rand lawyer. It was an awkward meeting. Mauchly claimed that during his visit to Iowa he hadn't read Atanasoff 's paper carefully or examined his computer, and Atanasoff coldly pointed out that this was not true. Mauchly stayed for dinner and tried to ingratiate himself with Atanasoff, but to no avail. Te issue went to trial before a federal judge, Earl Larson, in Minneapolis in June 1971. Mauchly proved a problematic witness. Pleading poor memory, he sounded squirrely about what he had seen during his visit to Iowa, and he repeatedly backtracked from assertions he had