The name, applied long after the fact, to an experimental machine for solving systems of simultaneous linear equations, developed in 1938-42 at Iowa State University by [John Vincent Atanasoff]? and [Clifford E. Berry]?.
Because of the machine's innovative use of electronics for arithmetical calculation, it has been described as the first "electronic digital computer". However, it was a special-purpose, non-programmable machine, which differentiates it from later, more general machines, such as ENIAC?.
The machine was seen by [John Mauchly]? in 1941, and is alleged to have influenced his later work on ENIAC. Mauchly denied this, but it was the basis for a court decision invalidating the ENIAC patents.
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