What Happened on September 30th
September 30, 1941
Mauchly Writes Atanasoff Suggesting Cooperative Work
During the trial to decide who would receive credit for designing the first electronic computer, John Atanasoff's lawyer, Mr. Halladay finally persuaded John Mauchly to confirm several key points.
The PS/2 was IBM's follow-on computer to its PC, PC/XT, and PC/AT machines. The PS/2 used the Micro Channel Architecture, a bus format incompatible with IBM's open ISA standard adopted by clone makers.
IBM had introduced its PS/2 machines just the year before, making the 3 1/2-inch floppy disk drive and video graphics array standard for IBM computers and compatibles. PS/2s were the first IBM computers to use Intel's 80386 chip and IBM released a new operating system, OS/2, at the same time, allowing the use of a mouse with IBM computers for the first time.
One such point was that on September 30th, 1941, Mauchly had written to Dr. Atanasoff, co-designer of the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, suggesting a cooperative effort. Mauchly was considering the development of a computer and had asked Atanasoff if he had any objection to the use of his concepts.
The judge would eventually rule in favor of Dr. Atanasoff.
September 30, 1988
IBM Announces Shipment of 3 Millionth PS/2 Personal Computer