I read the Alice Burks book "Who Invented the Computer?" before I read this one, and I'm surprised to find this one even worse. It appears to have been written by a god and goddess who know what is in the hearts of men, especially John Mauchly and Pres Eckert. I think the first page should have started with their philosophy of John and Pres's characters expressed on p.181, "they were greedy, for fame and fortune, and did not want to acknowledge any prior invention." This is the premise under which they operate so of course they interpret everything as a proof of this premise. I knew Arthur Burk as a nice, mild-mannered man in the style of the Mr. Milquetoast depicted in the New Yorker cartoon. Apparently, he married a woman with magical powers who turned him into this vicious all-knowing author. I wonder if he would have been as self-righteous if he had been included on the ENIAC patent. He would probably have been able to stifle his virtue and never even dream of beating the drums for Atanasoff. They even include testimony of Mrs. Atanasoff that makes her sound as gracious as a pig at a trough. Of course, she knew Mauchly was staying with them. Her husband had told him that they had plenty of room and he was welcome.



John Mauchly was delighted to meet Atanasoff, who attended one of his lectures and came up to talk to him later. Both were interested in computers and eager to communicate with a kindred spirit. I'm sure they learned many things from each other and discussed many ideas. This was 1940 when they met and not very many people were interested in discussing computing. Both had things they wanted to do and current tools didn't allow them to do them very well. John was eager to find out if Atanasoff's computer could help him with his problems. Does anyone for a moment believe that the passage of knowledge flowed only in one direction? One would think that Atanasoff must have learned something from John, but this book would have you believe that Atanasoff had all the knowledge. If so, why was he so eager to have John come to see his computer, which I believe was never built until the ENIAC Trial.



Page 181 also displays their heavenly knowledge when they state, "It was not long before they realized that this machine would surpass the analyzer in the range of problems it could solve as well as in speed, and they began to call it a general purpose computer." How do they know that? John always told the ENIAC Women that it was general purpose and he always tried to get us to try to program a matrix inversion.



Their castigating of Kay Mauchly is shameful. Her arguments are always discounted while anything a lawyer, Atanasoff. or the judge says is pure truth. John's statements are all discounted and made fun of. This is such a vicious prejudiced book, with its venom repeated over and over again, it should be held up to ridicule. It cannot be taken seriously. And to think, Arthur has a Ph.D. Jean J. Bartik

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