Breakthrough Square is a proposed public art project that is in development. Located in the heart of the Downtown Rock Island Arts & Entertainment District, the project will consist of an eighty-foot mural, fountain and informational kiosk that will commemorate the conceptualization of the electronic digital computer in Rock Island. As Dan Carmody, executive director of the Renaissance Rock Island, said, "It celebrates the 'A-ha! moment." For more information on this upcoming public art project contact Lori Roderick, Community Arts Administrator for Quad City Arts.

The conceptual image above was created to give some indication of the scope and possible direction of this public art project.

“In short, Atanasoff's computer is very important to you and me. Just as the Gutenberg press spawned an information revolution, so has the ABC. Electronic computing technology may have been an inevitable successor to mechanical computing technology, but it takes that first stroke of genius -- in this case, it occurred in a roadhouse in Rock Island, Illinois -- to start an irreversible change in the way we think.”

- Shawn Beattie, Educational Technology Coordinator at Augustana College