Editing John Vincent Atanasoff (section)

==Patent dispute==
{{further|Honeywell v. Sperry Rand}}

Atanasoff first met [[John Mauchly]] at the December 1940 meeting of the [[American Association for the Advancement of Science]] in Philadelphia, where Mauchly was demonstrating his "harmonic analyzer", an analog calculator for analysis of weather data. Atanasoff told Mauchly about his new digital device and invited him to see it.{{citation needed|date=June 2021}}

In June 1941 Mauchly visited Atanasoff in [[Ames, Iowa]] for four days, staying as his houseguest. Atanasoff and Mauchly discussed the prototype ABC, examined it, and reviewed Atanasoff's design manuscript.{{citation needed|date=June 2021}} In 1941 Atanasoff left Iowa State for a wartime assignment as Chief of the Acoustic Division with the [[Naval Ordnance Laboratory]] (NOL) in Washington, D.C.<ref name="NYT"/> No patent application for the ABC was subsequently filed by Iowa State College.{{citation needed|date=June 2021}}

Mauchly visited Atanasoff multiple times in Washington during 1943 and discussed computing theories, but did not mention that he was working on a computer project himself until early 1944.{{sfn|Mollenhoff|1988|page=62–66}}

By 1945 the [[United States Navy|U.S. Navy]] had decided to build a large-scale computer, on the advice of [[John von Neumann]]. Atanasoff was put in charge of the project, and he asked Mauchly to help with job descriptions for the necessary staff.{{citation needed|date=June 2021}} However, Atanasoff was also given the responsibility of designing acoustic systems for monitoring [[atomic bomb]] tests.{{citation needed|date=June 2021}} That job was made the priority, and he participated in the testing at [[Bikini Atoll]] in July 1946.<ref name="NYT"/> By the time he returned from the testing the NOL computer project was shut down due to lack of progress, again on the advice of von Neumann.{{citation needed|date=June 2021}}

In June 1954 IBM patent attorney A. J. Etienne sought Atanasoff's help in breaking an [[Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation|Eckert–Mauchly]] patent on a revolving magnetic memory drum, having been alerted by Clifford Berry that the ABC's revolving capacitor memory drum may have constituted [[prior art]]. Atanasoff agreed to assist the attorney, but IBM ultimately entered a patent-sharing agreement with [[Sperry Rand]], the owners of the Eckert–Mauchly memory patent, and the case was dropped.{{sfn|Mollenhoff|1988|pages=81–86}}

Atanasoff was deposed and testified at trial in the later action ''[[Honeywell v. Sperry Rand]]''. In that case's decision, Judge [[Earl R. Larson]] found that "Eckert and Mauchly did not themselves first invent the automatic electronic digital computer, but instead derived that subject matter from one Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff".

Between 1954 and 1973, Atanasoff was a witness in the legal actions brought by various parties to invalidate electronic computing patents issued to Mauchly and [[J. Presper Eckert]], which were owned by computer manufacturer [[Sperry Corporation#Sperry Rand|Sperry Rand]]. In the 1973 decision of ''Honeywell v. Sperry Rand'', a federal judge named Atanasoff the inventor of the electronic digital computer.