Apple is latest tech giant drawn to Iowa
Apple announced they will build a data center to the tune of a billion plus dollars in Waukee, basically a suburb of Des Moines. Expensive to build but said to only employ 50 or so once in operation. Here’s to the construction money and the hope they employ solid Iowans (or import people who become such) and not bring silicon values and influence.
The press palooza claimed that they will use 100% renewable energy to run the place. Consider it “unlikely” as in dissembling unless they actually require little and have big batteries made by elves in a far off galaxy.
In recent years California based Google and Washington state based Microsoft have opened billion dollar facilities in Iowa. Given their cultures, we are content if they employ relatively few in expensive hubs. Better our serious employment comes from upstarts that stay here.
Speaking of which the computer revolution got its upstart in these parts so maybe this is a bit of a return to the holy land of sorts.
John Vincent Atanasoff invented first electronic digital computer at Iowa State (Wikipedia excerpt)
John Vincent Atanasoff (October 4, 1903 – June 15, 1995) was an American physicist and inventor, best known for being credited with inventing the first electronic digital computer.
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.[1][2][3][4] His special-purpose machine has come to be called the Atanasoff–Berry Computer. . . .
Partly due to the drudgery of using the mechanical Monroe calculator, which was the best tool available to him while he was writing his doctoral thesis, Atanasoff began to search for faster methods of computation. At Iowa State, Atanasoff researched the use of slaved Monroe calculators and IBM tabulators for scientific problems. In 1936 he invented an analog calculator for analyzing surface geometry. The fine mechanical tolerance required for good accuracy pushed him to consider digital solutions.
With a grant of $650 received in September 1939 and the assistance of his graduate student Clifford Berry, the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) was prototyped by November of that year. According to Atanasoff, several operative principles of the ABC were conceived by him during the winter of 1938 after a drive to Rock Island, Illinois. . . .
Between 1954 and 1973, Atanasoff was a witness in the legal actions brought by various parties to invalidate electronic computing patents issued to John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, which were owned by computer manufacturer Sperry Rand. In the 1973 decision of Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, a federal judge named Atanasoff the inventor of the electronic digital computer.
Story goes around here that he sketched some key thoughts on a bar napkin when he arrived in Rock Island. Also apocryphally said to be one of our old haunts. Now if we just knew touch typing . . .
R Mall
