Posts about History of computers
On January 24, 2016 died Marvin Lee Minsky. He was an American cognitive scientist concerned largely with research of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AI laboratory, and author of several texts concerning AI and philosophy. Minsky received many accolades and honors, such as the 1969 Turing Award. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Minsky#cite_note-natureobit-15 On 29th … Learn more …
On January 19, 1978 Apple began developing the Lisa computer. It was to feature a graphical user interface (GUI) and use the Motorola 68000 CPU. It was also the first Apple product with an internal hard drive. SteveJobs, head of the project until he was taken off it in 1982, initially claimed LISA stood for … Learn more …
On January 10, 1938 was born Donald Knuth, an American computer scientist, mathematician, and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the 1974 recipient of the ACM Turing Award, informally considered the Nobel Prize of computer science. He is the author of the multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming. He contributed to the development … Learn more …
On January 3, 2018 computer security experts have discovered two major security flaws in the microprocessors inside nearly all of the world’s computers. The two problems, called Meltdown and Spectre, could allow hackers to steal the entire memory contents of computers, including mobile devices, personal computers and servers running in so-called cloud computer networks.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/business/computer-flaws.html On … Learn more …
On December 21, 1920 was born Adele Goldstine. She was an American mathematician and computer programmer. She wrote the manual for the first electronic digital computer, ENIAC. Through her work programming the computer, she was also an instrumental player in converting the ENIAC from a computer that needed to be reprogrammed each time it was … Learn more …
On December 13, 2004 died David Wheeler. He was a computer scientist and professor of computer science at the University of Cambridge. Wheeler’s contributions to the field included work on the Electronic delay storage automatic calculator (EDSAC) and the Burrows–Wheeler transform (BWT). He was responsible for the implementation of the CAP computer, the first to … Learn more …
On December 6, 1934 was born John Barkley Rosser. He was a mathematical logician. Rosser was able to anticipate the potential of early computers in many areas of mathematics as well as the ultimate impact of logic on the future of computing. He contributed to the Church-Rosser theorem that identifies the outer limit of what … Learn more …
This week in our column “History of computing”: Sir Maurice Wilkes, Federico Faggin, Eric Steven Raymond.
On November 22, 1962 was born Randal Schwarts. He is an American author, system administrator and programming consultant. He is known for his expertise in the Perl programming language, his promotional role within the Perl community, as a co-host of FLOSS Weekly, and for a controversial felony conviction resulting from State of Oregon vs. Randal … Learn more …
This week in our column “History of computing”: Cynthia Breazeal; James Weirich; Dries Buytaert.