Arthur Walter Burks (born October 13, 1915 in Duluth, Minnesota) is an American mathematician who in the 1940s as a senior engineer on the project contributed to the design of the ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. Decades later, Burks and his wife outlined their case for the subject matter of the ENIAC having been derived from John Vincent Atanasoff. October 13 is the 286th day of the year (287th in leap years). ... 1915 (MCMXV) was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Map Political Statistics Founded 1679 Incorporated 1800s County St. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... ENIAC ENIAC, short for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer[1], was the first large-scale, electronic, digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems[2], although earlier computers had been built with some of these properties. ... John Vincent Atanasoff (October 4, 1903 – June 15, 1995) was a prominent computer engineer of Bulgarian origin. ...

Early life and education

Burks earned his B.A. in mathematics and physics from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana in 1936 and his M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1937 and 1941, respectively. Euclid, a famous Greek mathematician known as the father of geometry, is shown here in detail from The School of Athens by Raphael. ... The first few hydrogen atom electron orbitals shown as cross-sections with color-coded probability density. ... This school is not to be confused with DePaul University, which has a similar pronunciation. ... Greencastle is a city located in Putnam County, Indiana. ... 1936 (MCMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Philosopher in Meditation (detail), by Rembrandt. ... This article is about the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. ... For the railroad company, see Ann Arbor Railroad. ... 1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... For the movie, see 1941 (film) 1941 (MCMXLI) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1941 calendar). ...

The Moore School

The summer after obtaining his Ph.D., the young Dr. Burks moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and enrolled in the national defense electronics course offered by the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering; his laboratory teaching assistant was J. Presper Eckert, a graduate student at the Moore School; a fellow student was John Mauchly, the chairman of the physics department at Ursinus College in nearby Collegeville, Pennsylvania. Both Burks and Mauchly sought and obtained teaching positions at the Moore School the following fall, and roomed together throughout the academic year. Nickname: City of Brotherly Love, Philly, the Quaker City, the City that Loves You Back Motto: Philadelphia maneto (Let brotherly love continue) Location in Pennsylvania Coordinates: Country State County United States Pennsylvania Philadelphia Founded Incorporated October 27, 1682 October 25, 1701 Mayor John F. Street (D) Area    - City 369. ... The University of Pennsylvania (Penn is the moniker used by the university itself [2]) is a private, nonsectarian research university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ... The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania came into existence as a result of an endowment from Alfred Fitler Moore on June 4th, 1923. ... John Presper Eckert, a computer pioneer, was born April 9, 1919 in Philadelphia and died June 3, 1995 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. ... John William Mauchly (August 30, 1907 – January 8, 1980) was an American physicist who, along with J. Presper Eckert, designed ENIAC, long held to be the first electronic digital computer, as well as EDVAC, BINAC and UNIVAC I, the first commercial computer made in the United States. ... Ursinus College is a small, coeducational, liberal arts college in Collegeville, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. ... Collegeville is a borough located in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Philadelphia on the Perkiomen Creek. ...

The ENIAC

When Mauchly and Eckert's proposed concept for an electronic digital computer was funded by the U.S. Army's Ballistics Research Laboratory in June 1943, Burks was added to the design team. Among his principal contributions to the project was the design of the high-speed multiplier unit. (Also during this time, Burks met and married Alice Rowe, a computer employed at the Moore School.) The US Army Ballistics Research Labatory is at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Aberdeen, Maryland. ... 1943 (MCMXLIII) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1943 calendar). ... Before mechanical and electronic computers, the term computer, in use from the mid 17th century, meant a human undertaking mathematical calculations. ...

In April 1945, with John Grist Brainerd, Burks was charged with writing the technical reports on the ENIAC for publication. Also during 1945 Burks assisted with the preliminary logical design of the EDVAC in meetings attended by Mauchly, Eckert, John von Neumann, and others. The EDVAC as installed in Building 328 at the Ballistics Research Laboratory. ... John von Neumann in the 1940s. ...

Burks also took a part-time position as a philosophy instructor at Swarthmore College during 1945-1946. Swarthmore College is a private liberal arts college in the United States, with an enrollment of about 1450 students. ...

The IAS

On March 8, 1946 Burks accepted an offer by von Neumann to join the computer project at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and joined full time the following summer. (Already on the project was another member of the ENIAC team, Herman Goldstine; together, Goldstine and Burks gave nine of the Moore School Lectures in Summer 1946.) During his time at the IAS, Burks worked to expand von Neumann's theory of automata. March 8 is the 67th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (68th in Leap years). ... 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... The IAS machine was the first electronic digital computer built by the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton, NJ, USA. The paper describing the design of the IAS machine was edited by John von Neumann, (see Von Neumann architecture). ... Fuld Hall The Institute for Advanced Study is a private institution in Princeton Township, New Jersey, U.S.A. (although it is not part of Princeton University), designed to foster pure cutting-edge research by scientists in a variety of fields without the complications of teaching or funding, or the... Princeton, New Jersey, is the name of a section of Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. ... Herman Heine Goldstine (September 13, 1913 – June 16, 2004) was one of the original developers of ENIAC. He worked closely with John von Neumann. ...

The University of Michigan

After working on this project, Burks relocated to Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1946 to join the faculty of the University of Michigan, first as an assistant professor of philsophy, and as a full professor by 1954. He helped found the university's computer science department, first as the Logic of Computers group in 1956, of which he was the director, then as a graduate program in 1957, and then as an undergraduate program within the new Department of Computer and Communication in 1967, which he chaired until 1971. He declined a position heading up a different university's computing center, citing his primary interest as the purely theoretical aspects of computing machines. For the railroad company, see Ann Arbor Railroad. ... 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... This article is about the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. ... 1954 (MCMLIV) was a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1956 (MCMLVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar (the link is to a full 1967 calendar). ... 1971 (MCMLXXI) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1971 calendar). ...

Restoration of parts of the ENIAC

In the 1960s he was presented with the opportunity to acquire four units of the original ENIAC, which had been rusting in a storage Quonset hut in Aberdeen, Maryland. He ran the units through a car wash before restoring them and donating them to the University of Michigan. They are currently on display in the entryway of the Computer Science Building near the "foo bar" snack cafeteria. A typical Quonset hut A Quonset hut is a lightweight prefabricated structure of corrugated steel having a semicircular cross section. ... Aberdeen is a city in Harford County, Maryland, United States. ...

Patent dispute

In 1964 Burks was approached by attorney Sy Yuter and asked to join T. Kite Sharpless and Robert F. Shaw in litigation that would add their names as inventors to the ENIAC patent, which would allow them to profit from the sale of licenses to the premiere electronic digital computer apart from Sperry Rand, the company that owned the Eckert-Mauchly interest in the patent and was at that time seeking royalties from other computer manufacturers. This endeavor was never successful; in the 1973 decision to Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, U.S. District Judge Earl R. Larson ruled—even as he invalidated the patent—that only Mauchly and Eckert had invented the ENIAC, and that Burks, Sharpless, and Shaw could not be added as inventors. 1964 (MCMLXIV) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1964 calendar). ... ENIAC ENIAC, short for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer[1], was the first large-scale, electronic, digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems[2], although earlier computers had been built with some of these properties. ... The American company Univac began as the business computer division of Remington Rand formed by the purchase of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC) in 1950. ... 1973 (MCMLXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday. ... Honeywell, Inc. ...

The BACH Group

In the 1970s Burks began meeting with Bob Axelrod, Michael Cohen, and John Holland, researchers with interests in interdisciplinary approaches to studying complex adaptive systems. Known as the BACH group (an acronym of their surnames), it came to include, among others, Pulitzer Prize winner Douglas Hofstadter, and survives today as the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Complex Systems (CSCS). This article is about a political scientist. ... Dr. John Henry Holland (February 2, 1929) is known as the father of genetic algorithms. ... The gold medal awarded for Public Service in Journalism The Pulitzer Prize is an American award regarded as the highest honor in print journalism, literary achievements, and musical compositions. ... Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American academic. ...

In the 1970s and 1980s Burks, working with his wife Alice, authored a number of articles on the ENIAC, and a book on the Atanasoff-Berry Computer. Diagram of the ABC pointing out its various components The Atanasoff-Berry Computer, constructed in the basement of the The Atanasoff-Berry Computer was the first electronic digital computer [1] [2] and was a major step in the history of computing . ...

As professor emeritus

In 1990, Burks donated a portion of his papers to the university's Bentley Historical Library, where they are accessible to researchers.

Suffering from dimensia, Burks is currently writing his memoirs and resides in an assisted living facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Assisted Living or Assisted living facilities (ALF) usually refers to a non-medical facility that is used by people who are not able to live on their own, but do not need the level of continuous nursing care that a nursing home offers. ...