The Founders

Atanasoff (Atanasoff-Berry Computer)

Build date - 1939/42
Stats - 700 lbs, 300 vacuum tubes, a mile of wire
Calculation speed - One operation every 15 seconds
Cost of full-scale model - $850

Extra information - Before its development came Konrad Zuze's Z1 mechanical binary computer in 1936, used as the foundation for future calculator technology. Zuze, an engineer in Germany during World War II, then completed the Z2 in 1939, the first fully functional electro-mechanical computer. In the same year, at Iowa State University, Professor John V. Atanasoff and a graduate student named Clifford Berry began building the world's first electronic-digital computer. It would incorporate a binary system of arithmetic, parallel processing, regenerative memory, and a separation of memory and computer functions, innovations not seen before in the ABC's predecessors. The size of a desk, the ABC was too large to go anywhere, and thus remained in the basement of the physics department of ISU. The war effort in 1942 prevented Professor Atanasoff from finishing the patent process and doing any more work on his computer. In the end it was dismantled when the department needed more space.

In the game Brave Tamer, the ABC, called simply Atanasoff, was the true creator of the Digital World, though all the credit went to ENIAC. It acted in the shadows as the silent foundations on which the world was built. When ZeedMillenniumon succeeded in depleting ENIAC's power, it's Atanasoff alone that prevents him from taking over the past.

ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator)

Build date - Commissioned in 1943, unveiled in 1946
Stats - 30 tons, covered 1800 square feet. Contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, 6,000 manual switches and 5 million soldered joints. Consumed 160 kilowatts of electrical power and caused brownouts in Philadelphia when it was turned on.
Calculation speed - 5,000 additions, 357 multiplications or 38 divisions in the span of a single second.
Cost of production - $500,000

Extra information - ENIAC had been built on the grounds laid out by Professor Atanasoff and his ABC. It had been commissioned by the US military to aid in the war effort, but the war was over by the time ENIAC was completed. Instead, it was used to calculate hydrogen bomb designs, weather prediction, cosmic-ray studies, thermal ignition, random-number studies and wind-tunnel design. Fast it may have been in its day and age, but programming was a tedious process spanning weeks, and the machine required long hours of maintenance. Modifications were made to it over time, and its creators Eckert and Mauchly moved on to work on the BINAC and UNIVAC. It was finally shut down and retired at 11:45 p.m., on October 2, 1955.

Possibly to reflect the patent infringment issues between ENIAC and ABC (Sperry Rand vs. Honeywell, 1973), the game thus does not mention Atanasoff until the shut-down of ENIAC by ZeedMillenniumon's forces. Until then, ENIAC is seen as the Creator, a tangible god in the Digital World keeping an eye out on the dimensions rendered in the future. Likewise, the ENIAC was seen as the first patented digital computer. However, the patent was voided as derivative of Professor Atanasoff's ABC. While Professor Atanasoff was generous in stating that credit for the invention and development of electronic computers should go to all involved, Eckert and Mauchly still to this day receive most of the credit for the creation of the first electronic-digital computer.