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: <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!! :-))