Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education

From	"Osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.c
Subject	Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education
Date	2016-08-04 14:22 -0500
Message-ID	<e0hivjFar8oU1@mid.individual.net> (permalink)
References	(7 earlier) <nnnjch$knq$1@jstuckle.eternal-september.org> <1btwf4qx8e.fsf@pfeifferfamily.net> <nnob2v$d6u$1@jstuckle.eternal-september.org> <1bpopsqjwu.fsf@pfeifferfamily.net> <nnvvtj$oj8$1@jstuckle.eternal-september.org>

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"Jerry Stuckle" wrote:

> Pay particular attention to the paragraph:
>
> Although John W. Mauchly’s ENIAC (to be described next) was originally
> granted a patent, in 1973 US Federal Judge Earl R. Larson declared the
> ENIAC patent invalid and named Atanasoff the inventor of the electronic
> digital computer. Atanasoff argued that Mauchly had visited him in [Ames]
> in 1940 and that he had shown Mauchly his machine and had let Mauchly
> read his 35-page manuscript on the ABC computer. Judge Larson found that
> Mauchly's ideas were derived from Atanasoff, and the invention claimed
> in ENIAC was derived from Atanasoff. He declared: 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.
>
> So no matter what you think, experts in computer history and even the
> courts disagree with you.

I certainly hope the above is not an accurate summary.  The trial was to 
decide if the ENIAC patent was valid, the judge decided it was not.  The 
trial was *not* to decide who invented the computer.

I spent many hours over a period of several weeks studying several papers 
written during WW II by one of the forthcoming witnesses about his possible 
contributions to computer development. I later sat in for tow days on his 
testimony at the ENIAC trial ..  My role was to tell the Univac lawyers if 
he fibbed. He was utterly charming and AFAICT was totally honest.  The 
courtroom had all kinds of training aids to give the judge some crude notion 
of what computers were all about. These were used before I got there, of 
course. I found that trial lawyers work really, really long days during a 
trial.

Sadly, IMO the Wikipedia article is accurate, ENIAC was not a computer as we 
know Von Neumann computers.

In my mind, the word "computer" is not all that important. I *assume* the 
wording of the claims is such that the inventor claims that this thing, 
whatever it is, is his work.  The visit to Atsanoff, in the judges' mind, 
negated such a claim.  I have a few patents of my own, but I never paid that 
much attention to the boilerplate surrounding the claims, so I can only 
guess..

Thread

Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2016-07-31 05:30 -0400
  Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Tim Rentsch <txr@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2016-07-31 12:40 -0700
    Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-07-31 16:58 -0400
      Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Tim Rentsch <txr@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2016-07-31 15:13 -0700
        Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-07-31 21:21 -0400
          Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Tim Rentsch <txr@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2016-08-01 08:12 -0700
      Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-07-31 16:41 -0600
        Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-07-31 21:24 -0400
          Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-07-31 22:15 -0600
            Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-08-01 09:38 -0400
              Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-08-01 10:18 -0600
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-08-01 16:22 -0400
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-08-01 15:05 -0600
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-08-04 14:01 -0400
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-08-04 12:22 -0600
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-08-04 16:47 -0400
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education "Osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> - 2016-08-04 14:22 -0500
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-08-04 16:52 -0400
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education "Osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> - 2016-08-04 16:10 -0500
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-08-04 20:30 -0400
    Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education luser droog <luser.droog@gmail.com> - 2016-07-31 18:20 -0700
    Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Gareth Owen <gwowen@gmail.com> - 2016-08-01 19:52 +0100
      Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education supercat@casperkitty.com - 2016-08-01 15:25 -0700
        Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-08-01 16:38 -0600
          Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education supercat@casperkitty.com - 2016-08-01 15:56 -0700
            Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-08-01 17:41 -0600
            Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Gareth Owen <gwowen@gmail.com> - 2016-08-02 06:22 +0100
      Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Tim Rentsch <txr@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2016-08-01 16:48 -0700
        Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Gareth Owen <gwowen@gmail.com> - 2016-08-02 06:27 +0100
          Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-08-02 08:42 -0600
            Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2016-08-02 16:28 +0100
              Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-08-02 11:15 -0600
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2016-08-02 19:37 +0100
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education supercat@casperkitty.com - 2016-08-02 12:08 -0700
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2016-08-02 22:40 +0100
          Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Tim Rentsch <txr@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2016-08-03 06:57 -0700
          Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2016-10-30 09:06 -0400
            Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education supercat@casperkitty.com - 2016-10-30 12:42 -0700
            Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Gareth Owen <gwowen@gmail.com> - 2016-10-31 18:12 +0000

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