The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

by Walter Isaacson

It became the basis for most subsequent computers. That last attribute is important. When we ascribe credit for an invention, determining who should be most noted by history, one criterion is looking at whose contributions turned out to have the most influence. Invention implies contributing something to the flow of history and affecting how an innovation developed. Using historic impact as a standard, Eckert and Mauchly are the most noteworthy innovators. Almost all computers of the 1950s trace their roots to ENIAC. The influence of Flowers, Newman, and Turing is somewhat trickier to assess. Their work was kept top-secret, but all three men were involved in the British computers built after the war. Zuse, who was isolated and under bombardment in Berlin, had even less influence on the course of computer development elsewhere. As for Atanasoff, his main influence on the field, perhaps his only influence, came from providing a few inspirations to Mauchly when he visited.

The essence of "influence"