I was very surprised to read of John Vincent Atanasoff out at Iowa State this morning. He had a tremendous impact and I hadn't ever heard of him.

http://www.columbia.edu/~td2177/JVAtanasoff/JVAtanasoff.html

A US District Judge ruled in the 70s that the ENIAC was largely derivative of the computer Atanasoff had developed with his student Clifford Berry. Berry would continue on to work for Remington Rand and Burroughs on the BatComputer

http://tjsawyer.com/B205Home.htm