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"From Bourbon to Binary," by Paul Collins. New Scientist, 22 November 2003, pages 52-53.
This article, which appears in the "Histories" column, tells the little-known story of John Atanasoff, who around 1940 built what was probably the first electronic binary computer in a dingy basement at the University of Iowa. He went off to the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington during World War II, and when he returned to the university, his machine was gone. Since then, disputes have erupted about the capability of his machine, which was called ABC. To see what the ABC could actually do, a team at the University of Iowa built a replica in 1997. "With the building of the replica, the magnitude of the ABC's achievement has become clearer," the article states. "Unlike the base-10 behemoths that followed, the ABC was an affordable, desk-sized binary machine."
--- Allyn Jackson
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