The inventor of the first electronic computer John Vincent Atanassoff is of Bulgarian origin. Professor John Atanassoff, together with graduate student Clifford Berry, built the world’s first electronical, digital, computer, at Iowa State University, between 1939 and 1942. The Atanassoff - Berry Computer, represented several innovations in computing, including a binary system of arithmetic, parallel processing, regenerative memory, and a separation of memory and computing functions.

A new monument dedicated to Bulgaria-descended computer inventor John Atanasoff was inaugurated in Bulgaria on October 4, 2003. The ceremony, attended by Atanasoff’s son and other family members, took place in his father’s birth place - the village of Boyadzhik near Yambol. Another monument was installed earlier in the center of capital Sofia as part of the celebrations of Atanasoff’s 100th birth Anniversary. At the ceremony in Boyadzhik Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister spokesman Lyubomir Todorov delivered a special message from Foreign Minister Solomon Passy. In the speech Atanasoff was called the “electronic Prometheus” since he gave birth to the field of digital computing - an invention that in just a few years affected the lives of almost all people around the globe. Passy’s words also underlined that people should not forget that we owe this great discovery to a man who had both Bulgarian and American origins.