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2020 was the worst! COVID kept the museum closed for much of the year and a mains water pipe bursting causing a flood kept us closed for the rest.
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The Atanasoff-Berry Computer is completed

1942
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer is completed

In late 1939, John Atanasoff teamed up with Clifford Berry to build a prototype. They created the first computing machine to use electricity, vacuum tubes, binary numbers and capacitors. The capacitors were in a rotating drum that held the electrical charge for the memory.

The brilliant and inventive Berry, with his background in electronics and mechanical construction skills, was the ideal partner for Atanasoff. The prototype won the team a grant of $850 to build a full-scale model. They spent the next two years further improving the Atanasoff-Berry Computer. The final product was the size of a desk, weighed 700 pounds, had over 300 vacuum tubes, and contained a mile of wire in1942