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In your profile of J. Presper Eckert, you claim that he, along with Dr. John W. Mauchly, developed the "world's first electronic digital computer." This is not correct.

The original inventor was Dr. John V. Atanasoff, who, along with graduate student Clifford Berry, developed the first working electronic digital computer at Iowa State University during the late 1930s. While the machine was small in size, it in fact played a significant role in serving as the foundation for Mauchly and Eckert's ENIAC.

That this is true was confirmed in a legal battle over the original ENIAC patent. In the late 1960s, Sperry Rand Corp. brought suit against Honeywell and Control Data Corp., claiming unpaid royalties. In 1973, following seven years of litigation, federal judge Earl R. Larson ruled against Sperry Rand. Among other things, Judge Larson invalidated the entire ENIAC patent, stating that "Eckert and Mauchly did not themselves first invent the automatic digital computer, but instead derived that subject matter from Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff." The decision was not appealed.

I do not mean to diminish the contribution made by Mauchly and Eckert. The ENIAC was a tremendous achievement and made great progress in computer evolution. However, Atanasoff should be accorded his true place in the history of the modern computer.