1. 1. Blaise Pascal - Mechanical Calculator
Blaise Pascal along with Wilhelm Schickard was one of two inventors of
the mechanical calculator in the early 17th Century. Pascal made his invention in
1642. He was spurred to it when participating in the burden of arithmetical labor
involved in his father's official work as supervisor of taxes at Rouen. First called
the Arithmetic Machine, Pascal's Calculator and laterPascaline, his invention
was primarily intended as an adding machine which could add and subtract two
numbers directly, but its description could, with a bit of a stretch, be extended to a
"mechanical calculator, in that at least in principle it was possible, admittedly rather
laboriously, to multiply and divide by repetition.
2. 2. Jose Marie Jacquard – Punch Card
Joseph-Marie Jacquard was not the inventor of the programmable loom, as many
people imagine, actually he created an attachment to the loom, which played a very
important role not only in the textile industry, but also in development of other
programmable machines, such as computers, for example the Analytical
Engine ofCharles Babbage. One of the first improvements of Jacquard was to
eliminate the paper strip from Vaucanson's mechanism and to return to Falcon's
chain of punched cards. Then, he tried to avoid the expensive metal cylinders of
Vaucanson. In fact, the term Jacquard loom is a misnomer, actually Jacquard's
invented an attachment (head), that adapts to a great many type of looms, that allow
the weaving machine to create the intricate patterns often seen in Jacquard weaving.
Thus any loom that uses the attachment is called a Jacquard loom.
Each position in the punched card of the loom corresponds to a hook, which can
either be raised or stopped dependant on whether the hole is punched out of the card
or the card is solid. The hook raises or lowers the harness, which carries and guides
the warp thread so that the weft will either lie above or below it. The sequence of
raised and lowered threads is what creates the pattern. Each hook can be connected
via the harness to a number of threads, allowing more than one repeat of a pattern.
For example, a loom with a 500-hook head might have four threads connected to
each hook, resulting in a fabric that is 2000 warp ends wide with four repeats of the
weave going across.
3. 3. Charles Babbage – Mechanical Computer
Charles Babbage, FRS was an English polymath. He was a mathematician,
philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, who is best remembered now for
originating the concept of a programmable computer.
Considered a "father of the computer",Babbage is credited with inventing the
first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs. His varied
work in other fields has led him to be described as "pre-eminent" among the many
polymaths of his century.
Parts of Babbage's uncompleted mechanisms are on display in the London Science
Museum. In 1991, a perfectly functioning difference engine was constructed from
Babbage's original plans. Built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century, the
success of the finished engine indicated that Babbage's machine would have
worked.
4. 4. Augusta Ada Byron – Computer Programming
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, born Augusta Ada Byron and now
commonly known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer
chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose
computer, theAnalytical Engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognised
as the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine. Because of this, she is
often described as the world's first computer programmer.
5. 5. Konrad Zuse – Freely Programmable Computer
Konrad Zuse was a German inventor and computer pioneer. His greatest
achievement was the world's first programmable computer; the functional program-
controlledTuring-complete Z3 became operational in May 1941. Thanks to this
machine and its predecessors, Zuse has often been regarded as the inventor of the
modern computer.
Zuse was also noted for the S2 computing machine, considered the first process-
controlled computer. He founded one of the earliest computer businesses in 1941,
producing the Z4, which became the world's first commercial computer. From
1943[5]
to 1945[6]
he designed the first high-levelprogramming
language, Plankalkül.[7]
In 1969, Zuse suggested the concept of a computation-
based universe in his book Rechnender Raum (Calculating Space).
Much of his early work was financed by his family and commerce, but after 1939
he was given resources by the Nazi German government. Due to World War II,
Zuse's work went largely unnoticed in the United Kingdom and theUnited States.
6. Possibly his first documented influence on a US company wasIBM's option on his
patents in 1946.
There is a replica of the Z3, as well as the original Z4, in the Deutsches
Museum in Munich. The Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin has an exhibition
devoted to Zuse, displaying twelve of his machines, including a replica of
theZ1 and several of Zuse's paintings.
6. John Atanasoff & Clifford Berry – Computing Biz ABC
The Atanasoff–Berry computer (ABC) was the first automatic electronic digital
computer, an early electronic digital computing device that has remained somewhat
obscure. To say that it was the first is a debate among historians of computer
technology. Most would probably credit John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert,
7. creators of the ENIAC, with the title. Still, other would argue that the credit
undisputedly belongs to Iowa State mathematics and physics professorJohn Vincent
Atanasoff for his work with the 'ABC,' with the help of graduate student Clifford
Berry. Conceived in 1937, the machine was not programmable, being designed only
to solve systems of linear equations. It was successfully tested in 1942. However,
its intermediate result storage mechanism, a paper card writer/reader, was
unreliable, and when John Vincent Atanasoff left Iowa State College for World War
II assignments, work on the machine was discontinued. The ABC pioneered
important elements of modern computing, including binary arithmetic andelectronic
switching elements, but its special-purpose nature and lack of a changeable, stored
program distinguish it from modern computers. The computer was designated
an IEEE Milestone in 1990.
Atanasoff and Berry's computer work was not widely known until it was
rediscovered in the 1960s, amidst conflicting claims about the first instance of an
electronic computer. At that time, the ENIAC was considered to be the first
computer in the modern sense, but in 1973 a U.S. District Court invalidated the
ENIAC patent and concluded that the ENIAC inventors had derived the subject
matter of the electronic digital computer from Atanasoff (see Patent dispute).
8. 7. Howard Aiken & Grace Hopper - Harvard Mark I Computer
Aiken studied at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and later obtained his PhD
in physics at Harvard University in 1939.During this time, he
encountered differential equations that he could only solve numerically. He
envisioned an electro-mechanical computing device that could do much of the
tedious work for him. This computer was originally called the ASCC (Automatic
Sequence Controlled Calculator) and later renamed Harvard Mark I. With
engineering, construction, and funding from IBM, the machine was completed and
installed at Harvard in February, 1944. Grace Hopper joined the project in July of
that year.In 1947, Aiken completed his work on the Harvard Mark IIcomputer. He
continued his work on the Mark III and the Harvard Mark IV. The Mark III used
some electronic components and the Mark IV was all-electronic. The Mark III and
Mark IV used magnetic drum memory and the Mark IV also had magnetic core
memory.
Aiken was inspired by Charles Babbage's difference engine.
9. Aiken accumulated honorary degrees at the University of Wisconsin, Wayne State
and Technische Hochschule, Darmstadt. He was elected a Fellow of theAmerican
Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1947.He received the University of Wisconsin–
Madison College of Engineering Engineers Day Award in 1958, the Harry H.
Goode Memorial Award in 1964, the John Price Wetherill Medal in 1964, and
the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Edison Medal in 1970
"For a meritorious career of pioneering contributions to the development and
application of large-scale digital computers and important contributions to
education in the digital computer field."
In addition to his work on the Mark series, another important contribution of
Aiken's was the introduction of a master's program for computer science at
Harvard,nearly a decade before the programs began to appear in other universities.
This became a starting ground to future computer scientists, many of whom did
doctoral dissertations under Aiken.
10. 8. John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly – 20,000 Vacuum Tubes
John Adam Presper "Pres" Eckert Jr. was anAmerican electrical
engineer and computer pioneer. With John Mauchly he invented the first general-
purpose electronic digital computer (ENIAC), presented the first course in
computing topics (the Moore School Lectures), founded the first commercial
computer company (the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation), and designed the
first commercial computer in the U.S., the UNIVAC, which incorporated Eckert's
invention of the mercury delay line memory.
11. 9. Frederic Williams & Tom Kilburn Manchester Baby & Williams Tube – Baby
and the Williams Tube
The Manchester Mark 1 was one of the earliest stored-program computers,
developed at the Victoria University of Manchester from theSmall-Scale
Experimental Machine (SSEM) or "Baby" (operational in June 1948). It was also
called the Manchester Automatic Digital Machine, or MADM. Work began in
August 1948, and the first version was operational by April 1949; a program written
to search forMersenne primes ran error-free for nine hours on the night of 16/17
June 1949.
The machine's successful operation was widely reported in the British press, which
used the phrase "electronic brain" in describing it to their readers. That description
provoked a reaction from the head of the University of Manchester's Department of
Neurosurgery, the start of a long-running debate as to whether an electronic
computer could ever be truly creative.
The Mark 1 was to provide a computing resource within the university, to allow
researchers to gain experience in the practical use of computers, but it very quickly
12. also became a prototype on which the design of Ferranti's commercial version could
be based. Development ceased at the end of 1949, and the machine was scrapped
towards the end of 1950, replaced in February 1951 by a Ferranti Mark 1, the
world's first commercially available general-purpose electronic computer.
The computer is especially historically significant because of its pioneering
inclusion of index registers, an innovation which made it easier for a program to
read sequentially through an array of words in memory. Thirty-four patents resulted
from the machine's development, and many of the ideas behind its design were
incorporated in subsequent commercial products such as the IBM 701 and 702 as
well as the Ferranti Mark 1. The chief designers, Frederic C. Williams and Tom
Kilburn, concluded from their experiences with the Mark 1 that computers would be
used more in scientific roles than in pure mathematics. In 1951 they started
development work on Meg, the Mark 1's successor, which would include a floating
point unit.
13. 10. John Bardeen Walter Brattain & Wiliam Shockley – Transistor
William Bradford Shockley Jr. was an American physicist and inventor. Along
with John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain, Shockley co-invented
thetransistor, for which all three were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prizein
Physics.Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the
1950s and 1960s led to California's "Silicon Valley" becoming a hotbed of
electronics innovation. In his later life, Shockley was a professor at Stanford and
became a staunch advocate ofeugenics.
14. 11. John Backus & IBM FORTRAN – High Level Programming Language
John Warner Backus was an American computer scientist. He directed the
team that invented the first widely used high-level programming
language (FORTRAN) and was the inventor of the Backus-Naur form (BNF), a
widely used notation to define formal language syntax. He also did research
in function-level programming and helped to popularize it.The IEEE awarded
Backus the W.W. McDowell Award in 1967 for the development of FORTRAN.
He received the National Medal of Science in 1975, and the 1977 ACM Turing
Award “for profound, influential, and lasting contributions to the design of
practical high-level programming systems, notably through his work on
FORTRAN, and for publication of formal procedures for the specification of
programming languages.”
15. 12. Jack Kilby & Robert Noyce – Integrated Circuit
Jack St. Clair Kilby was an American electrical engineer who took part (along
with Robert Noyce) in the realization of the first integrated circuit while working
at Texas Instruments (TI) in 1958. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics on
December 10, 2000. To congratulate him, US President Bill Clinton wrote, "You
can take pride in the knowledge that your work will help to improve lives for
generations to come."He is also the inventor of the handheld calculator and
the thermal printer, for which he has patents. He also has patents for seven other
inventions.
16. 13. Steve Russell – First Computer Game (MIT Spacewar)
In 1962, Steve "Slug" Russell, a computer programmer working for the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), invented Spacewar!, the first popular
and earliest known digital computer game.
In 1961, Russell created and designed Spacewar!, with the fellow members of
the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT, working on a DEC Digital PDP-1.
The precise origin of the "concept" of computer-based games in general has been
debatedSpacewar!, however, was unquestionably the first to gain widespread
recognition, and it is generally recognized as the first of the "shoot-'em' up" genre
17. 14. Douglas Engelbart – First Computer Mouse and Windows
Douglas Carl Engelbart was an Americanengineer and inventor, and an early
computer and Internet pioneer. He is best known for his work on the challenges
of human–computer interaction, particularly while at his Augmentation Research
Center Lab in SRI International, resulting in the invention of the computer mouse,
and the development of hypertext, networked computers, and precursors
to graphical user interfaces. These were demonstrated at The Mother of All
Demos in 1968. In the early 1950s, he decided that instead of "having a steady job"
(such as his position at NASA's Ames Research Center) he would focus on making
the world a better place, especially through the use of computers. Engelbart was
therefore a committed, vocal proponent of the development and use of computers
and computer networks to help cope with the world’s increasingly urgent and
complex problems. Engelbart embedded a set of organizing principles in his lab,
which he termed "bootstrapping strategy". He designed the strategy to accelerate the
rate of innovation of his lab.
18. 15. Faggin, Hoff & Mazor Intel – First Microprocessor
Federico Faggin (born December 1, 1941) is an Italian-born and
educated physicist, naturalized US citizen, widely known for designing the first
commercial microprocessor. He led the 4004 (MCS-4) project and the design group
during the first five years of Intel's microprocessor effort. He was founder and CEO
of Zilog, the first company solely dedicated to microprocessors.
In 2010 he received the 2009 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the
highest honor the United States confers for achievements related to technological
progress.
19. 16. Alan Shugart – Floppy Disk
Alan Field Shugart was an American engineer, entrepreneur and business
executive whose career defined the modern computer disk drive industry.
With Shugart as Chief Executive Officer, Seagate became the world’s largest
independent manufacturer of disk drives and related components. In July 1998,
Shugart resigned his positions with Seagate.
In 1996 he launched an unsuccessful campaign to elect Ernest, his Bernese
Mountain Dog, to Congress. Shugart later wrote about that experience in a
book, Ernest Goes to Washington (Well, Not Exactly). He backed a failed ballot
initiative in 2000 to give California voters the option of choosing "none of the
above" in elections.
20. 17. Robert Metcalfe – Xerox the Ethernet
Robert Melancton "Bob" Metcalfe is an electrical engineer from the United
States who co-invented Ethernet, founded 3Com and formulated Metcalfe's Law.
As of January 2006, he is a general partner of Polaris Venture Partners. Starting in
January 2011, he holds the position of Professor of Electrical Engineering and
Director of Innovation at The University of Texas at Austin.
Metcalfe was working at Xerox PARC in 1973 when he and David Boggs
invented Ethernet, a standard for connecting computers over short distances.
Metcalfe identifies the day Ethernet was born as May 22, 1973, the day he
circulated a memo titled "Alto Ethernet" which contained a rough schematic of how
it would work. "That is the first time Ethernet appears as a word, as does the idea of
using coax as ether, where the participating stations, like in AlohaNet or ARPAnet,
would inject their packets of data, they'd travel around at megabits per second, there
would be collisions, and retransmissions, and back-off," Metcalfe explained. Boggs
identifies another date as the birth of Ethernet: November 11, 1973, the first day the
system actually functioned.
21. 18. Adam Osborne – First Portable Computer
Adam Osborne was a Thailand-born British-American author, book
and software publisher, and computer designer who founded several companies in
the United States and elsewhere.
Osborne was known to frequent the famous Homebrew Computer Club's meetings
around 1975. He was best known for creating the first commercially
available portable computer, the Osborne 1, released in April 1981. It weighed 24.5
pounds (12 kg), cost US$1795—just over half the cost of a computer from other
manufacturers with comparable features—and ran the popular CP/M 2.2operating
system. It was designed to fit under an airline seat. At its peak, Osborne Computer
Corporation shipped 10,000 units of "Osborne 1" per month. Osborne was one of
the first personal computing pioneers to understand fully that there was a wide
market of buyers who were not computing hobbyists: the Osborne 1 included word
processing and spreadsheet software. This was at a time when IBM would not
bundle hardware and software with their PCs, selling separately the operating
systems, monitors, and even cables for the monitor.
22. 19. Dan Bricklin & Bob Frankston – VisiCalc Spreadsheet
VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet computer program, originally released for
the Apple II. It is often considered the application that turned
the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business
tool, and is considered the Apple II's killer app. VisiCalc sold over 700,000 copies
in six years, and as many as 1 million copies over its history.
VisiCalc was ported to numerous platforms, both 8-bit and some of the early 16-bit
systems. In order to do this, the company developed porting platforms that
produced bug compatibleversions. The company took the same approach when
the IBM PCwas launched, producing a product that was essentially identical to the
original 8-bit Apple II version. Sales were initially brisk, with about 300,000 copies
sold.VisiCalc used the A1 notation in formulas.
When Lotus 1-2-3 was launched in 1983, taking full advantage of the expanded
memory and screen of the PC, VisiCalc sales practically ended overnight. Sales
imploded so rapidly that the company was soon insolvent. Lotus
Development purchased the company in 1985, and immediately ended sales of
VisiCalc and the company's other products.
23. 20. Seymour Rubenstein & Rob Barnaby WordStar – Word Processors
Seymour Ivan Rubinstein (born 1934) is a pioneer of
the PC software industry. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and after a six-year
stint in New Hampshire, later moved to California. Programs developed partially or
entirely under his direction include WordStar, HelpDesk, Quattro Pro, and
WebSleuth, among others. WordStar was the first truly successful program for the
personal computer (in a commercial sense) and gave reasonably priced access to
word processing for the general population for the first time.
Rubinstein began his involvement with microcomputers as director of marketing
at IMSAI.
