Marvin Minsky
Marvin Minsky was, and remains, one of the best known of the revolutionary thinkers of the early days of AI, robotics and computer science.
View ArticleMargaret Hamilton - Apollo and Beyond
Margaret Hamilton was lead developer for the team that wrote the programs that landed men on the moon and has devoted a career to error detection and recovery. She coined the term "software engineer"...
View ArticleManchester Computers of the 1950s
In the period after World War II, Manchester in the UK was one of foremost centers of computing expertise. In 1948 Tom Kilburn and Freddie Williams designed, “Baby" or Small Scale Experimental Machine...
View ArticleLEO - Lyons Electronic Office
One of the most unlikely events in the history of computing is the involvement of a UK company better known for its tea rooms.
View ArticleKonrad Zuse and the First Working Computers
You may well never have heard of Konrad Zuse, but he has a better claim than most to be the man who invented the programmable computer in the sense of actually building one. In fact, he built several...
View ArticleKemeny & Kurtz - The Invention Of BASIC
In May 2014 it is 50 years since the invention of the BASIC language and of time sharing. Is there another language that can claim to have done more to change the way we use computers? You may not like...
View ArticleJohn Warnock - Father of PostScript
John Warnock is a mathematican turned computer scientist. Wihout him there would probably be no Apple, no PDF and no printers that produce typeset quality output. Find out how he invented PostScript...
View ArticleJohn Von Neumann The Great Polymath
John Von Neumann was perhaps the first computer age polymath. He seemed to be capable of getting involved in just about any subject. Not content with inventing game theory, cellular automata and...
View ArticleJohn Backus - the Father of Fortran
Creating the first compiler went hand-in-hand with the task to creating the first high-level computer language. You can argue that this was Fortran or some other language, but the fact of the matter is...
View ArticleJay Forrester and Whirlwind
Jay Forrester, who invented core memory while working on Project Whirlwind at MIT in the 1940s, died on November 16, 2016 aged 98. Discover the man who invented core memory and, indirectly, gave the...
View ArticleIvan Sutherland - Father of Computer Graphics
Computer graphics wasn't invented by one man, but Ivan Sutherland had a lot to do with it and his is the name you generally think of first in connection with its development.
View ArticleInvention of the Microchip
Without the microchip it is unlikely that computers would have become commonplace. Its invention was a key stage in the development of computing and is credited to two individuals - Jack Kilby and...
View ArticleIntel - The Microprocessor Revolution
Intel is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its 4004 microprocessor, the first customer programmable chip and the one that led on to the Intel design dominating the processors we use. We look at how...
View ArticleHoward Aiken and the Harvard Mark I
The Harvard Mark I now has an established place in the history of computing. However, without financial help from IBM it would never have materialized. It is more than 75 years since the memorandum...
View ArticleHistory of Computer Languages - The Classical Decade, 1950s
In the first of a series of articles about the development of computing languages, we look at the struggle to create the first high level languages.
View ArticleHerman Hollerith and the Punch Card
In the field of business computing one man can be credited with inventing automatic data processing, but these days his name is hardly known. You might even call Herman Hollerith, the forgotten giant...
View ArticleHAL 9000 - a fictional computer
HAL is an entirely fictional machine and yet it seems to stir something in the soul of the computer scientist. Why?
View ArticleGrace Hopper - The Mother of Cobol
Rear Admiral Grace Brewster Murray Hopper was responsible not only for the development of the Cobol language but also for the continuous pressure within the industry to make computers and computing...
View ArticleGordon Bell And DEC - The Mini Computer Era
Gordon Bell is responsible for many things, but the design of the most successful range of minicomputers, the PDP range, is probably the thing he is best known for. This is a story about when computers...
View ArticleGene Amdahl
For computer people of a certain age Gene Amdahl is a legend and a hero who made logic design cool and out did IBM in building advanced computers. IBM may have had the 360 and the 370 but Amdahl built...
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