Checksum: 46776
Path: utzoo!utgpu!sarathy
From: sarathy@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Rajiv Sarathy)
Date: Thu, 15-Sep-88 18:16:56 EDT
Message-ID: <1988Sep15.181656.16223@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu>
Organization: University of Toronto Computing Services
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Look & Feel  (Was: PK vs ARC)
References: <KPETERSEN.12427478613.BABYL@SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL> <8851@cup.portal.com> <6085@ihlpf.ATT.COM> <613@unisv.UUCP> <5525@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>
Reply-To: sarathy@gpu.utcs.UUCP (Rajiv Sarathy)

In article <5525@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> u-word!egs@killer.Dallas.TX.US (Eric Schnoebelen) writes:
>In article <613@unisv.UUCP> vanpelt@unisv.UUCP (Mike Van Pelt) writes:
>>In article <6085@ihlpf.ATT.COM> cem@ihlpf.ATT.COM (Malloy) writes:
>>.       Are suggesting that AT&T sue SEA for the exact same reason that
>>.SEA sues PKWARE?  All of the "LOOK AND FEEL" stuff is really getting
>>.out of hand.  Maybe IBM should sue everyone that makes a computer.
>>
>>No.  Not IBM.  Univac.  The Univac 1 long pre-dated the first IBM
>>computer.  The company was started by the guys who build the Eniac.
>
>No, not Univac.  The Gentlemen who brought you the Eniac, got at least
>some of their ideas from a gentleman name Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff, at
>Iowa State University ( then Iowa State College ) in 1941. Dr. Atanasoff
>built the first electronic digital computer at Iowa State between 1939
>and 1941, with the help of graduate student Clifford Berry.  See
>Honeywell vs. Sperry, 1973.  No one holds/held patents on the original
>electronic digital computer.  ( The University forgot to file the
>patent papers during WWII )

I was always under the impression (I think I read it somewhere) that Harvard
university built the first digital computer.  It was able to add 2 8-digit
numbers per second, crashed every 2 minutes, and used enough electricity to
feed a city of about 25,000 people!

In fact, a Harvard professor (Electrical Engineering, presumably) was so
impressed with the computer, he exclaimed that by the end of the century,
the world will have 50 such computers.

Now I know why so few computer science big-names are from Harvard!! :-))

