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PHILADELPHIA -- Philadelphia artist Jim Reed grew up figuring that everyone's grandfather had invented something.
So he didn't feel like his grandfather John Mauchly was in any way out of the ordinary, even though Mauchly is widely credited with having invented the computer.
Reed remembers watching the television broadcast of Neil Armstrong's 1969 walk on the moon. As Armstrong scuffled across the dusty lunar surface, his grandfather fielded congratulatory phone calls from people who knew the space mission wouldn't have been possible without computers.
But Reed also remembers a grandfather who was "depressed, harassed by a series of legal struggles concerning patent claims, and plagued by giant government corporate interests who stood to lose billions of dollars if a physicist and engineer in their mid-20s were to hold the patent on computers."
"He was a person overflowing with creativity and (the) inventor of the most revolutionary tool of the century," said Reed of his grandfather. "How could he end up uncompensated for his years of labor, his patent lost, and as a final insult, discredited as being the inventor?"
"Because we have an adversarial court system, that's why," said Reed. "It is all about winning, so if you are an inventor, you had better team up with someone who is cunning and vicious. Society will compensate only those who have the power to demand it."
John Mauchly, with J. Presper Eckert, were the inventors of the "Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer" (ENIAC), widely considered to be the world's first electronic general-purpose computer.
Built in the basement of University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Engineering, ENIAC was a tremendously complicated and huge machine -- taking up 1,800 square feet of floor space and weighing 30 tons with more than 17,000 vacuum tubes. It sucked up 160 kilowatts of electrical power, and when turned on, often caused the city of Philadelphia to experience brownouts.
When it was unveiled in 1946, the public wondered whether the machine could truly perform computational tasks as well as a human could, and whether there would ever be more than highly specialized scientific uses for the contraption. There certainly were uses, judging by the ensuing decades of patent struggles that would drain Mauchly both emotionally and financially.
The first patent battle occurred when Mauchly and Eckert were asked to sign over the ENIAC patent to Pennsylvania University. Their refusal cast a shadow over their academic careers and caused them to leave the university, according to Reed.
Mauchly and Eckert then started their own business, the Electronic Control Company, and built the Binary Automatic Computer (BINAC), which was the first machine to store data on magnetic tape rather than on punched cards.
The Electronic Control Company soon became the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, and BINAC was followed by the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC), the first computer to be produced commercially in the United States. Forty-six UNIVACs were built. In fact, the very first UNIVAC was built for the U.S. Census Bureau. The UNIVAC was later used to predict the 1952 presidential election results.
Remington Rand acquired Eckert-Mauchly and the rights to the ENIAC patent in 1950, which was eventually passed to Sperry Rand, as a result of a Remington Rand-Sperry Corporation merger. Sperry Rand then opted to demand royalties from all computer developers. Honeywell refused to pay and filed an antitrust suit against Sperry Rand and Mauchly, who was still the ENIAC patent holder.
The case went to trial in June 1971. In April 1973 Judge Earl Larson found that Honeywell had infringed on the ENIAC patent, but also said the ENIAC patent was invalid, because it was filed a year after the computer had gone into public use and because ENIAC was derived in part from the work of John V. Atanasoff at Iowa State University.
Atanasoff had developed a prototype electronic computer in 1938, later named the Atanasoff Berry Computer (ABC). Atanasoff and others firmly believed that the design of the ENIAC was based on the ABC.
But many Mauchly supporters, including Reed, believe the ABC was no more than a prototype, and the lawsuit was, in Reed's words, "a deliberate attempt to sabotage the patent," and wrest its control from a single person to a company.
Mauchly died Jan. 8, 1980, in Ambler, Pennsylvania. He was 72.
Reed, a painter and, with his brother William, part-owner of Philadelphia's Standard Tap pub, decided to produce a documentary to tell his grandfather's story. Mauchly: The Computer and the Skateboard was made by Reed and Philadelphia filmmaker Paul David.
Mauchly, who had been a physics professor at Ursinus College near Philadelphia before beginning work on ENIAC, often zipped around his classroom on a homemade, jet-propelled skateboard in order to demonstrate Newton's laws of motion.
"It is odd how few people know of John Mauchly, as he single-handedly changed the entire world in which we live," said David. "Of course, politics plays a role in that, and there's plenty of debate as to who really invented the computer.
"But after five years of work on this documentary, there is no doubt in my mind. John Mauchly envisioned a machine which would do calculations electronically to help solve weather problems -- not really for ballistics, which is how the project got wartime funding -- and he was the first."
Reed and David worked closely with Mauchly's widow, Kay, who was one of the world's first computer programmers. During the process of inventing computer programming, she also fell in love with and married the computer's inventor.
"Kay paved the way for us to make this film by giving us access to archives at universities and museums, but most importantly her own attic -- where we discovered the original ENIAC patent and scores of tapes, slides and photos," said David.
The documentary includes never-before-seen footage of interviews with Mauchly. During one he mourns the fact that he was better known for his invention of the computer than for inventing the skateboard. He believed both were revolutionary tools.
A standout moment for David during filming was the scene at Ursinus College when professor Evan Snyder produced a skateboard from a desk drawer, which he claimed was the very one used by John Mauchly. Another was when technical writer Joe Chapline compared his experience writing a manual for the BINAC to that of Mozart: It was "at once in his brain." Then there was documentary interviewer Chris Blake telling Kay Mauchly he had to end their discussion to go home and feed his goldfish.
Despite these bright spots, the film is, according to Reed, a dark and cautionary tale for inventors.
Only one of the Reed boys is an inventor. John Reed, who lives in California, has created such oddities as an automatic cat-petting machine, a sewing-machine doorbell, and a dentist's chair-cappuccino maker.
But artist Jim Reed follows in his grandfather's footsteps with his keen interest in technology. And he's not all that thrilled with how his grandfather's invention has developed.
"I feel today's PC is still a hobbyist tool, not yet fit for the general public," said Reed.
"I am interested in the PC as an appliance and how well the PC functions as a useful tool for everyone. I'm interested in how well does it serve or exploit its owner. And I think I know what the next PC will be like, but who can I tell? Will I be protected by a patent? And even if I was, when someone decides to take it away from me, how would I defend it?"
*(Michelle Delio and photographer Laszlo Pataki continue their four-week geek-seeking journey along U.S. Route 1. If you know a town they should visit, a person they should meet, a weird roadside attraction they must see or a great place to fuel up on lobster rolls, barbecue, conch fritters and the like, send an e-mail to wiredroadtrip@earthlink.net.) *
