Recorded at Iowa State University on March 3, 2011. "Production elements"--Disc label. "Part of the National Affairs Series on Innovation"--ISU Lectures program website.
Summary:
Jane Smiley begins with how 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 easier. Then he went back and built the machine. It worked, but he never patented the device, and 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 gates to the computer revolution. Smiley looks at the contributions and shortcomings of 8 of the major players of the birth of the computer.
Series:
Intelligent talk television #218
OCLC:
(OCoLC)752327953
Locations:
USUX851 -- Iowa State University - Parks Library (Ames)
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.