Did you know who invented the world's first digital
computer? When Professor John Vincent Atanasoff and a
graduate student Clifford Berry were building the
world's first digital computer at the basement of Iowa
State University's Physics building, it barely came to
their minds that they were stepping on to a
significant stone that laid the very foundation of
computing technology. It was neither fame nor fortune
that had motivated Dr. Atanasoff to invent a machine
whose principles would change the technology forever,
but rather his desire to find a better, more efficient
way for his students at Iowa State University to
learn. Specifically, he was seeking a way to help his
graduate students spend less time working on lengthy
linear equations by hand or mechanical means. As a
result, from 1939 through 1942, the Atanasoff-Berry
Computer became a reality in the basement of the
Physics Building on the Iowa State University campus
in Ames, Iowa, USA. To honor this occasion, Iowa State
University, recently, conducted a symposium, "The
International Symposium on Modern Computing", and at a
right time to coincide with the 100th birth
anniversary of Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff, the father
of modern computing. The symposium, held from Oct 30
to Nov 1, brought together leading experts in the
field of computing technology to discuss the potential
future of new computers that could change the world.
The event was marked with workshops on
High-Performance Computing, Computational
Intelligence, Application-specific IT Infrastructure,
Grid Computing and talks by distinguished speakers
like Gordon Bell, Senior Researcher, Microsoft, San
Francisco; John Gustafson, Principal Investigator,
High Productivity Computing Systems, Sun Microsystems
Inc., Mountain View, California; Dr. Stephen Wolfram
(by teleconference) President and CEO of Wolfram
Research, author of "A New Kind of Science" and
creator of powerful scientific computing package,
Mathematica. I shall provide with a detailed history
of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer at a latter
publication.
- Satyam K Bhuyan, Ames, Iowa
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