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This reminds me a little of a book I just read "The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer" A similar thing happened b
by nkassis 16y ago
This reminds me a little of a book I just read "The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer"
A similar thing happened between Atanasoff and the guys who designed ENIAC. It led to a huge court battle in the 70s where Honywell & CDC were fighting IBM and cie's patents. It was found out that John Mauchly, one of the two main creators of ENIAC, visited Atanasoff in Iowa while Atanasoff was building the first electronic digital computer (I'm sure that's debated) and learn enough about it that the court found that the patents he held with J. Presper Eckert were most likely lifted from research Atanasoff was doing.
The fact that those patents have been overturned today is good, else IBM would have killed the early PC industry.
- kingkilr 16y agoENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer, by Scott McCartney presents a slightly different view of the court case. It says that though the courts were on shaky legal ground throwing the patents out (there were fundamental differences between the ABC and ENIAC) it was really done to advance the computing industry, similar to how one of the Ford's (I think) early patents on the engine was ruled to only cover 2 cylinder engines (by that time most cars were onto 4 cylinders, effectively preventing Ford from maintaining a monopoly).