Honeywell vs. Sperry Rand records

This collection contains pretrial depositions, plaintiff exhibits, deposition exhibits, trial testimony, trial exhibits, the final opinion and judgement, and indexes from the 1971 Honeywell vs. Sperry Rand suit. The trial featured extensive testimony by many early computer designers and engineers detailing the efforts in the United States to build the first digital computers. The trial included thousands of exhibits, which included early research reports and notebooks, pictures, and descriptions of early computing machines and programs, and films on the ENIAC. Honeywell, Inc. donated most of the materials in the collection and all of the indexes. A copy of the final judgement was donated by Judge Earl Larson.

The final computerized plaintiff's brief contains the plaintiff's and defendant's arguments and replies, and the actions of the court on motions. The brief is arranged by event statements, statements alleged by the plaintiff to be fact. The defendant then challenges or agrees with these statements. The final brief is available only on microfiche.

There are eleven indexes on microfiche that provide cross-references to the exhibits, trial transcripts, and event statements from the plaintiff's final brief. Honeywell was responsible for the extensive indexing of the collection. A description of the indexes may be found in the container list.

The complete trial transcript is on microfiche, and there are paper photocopies of the trial testimony of John W. Mauchly. There are transcripts of many pretrial depositions, including John V. Atanasoff; his former wife, Lura Atanasoff; Sam Legvold; and John Mauchly. Some of the transcripts were donated by Dr. Arthur W. Burks; the rest came from Honeywell, Inc. There are extensive deposition exhibits, many of which became trial exhibits. A cross listing of deposition and trial exhibit numbers is attached.

The nineteen cubic feet of trial exhibits include letters, reports, notebooks, and publications. Most of these are photocopies. Also included are photographs of physical exhibits, photographic exhibits, and two motion picture films. The exhibits were used to support Honeywell's allegations in their final brief. Some of the trial exhibits are filed as deposition exhibits, and a cross-reference index is available. Honeywell destroyed most of the exhibits dating after 1951 due to obligations relating to companies holding the original documents. However, the collection does contain some exhibits dating after 1951. Trial exhibits are arranged numerically by exhibit number, and those with unknown numbers are arranged by subject.

The sets of microfiche were poorly processed so it may not be possible to provide photocopies of some frames. Some photocopies are barely legible and may not reproduce well.

Related collections are the Larson papers, CBI 31, a collection of correspondence to and from Judge Larson relating to the trial; and the Robert Kalb papers, CBI 4, an early computer engineer and witness in the trial.