Clifford E. Berry

Cocreator of the first electronic digital computer

• Born: April 19, 1918
• Place of Birth: Gladbrook, Iowa
• Died: October 30, 1963
• Place of Death: New York, New York

Primary Company/Organization: Iowa State College

Introduction

Clifford E. Berry was the co-creator of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC), the first electronic digital computer while a graduate student at Iowa State College from 1939 to 1941. Although later computers such as the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) were better known, the ABC introduced numerous innovations critical to the advent of modern computing, including several still in use today—such as regenerative capacitator memory, parallel processing, the separation of memory and computing as distinct functions, the use of binary (base 2) arithmetic for computing, and the move away from using mechanical parts such as ratchets and gears. Little known for decades, the importance of Berry's work was recognized ten years after his death when the U.S. District Court acknowledged the primacy of the ABC.

Early Life

Clifford Edward Berry was born on April 19, 1918, in Gladbrook, Iowa, to Fred Berry and Grace Strohm Berry. He was the oldest of four children and quickly picked up his father's interest in electrical projects. Fred owned an electrical appliance store and repair service, and he built the town's first radio, just as radios began to experience their boom in popularity. Radios were the first devices young Clifford tinkered with, his father instructing him. His excellence in school led to his skipping the fourth grade; grade skipping was more common at the time, when there were few to no programs for accelerated students.

In 1929, the Berrys moved to the town of Marengo, where Fred managed the local office of the Iowa Power Company. Clifford built his first ham radio and continued in his studies. In Clifford's second year of high school, his father was fatally shot by a fired employee; the family remained in Marengo long enough for Clifford to finish high school and then relocated to Ames in order to be near Clifford while he attended Iowa State College (ISC). Now Iowa State University, ISC had started as a land-grant college and had an excellent program in engineering; it attracted numerous out of state students and skilled professors. It was the school Fred had suggested for his son. Clifford graduated with a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering in 1939.

Life's Work

One of Berry's professors was Harold Anderson, a close friend of John Vincent Atanasoff. Atanasoff had earned his master's degree at ISC and returned there to teach after finishing his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin. While at Wisconsin, he had had his first experiences with computers and found them both fascinating and frustrating. He wanted to build something better and discussed his ideas and frustrations with Anderson. When he asked Anderson to recommend a student to assist him, Berry was a few months away from graduating and intended to enter the school's graduate program in physics. He impressed Atanasoff as much as he had Anderson, and a stipend was arranged for him so that he could assist in Atanasoff's research instead of teaching or finding work outside the university.

The two began their work in 1939, building on ideas Atanasoff had brainstormed the previous year. Atanasoff had a good sense of how he wanted to achieve his vision but needed help fully implementing it. While the terms analog computer and digital computer were not yet widely used, existing computers were what we now call analog: computing devices that stored or manipulated quantities by moving parts into different positions. Slide rules and abacuses are common examples of analog computers—simple in construction but requiring constant operator involvement to use and a bit of training to understand. Analog computers could be automated and could be built to solve complex problems, but the mechanical actions were prone to error and inefficient. Atanasoff sought what he then called a “proper computing device” and would later be called a digital computer. The project was initially funded with an $850 grant from the college (through the agronomy department, which hoped to benefit from better economic analyses made possible by faster computation) and an additional $5,000 from the New York City–based Research Corporation.

Atanasoff took a job at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory later in 1939, reducing the amount of time he and Berry worked together on the project face to face. Numerous engineers around the country found themselves pursued for defense jobs as the nation anticipated the possibility of war with Germany and Japan. Berry assisted Atanasoff in drafting a thirty-five-page manuscript describing their designs, entitled “Computing Machines for the Solution of Large Systems of Linear Algebraic Equations,” and in 1940 it was given to a patent attorney hired by the college in order to protect the ABC's invention. Because of interruptions to the work, the patent was never filed. In later years, the patent on the ENIAC computer would be challenged in court by a rival corporation seeking to invalidate the patent in order to bring digital computers into the public domain. The U.S. District Court invalidated ENIAC's patent in 1973, ten years after Berry's death, on the justification that it derived too heavily from the ABC. Berry was posthumously acknowledged as one of the fathers of the digital computer.

Atanasoff was always quick to credit Berry as the catalyst for the breakthrough. The elder scientist had worked for several years on his ideas; it was the assistance of Berry, as much as the funding, that made it possible to turn cocktail-napkin ideas into a working prototype. Berry was instrumental in moving the ABC's design further away from the norms of analog computing; Atanasoff pointed out that Berry removed any references to the abacus from their notes in order to keep it from shackling their attempt at innovation.

Although the ABC was not programmable—the major difference between it and its immediate successors—and was designed to handle only linear equations, it was the first of its kind. It implemented many innovations that have become synonymous with modern computing: the use of binary (base-two) digits to represent data for computation, electronic calculation rather than the inefficiencies of mechanical parts, and segregated systems for computation and memory. The system used regenerative capacitor memory, the same kind of memory used by dynamic random access memory (DRAM) today, using sixty-four bands of fifty capacitors to represent data as 50-bit binary numbers. The bands were contained by a pair of drums that rotated once per second. Arithmetic was conducted by vacuum tubes, of which there were 280, as well as 31 thyratrons. The input-output mechanism was entirely Berry's work and was the subject of his thesis.

Berry completed his master's degree in 1941, and work on the ABC, which lacked some refinements, was put on hold. He continued his studies in ISC's physics department but did so from afar, relocating to California to take a defense job at Pasadena's Consolidated Engineering Corporation (CEC), founded by the son of Herbert Hoover. The military draft was going strong at the time—the Draft Board was not willing to excuse him from the draft for working on the ABC but instead wanted him to work more directly on defense in another matter, which accounts for ISC's flexibility in allowing him to move across country while still enrolled as a graduate student. Berry completed his Ph.D. in 1948 with a dissertation entitled Effects of Initial Energies on Mass Spectra. His rise in CEC was rapid: In 1949 he became chief physicist; in 1952, assistant director of research; and in 1959, technical director and director of engineering of the analytical and control division. He remained with CEC until 1963, when he relocated to Plainview, New York, to become manager of advanced development at Vacuum Electronics Corporation. In his professional work, Berry patented thirty different inventions: eleven related to vacuums and electronics and nineteen to mass spectrometry.

Personal Life

While working on the ABC, Berry met Martha Jean Reed, Atanasoff's secretary and a fellow graduate of ISC, who had a slight limp left after surviving polio. Like Berry, Reed had lost her father at a young age. They were married in 1942, a year after Berry completed his master's degree in physics, and moved to Pasadena, California, for Berry's Consolidated Engineering Corporation job. They had two children, Carol and David. Unbeknownst to Berry, Atanasoff had deep reservations about the relationship; long after Berry's death, Atanasoff confessed that he had wished something had intervened to prevent the marriage and that he distrusted his secretary's influence on his assistant. According to Atanasoff, when he visited them in Pasadena in the 1950s, the Berrys both drank more heavily than had been their earlier habit.

Berry left Pasadena for New York in October 1963. He died the same month, before his family relocated. His death was ruled a suicide, but both Atanasoff and members of the Berry family suspected foul play. In 1985, Iowa State University posthumously awarded Berry its Distinguished Achievement Citation, the highest honor bestowed by the school.

Bibliography

Atanasoff, John V. “Advent of the Electronic Digital Computing.” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 6.3 (1984): 229–82. Print.

Burks, Alice Rowe. Who Invented the Computer? The Legal Battle That Changed Computing History. New York: Prometheus, 2003. Print.

“Clifford Edward Berry." Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2023, history.computer.org/pioneers/berry.html.  Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.

Gleick, James. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. New York: Pantheon, 2011. Print.

McCartney, Scott. ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer. New York: Walker, 1999. Print.

Smiley, Jane. The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer. New York: Doubleday, 2010. Print.