In the 1930s, Atanasoff created the first electronic digital computer at Iowa State College (now known as Iowa State University). When the Honeywell v. Sperry Rand litigation was settled in 1973, it was determined that Atanasoff was the computer's inventor. The Atanasoff–Berry Computer is the name given to his special-purpose machine.

By November of that year, the Atanasoff–Berry Computer (ABC) had been prototyped thanks to a $650 grant and the help of his doctoral student Clifford Berry. Several functional concepts of the ABC, according to Atanasoff, were created during a drive to Rock Island, Illinois in the winter of 1938.

To answer up to 29 simultaneous linear equations, the ABC used binary math and Boolean logic as core concepts. The ABC was not developed with a central processing unit (CPU), but rather as an electrical device that used vacuum tubes to perform digital calculations. It also contained regenerative capacitor memory, which worked in a similar way to how DRAM memory works today.