Legal Decision, 1973

              Atanasoff
V
V
3.1   The subject matter of one or more claims of the ENIAC was derived
from Atanasoff, and the invention claimed in the ENIAC was derived
from Atanasoff.
3.1.1 SR and ISD are bound by their representation in support of the
counterclaim herein that the invention claimed in the ENIAC patent
is broadly "the invention of the Automatic Electronic Digital
Computer."
3.1.2 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.
3.1.3 Although not necessary to the finding of derivation of "the
invention" of the ENIAC patent, Honeywell has proved that the
claimed subject matter of the ENIAC patent relied on in support
of the counterclaim herein is not patentable over the subject
matter derived by Mauchly from Atanasoff. As a representative
example, Honeywell has shown that the subject matter of detailed
claims 88 and 89 of the ENIAC patent corresponds to the work of
Atanasoff which was known to Mauchly before any effort pertinent
to the ENIAC machine or patent began.
3.1.A   Between 1937 and 1942, Atanasoff, then a professor of physics, and
mathematics at Iowa State College, Ames, Iowa, developed and built
an automatic electronic digital computer for solving large systems
of simultaneous linear algebraic equations.
3.1.5 In December, 1939, Atanasoff completed and reduced to practice
his basx'c conception in the form of an operating breadboard model
of a computing machine.
3.1.6 This breadboard model machine, constructed with the assistance of
i
a graduate student, Clifford Berry, permitted the various components
of the machine to be tested under actual operating conditions.
3.1.7 The breadboard model established the soundness of the basic principles
of design, and Atanasoff and Berry began the construction of a
prototype or pilot model, capable of solving with a high degree of
accuracy a system of as many as 29 simultaneous equations having
29 unknowns.
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