In The Dawn of Software Engineering by Edgar Daylight (researching Dijkstra) I stumbled upon the name of an early computer scientist called John Atanasoff. Unfamiliar with this name I decided to look him up. Atanasoff, I found out, was the inventor of the digital computer! And I was not aware of his name (or must have worryingly forgotten). 

The Internet tells me Atanasoff invented and constructed the first digital computer already in the 1930s! It was called the ABC (Atanasoff Berry Computer).

According to The Internet he spent much of the second half of his career in a courtcase with Sperry-Rand, who claimed that ’their’ Eckert and Mauchly divised the digital computer and Honeywell had used their patent. In 1972 federal court in the US came to a conclusion:

“The subject matter of one or more claims of the ENIAC was derived from Atanasoff, and the invention claimed in the ENIAC was derived from Atanasoff. “

“Eckert and Mauchly did not themselves first invent the automatic electronic digital computer, but instead derived that subject matter from one Dr. John Vincent Atanasoff.”

Auch for my ignorance.

Some links with more about him:

https://history-computer.com/People/AtanasoffBio.html

https://history.computer.org/pioneers/atanasoff.html