<Tr> <Th> Doctoral advisor </Th> <Td> J.H.V. Vleck </Td> </Tr> <P> John Vincent Atanasoff (October 4, 1903--June 15, 1995) was an American - Bulgarian physicist and inventor, best known for being credited with inventing the first electronic digital computer . </P> <P> Atanasoff invented the first electronic digital computer in the 1930s at Iowa State College . Challenges to his claim were resolved in 1973 when the Honeywell v. Sperry Rand lawsuit ruled that Atanasoff was the inventor of the computer . His special - purpose machine has come to be called the Atanasoff--Berry Computer . </P> <P> Atanasoff was born on October 4, 1903 in Hamilton, New York to an electrical engineer and a school teacher . Atanasoff's father, Ivan Atanasoff was of Bulgarian origin, born in 1876 in the village of Boyadzhik, close to Yambol, then in Ottoman Empire . While Ivan was still an infant, Ivan's own father was killed by Ottoman soldiers after the Bulgarian April Uprising . In 1889, Ivan Atanasov immigrated to the United States with his uncle . Atanasoff's father later became an electrical engineer, whereas his mother, Iva Lucena Purdy (of mixed French and Irish ancestry), was a teacher of mathematics . Young Atanasoff's ambitions and intellectual pursuits were in part influenced by his parents, whose interests in the natural and applied sciences cultivated in him a sense of critical curiosity and confidence . </P>

When was the first computer invented in america