Engineers
J. Presper Eckert
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J. Presper Eckert was an American electrical engineer who, with John Mauchly, designed and built ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania, completed in 1945 and unveiled in February 1946, the first general purpose electronic digital computer. The pair's 1964 ENIAC patent was invalidated in 1973 after a federal court found they had derived key ideas from John Atanasoff's earlier Atanasoff-Berry Computer.
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Invented: The Computer
Judge Earl R. Larson's 1973 federal ruling, following a trial that began in 1971, held that J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly's 1964 ENIAC patent was invalid because its subject matter had been derived from John Atanasoff's earlier Atanasoff-Berry Computer, which Mauchly had seen operating during a 1941 visit to Atanasoff's Iowa State laboratory. The court placed the invention of the electronic digital computer in the public domain rather than crediting either machine outright, but its finding of derivation is the strongest documented challenge to Eckert and Mauchly's own claim to have originated the electronic digital computer.
A dissenting reading, from Honeywell, Inc. v. Sperry Rand Corp. (1973)Honeywell, Inc. v. Sperry Rand Corp. (1973), 1973
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