Physical Database Design

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Distributed Data

Allocation

All men are caught in a network of mutuality.

—Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968)

he first electronic computer was arguably the ABC computer designed and built by

John V. Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry at Iowa State University in 1938 to solve

sets of linear equations. The first general-purpose electronic computer, the ENIAC, was

completed eight years later in 1946, and could solve a larger and much more general set

of mathematical problems. The subsequent lawsuit involving patent rights between Ata-

nasoff and the lead designers of the ENIAC, John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert,

resulted in a court decision in November 1971 that gave Atanasoff credit for inventing

regenerative memory using a rotating drum and electronic ...