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This Week in History of Computing

Jonh Vincent Atanasoff
Jonh Vincent Atanasoff

On June 15, 1903 was born John Vincent Atanasoff. He was an American physicist and inventor, best known for being credited with inventing the first electronic digital computer. Atanasoff invented the first electronic digital computer in the 1930s at Iowa State College. Challenges to his claim were resolved in 1973 when the Honeywell v. Sperry Rand lawsuit ruled that Atanasoff was the inventor of the computer. His special-purpose machine has come to be called the Atanasoff–Berry Computer.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Vincent_Atanasoff

Control-Tabulating-Recording Company is Founded
Control-Tabulating-Recording Company is Founded

On June 16, 1911 financier Charles Flint built trusts by merging several smaller companies to form dominant company in particular fields. He had already formed International Time Recording Company that was the major player in factory time clocks and Computing Scale Company of America for scales. He then bought out Herman Hollerith, the founder of Hollerith Tabulating Machine Company, and merged the three companies into Control-Tabulating-Recording Company, or C-T-R. In the 1920s, C-T-R would rename itself IBM.
Source: https://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/june/16/#control-tabulating-recording-company-is-founded.

Hackers Decipher Data Encryption Standard
Hackers Decipher Data Encryption Standard

On June 17, 1997 hackers deciphered computer code written in the Data Encryption Standard, which had been designed to be an impenetrable encryption software. A group of users organized over the Internet cracked the software — the strongest legally exportable encryption software in the United States — after five months of work. The United States bans stronger encryption software out of fear that it would be used by terrorists, but companies designing the software say such restrictions are worthless because foreign countries offer much stronger programs.
Source: https://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/june/17/#hackers-decipher-data-encryption-standard

Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal

On June 19,1623 was born Blaise Pascal. He was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Catholic theologian. Pascal’s earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences, where he made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalising the work of Evangelista Torricelli. In 1642, while still a teenager, he started some pioneering work on calculating machines. After three years of effort and 50 prototypes, he built 20 finished machines (called Pascal’s calculators and later Pascalines) over the following 10 years, establishing him as one of the first two inventors of the mechanical calculator. Pascal was an important mathematician, helping create two major new areas of research: he wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of 16, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal

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