John Vincent Atanasoff is shown delivering a lecture in Boston in 1980. Photo courtesy of Iowa State University Library Special Collections and University Archives
By John Skipper
John Vincent Atanasoff was a pioneer in computer technology at what is now Iowa State University. He invented a one-of-a-kind device more than 75 years ago, but because of a series of strange events, it took more than 30 years for him to receive the recognition he deserved for his electronic digital computer.
Atanasoff’s story has many twists and turns. Despite his brilliance in math and physics and his obsession with research and finding answers to difficult questions, a shot of bourbon and a cocktail napkin were instrumental in paving the way to his success.
His father, Ivan Atanasuv, came to the United States from Bulgaria with his uncle in 1899. When he arrived at Ellis Island in New York, seeking a new life in what to him was a new world, immigration officials allowed him in but changed his name to John Atanasoff for reasons unknown, or that have been lost with the passage of time.
As he adjusted to life in the U.S. he met and married Iva Lucena Purdy, an English teacher from upstate New York in 1900. Their son, John, the first of 10 children, was born on Oct. 4, 1903, in Hamilton, N.Y.
Atanasoff’s father worked as an industrial engineer in New Jersey. Not long after Atanasoff was born, the family moved to California where his father got a better-paying job as an electrical engineer in Brewster, a town that no longer exists.
Atanasoff was studious at a very young age and was found trying to fix electrical wiring in the family home when he was just nine years old. Up to that point in his life, baseball was his passion.
Recognizing his intelligence and his yearning to learn, his parents encouraged him. While he was a young student, his father bought a slide rule and gave it to him as a gift. It opened a whole new world for him. He became fascinated with calculating devices, a passion that consumed him for the rest of his life.
Nearly 60 years later, Atanasoff, reflecting on his boyhood, said, “That slide rule was my meat. In two weeks or thereabouts, I could solve most simple problems with it. Can you imagine how a boy of nine-plus, with baseball on his mind, could be transformed by this knowledge? Baseball practice was reduced to zero and a stern study of logarithms was substituted. By the age of 10, I became an expert in computing logarithms and many other mathematical and statistical problems.”
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