Charles Shorb, an ISU graduate student, works on a nearly exact replica of the world's first electronic digital computer. (Photo by Gary Fandel, The Register)
Charles Shorb says getting a replica of the world's first electronic digital computer to work is a little like the time he rebuilt the engine of his 1980 Volkswagen Jetta. But at least there were directions for the Jetta.
There are no similar instructions for assembling and tuning up the Atanasoff-Berry Computer. Shorb, fueled by Coca-Cola and Hostess Fruit Pies, has spent the last two months in the basement of Spedding Hall on the Iowa State University
He's nearly finished the job.
"The logic runs, and we can demonstrate it and the memory works. . . . That proves the concept," said John Gustafson, who is overseeing Shorb's work. Gustafson is an ISU professor and researcher at the Ames Laboratory, a federal installation operated by the university.
The success so far is largely thanks to Shorb, Gustafson said. "Charles produces the work of three engineers."
The pleasure's all his, said Shorb, who turns 27 this week. The ISU computer science graduate student told computer chip maker Intel it will have to wait until September for him to start his new job so he can spend the summer working out the computers kinks. If Intel hadn't delayed his start date, Shorb said, he would have turned down the job in a second. "How many times in my life am I going to be able to work on the first computer?" he asked. When the replica goes on display, "I'm going to be able to say I made that thing work."
What Shorb is fixing is a nearly exact replica of the computer built in the late 1930s by ISU mathematics professor John Vincent Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry. The complex, desk-sized machine was designed to solve 29 simultaneous equations with 29 unknowns, but in actual operation solved just five equations with five unknowns.
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