I looked up the book on Atanasoff -- it's by Jane Smiley, and I should add that she clearly didn't understand computers (most egregiously, she seemed to think 'digital' meant 'electronic'). Still, not taking her judgments for granted, I thought there was some interesting history there I hadn't heard about, and Atanasoff really seemed to have gotten a lot right earlier than most, and Mauchly to have only subtracted value from what he'd learned from him. (Eckert on the other hand came off as a great engineer.) I have no independent knowledge of this stuff, however.