History Of Computing

By: Weng

It started with ABACUS, consist of beads and strings. Serves as simple counting aid Invented in Babylonia

Napier’s Bone, consist of series of sticks by John Napier. Used for multiplication

Slide Rule by William Oughtred. Used for approximate multiplication, division and extraction of roots
and raising of powers.

Pascaline by Blaise Pascal.Used for adding and subtracting numbers.

Leibniz’s Machine by Gottfried Leibniz did multiplication by repeated addition and shifting.

Loom Machine by Joseph-Marie Jacquard. Used for weaving fabrics.

George Boole – devised an algebra of logic that later become a key tool in computer design.

Charles Babbage – regarded as father of the computer. Conceived “analytical engine” and “difference
engine”.

Augusta Ada Byron- First computer programmer.

Herman Hollerith- devised the electromagnetic “tabulating machine”.

Used for tabulating population census.

Alan Turing – devised “Turing Machine” laid the foundation for the development of general purpose
programmable computers.

Howard Aiken- built a large-scale digital computer known as MARK1

John Atanasoff – inventor of the first electronic digital special-purpose computer, used vacuum tubes.

Grace Hopper- originated the term “debugging”. Pioneered the development and used COBOL(Common
Business Oriented Language).

John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert- built the first large-scale electronic digital general-purpose
computer called ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). Later designed and developed
the first commercial electronic computer called UNIVAC 1 (Universal Automatic Computer)

The EDVAC is the successor of the ENIAC. Made by the same designers: Mauchly and Eckert.
EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer)

Maurice Wilkes – built the first computer to use the stored program concept called EDSAC(Electronic
Delay Storage Automatic Computer).
John Von Neumann- developed the stored program concept used in all modern computers. Along with

Hermann Goldstein, he wrote the first paper on the use of flowchart.

Stanislaw Ulam- pioneered the application of random numbers and computers to solution of problems
in mathematics and physics.

John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley – developed the transistor.

John Bacus- he and his team produced the compiled language FORTRAN, which soon became the
primary academic and scientific language.

Donald Shell- published an efficient algorithm for ordering list of data (sorting).

John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz- inventors of BASIC.

Corrado Bohm and Guiseppe Jacopini- proved that any program can be written with three structures –
sequences, decision and loops.

Ted Hoff, Stan Mazer, Roger Noyce, and Fererico Faggin- developed the first microprocessor chip.

Ted Codd- laid the groundwork for relational databases in his seminar paper.

Paul Allen and BiIl Gates- co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. Developed languages and the operation
system for the IBM PC. Operating System known as MS-DOS is a collection of programs that manage the
operation of the computer. Their initial project was a version of BASIC for first microcomputer called
Altair.

Stephen Wozniak and Steve Jobs- co-founders of Apple Computer Inc.

Dan Bricklin and Dan Fylstra- co-founder of Software Arts. Wrote the first electronic spreadsheet
program called VISICALC.

Robert Barnaby- wrote one of the most popular word processor called WORDSTAR.

William Sydnes- manager of the IBM Entry System Boca engineering group; headed the design team for
the IBM Personal Computer.

Mitchell Kapor- co-founder of Lotus Corporation; wrote the business program called Lotus 1-2-3. Lotus
1-2-3 is an integrated program consisting of a spreadsheet, a database manager and a graphics package.

Tim Berners- Lee- proposed the World Wide Web.

Marc Andreessen- develop a program that allowed the user to move around the WWW by clicking on
words and symbols. A program is called MOSAIC. He went on to co-found the Netscape Communications
Corporation. Netscape is the world’s leading Web browser.
Assignment:
 Create a 10-items puzzle game out from the name and contributions of the different
contributors in the history of computing.
 Do it by pair.
 The puzzle will be 20pts.