100th Anniversary of Bulgarian inventor of the modern computer

The Founder and President of Microsoft, Bill Gates, has sent a letter of greeting on the occasion on October 4th of the 100th anniversary of the birth of John Atanasoff, the creator of the modern computer, said the Deputy Speaker of Parliament Blagovest Sendov. "Gates states in writing that a Bulgarian national is the creator of the computer," Sendov said.

John Atanasoff, the son of a Bulgarian immigrant from Bulgaria’s village of Boyadjik in the Yambol Region, built the world’s first electronic digital computer at US Iowa State University in 1937-42 together with his assistant Clifford Berry. Their creation incorporated several major innovations in computing including the use of binary arithmetic, regenerative memory, parallel processing and separation of memory and computing functions.

Microsoft’s vice president Pete Haze will attend the celebration of Atanassov’s anniversary. Atanassov’s relatives presented books to the ten best students of computer science at the Blagoevgrad University.