Jane Smiley Books
Jane Smiley is an American novelist and essayist, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She is known for her wide-ranging works that explore American life, history, and technology.
Known for: The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer
Books by Jane Smiley
The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer
This biography recounts the life and work of John Atanasoff, the American physicist and inventor credited with creating the first electronic digital computer. Jane Smiley explores Atanasoff’s groundbreaking innovations at Iowa State College in the 1930s and 1940s, his struggles for recognition, and the historical context of computing’s early development.
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The Early Life of John Atanasoff and His Emerging Vision
John Vincent Atanasoff’s childhood provides the first glimpse of a mind attuned to logic. Born in 1903 to immigrant parents—his father a Bulgarian engineer and his mother an American schoolteacher—he grew up surrounded by scientific discourse and exploratory spirit. His curiosity about mathematics d...
From The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer
Frustration and the Birth of a New Idea
The turning point came one winter night in 1937 when, exhausted from hours of manual calculations, Atanasoff drove aimlessly across the Iowa plains. The story of that drive is legendary: as the hiss of wind subsided into his thoughts, he began forming the outline of a machine unlike any before. It w...
From The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer
About Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley is an American novelist and essayist, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She is known for her wide-ranging works that explore American life, history, and technology.
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Jane Smiley is an American novelist and essayist, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She is known for her wide-ranging works that explore American life, history, and technology.
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