Glossary of Historical IT Personalities A Dictionary Compiled by
: the transfer of data from outside the computer to its main
Michael Grant
Abramson, Norman (born 1932)
Author of the concept of (data) packet radio transmission and leader
of the University of Hawai team that put it into execution in the
ALOHANET, with his multiple access ALOHA protocol (1970). This
technology was adapted to cable transmission, in 1973, by Bob
Metcalfe at Xerox PARC (Xerox Palo Alto Research Center), to
become known as Ethernet, the best known network connection and
transmission technology.  video files, using the MP3 format; Internet telephony; real-time audio
Abu Ali Hasan Ibn Al-Haytham or “Alhazen” (965-1040)
Mathematician, astronomer and author of important works on
astronomy, mathematics, physics and optics, he is usually seen as one
of the authors of modern science. 
Aiken, Howard (1900-1973)
Inventor, with his IBM-backed team, of the ASCC Mark I (Automatic
Sequence-Controlled Calculator Mark I) at Harvard, in 1943. This was
an enormous, fixed-point, electro-mechanical, programmable
calculator capable of 1 multiplication a second and an addition in a
third of a second, with input and output on paper tape. 
Allen, Paul (born 1953)
Co-founder of the Microsoft software company with Bill Gates in 1975.
He obtained the rights to QDOS (“Quick and Dirty Operating System”)
for the sum of $50,000 and Microsoft offered it to IBM as the operating
system for their new microcomputer, the PC. Nowadays a rich
philanthropist, Allen resigned from the Microsoft board in 2000 but is
still one of its strategy consultants.  held on the site, or to another site altogether, by activating, with one
Andreesen, Mark (born 1971)
One of the inventors of the first Web browser programme, Mosaic,
and co-founder, with Jim Clark, of the Internetsoftware company
Netscape; he designed the Web browsers “Navigator” and
“Communicator”.  Babbage, Charles (1792-1871)
Atanasoff, John Vincent (1903-1995)
Co-inventor, with Clifford Berry of the ABC (Atanasoff-Berry Computer)
binary calculator, built in 1937-1942 at Iowa State University. It used a
mechanical clock, but valves made up the logic circuits and the
memory was an electrical charge, held in two rotating drums
containing capacitors, able to store sixty fifty-bit words. It ran at 60 Hz
and could carry out one addition per second. Punched cards were
used for entering data. J. V. Atanasoff communicated his ideas to J. W.
Mauchly, who used them in the design of the better-known ENIAC,
built in 1945. 
Lexical Aid
Browser : a software programme that enables Internet users to visit
the Web and to go from site to site. It operates by interpreting HTML
(Hypertext Markup Language), responding to a user clicking on one of
the hyperlinks planted in a Webpage, and taking them to another page
in the site, or to another site altogether.
Capacitor : a device consisting of at least two conductors, or semi-
conductors, separated by a dielectric (an insulator) capable of storing
a certain electric charge, its “capacitance”, measured in farads.
Data packet, or datagram : a small block of data circulating within a
computer network and containing code for its destination address and
route.
Fixed-point : a representation of numbers in which the position of the
decimal point and the digits is fixed, thus limiting their manipulation.
1
Input 
memory or CPU.
Internet : the “Net”, the global network of computer networks and of
individual computer users, in which all the users can communicate and
use the Net’s services because they use common telecommunication
protocols. The services available include: e-mail (electronic mail); the
World Wide Web; IRC (Internet Relay Chat) chatrooms; FTP (File
Transfer Protocol) for downloading large files and programs; Usenet
newsgroups; multi-user games; peer-to-peer exchange of audio and
and video streaming.
Output : the transfer of data from the main memory or CPU of the
computer to another device.
Protocol : agreed rules or codes for data exchange over a network.
Software : logical code, written by a programmer, that instructs a
computer how to carry out a given task according to a programme of
operations.
Valve : another word for vacuum tube, in electronics.
Web : contraction of the term “the World Wide Web”, or “W3”, this is
the Internet service that allows its users to publish “pages” of
information at a specific location on the Internet, called a “Website”.
Other users, who have the right software, can visit the site and read
the information published there. They can go directly to other pages
click of the mouse, special “dynamic” link points , called “hyperlinks”, in
the page they are reading. There are now millions of sites located on
servers, the big computers that deal with network traffic, all over the
world and they make up the Web. 
Inventor of the calculating machines, the Difference Engines No 1
(1832) and 2 (1847-9), and his Analytical Engine (1834), ancestors of
today's computers. In 1906, his son, Henry Babbage, with the help of
the firm of R. W. Munro, completed the “mill”, the equivalent of
today's CPU, of his father's Analytical Engine, showing that it would
have worked. 
Bacon, Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)
Philosopher and inventor of the Biliteral Code (1623) which allowed its
user to encode the alphabet using 5 characters. 
Bardeen, John (1908-1991)
John Bardeen shared in the award of the Nobel Prize for Physics in
1956, with W. Schockley and W. Brattain, his colleagues at Bell
Laboratories, for his contribution to the invention of the transistor. He
shared in a second Nobel Prize in 1972, with L. N. Cooper and J. R.
Schrieffer, for their work on superconductivity.
Berners-Lee, Timothy (born 1955)
Inventor of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), in 1989, and thus
inventor of the World Wide Web, when working as a computer scientist
at the CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva. He
wrote the first web client (browser) and server in 1990. A graduate of
Oxford University, he now holds the 3Com Founders’ chair at the
Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab
(CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He directs
the World Wide Web Consortium, an open forum of companies and
organizations whose mission is to make the Web work as efficiently
and harmoniously as possible.
Berry, Clifford E. (1918-1963) Hyperlink : special “dynamic” link points in a webpage, that lead the
Co-inventor while still a student, with J. V. Atanasoff of the user directly to other pages held on a website, or to another site
ABC binary calculator, built in 1937-1942 at Iowa State University.  altogether, once activated by one click of the mouse.

Boole, George (1815-1864) Information technology : also known simply by its initials “IT” is the
Mathematician and author of the work “An Investigation Into the Laws science, practice and phenomenon of computing, that used to be
of Thought, on Which are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic called “data processing”.
and Probabilities”, published in 1854, in which he claimed that logic is
subject to mathematical laws that can be represented in algebraic
Punched cards : perforated cards whose pattern of holes makes up
terms, that all operations can be carried out by one of the three logical
the data to be processed by a program, or may constitute the program
operators : AND, OR, NOT, and, finally, that “the respective
itself, on earlier, more primitive machines, such as weaving looms.
interpretations of the symbols 0 and 1 in the system of Logic are
Nothing and Universe”
Spreadsheet : a software programme that carries out tasks of
complex mathematical calculation.
Brattain, Walter Houser (1902-1987)
John Bardeen shared in the award of the Nobel Prize for Physics in
1956, with W. Schockley and J. Bardeen, his colleagues at Bell Caillau, Robert (born 1947)
Laboratories, for his contribution to the invention of the transistor.  Belgian collaborator with Tim Berners-Lee in the composition of
“Hypertexte et le CERN”, the key-document in the development of the
World Wide Web. 
Bricklin, Daniel (born 1951)
Co-inventor, with Bob Franston, in 1979, of the
first spreadsheet programme, Visicalc, designed for the Apple II.  Čapek, the brothers Karel (1890-1938) and Josef (murdered in
1945, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp)
Brin, Sergey (born 1973)
Co-inventor, with Larry Page, of the world’s best-known browser, Czechoslovak authors of the science fiction play “R. U. R.” (Rossum's
Google. The son of Russian mathematician and economist Mihail Brin, Universal Robots - 1921) in which the word “robot” was coined (from
who left the Soviet Union for Palo Alto in the USA in 1979, he first met the Czech “robotník” - drudge).
Larry Page at Stanford University in 1995. The two had gone there to
study for their PhD’s in computer science, having already obtained
Cerf, Vinton G. (born 1943)
their Master’s degrees there. Although they initially clashed, they
Pioneer of the Internet and co-inventor, with Robert Kahn, of
became friends and co-inventors, devising firstly the BackRub
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) (V. Cerf and R. Kahn, “A protocol
experimental browser and then the Page Ranking system, which is
for packet network interconnection”, IEEE Transactions on
Google’s particularity and which, by counting the links used to get to a
Communications) and president of the Internet Society. 
web page, makes it possible to rank the sites according to their
popularity, since the multiplicity of links constitutes a type of “voting” for
the quality of the content of a site. Google became operational for the Chappe, Claude (1763-1805)
public in 1998 and caught on with spectacular rapidity.  Inventor of the Aerial Telegraph, composed of a network of towers,
within sight of each other, each equipped with articulated, wooden
arms, capable of transmitting a message by sight, using coded signals.
Bush, Vannevar (1890-1974)
The first line in the network was set up in 1794, between Paris and
Science Advisor to President Roosevelt during World War II and author
Lille. 
of a visionary article, published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1945, entitled
“As We May Think”, in which he foresaw much of what is
now Information Technology, including a kind of hyperlink system, Clark, James H. (born 1944)
in the form of a machine he called the Memex. He also led the team at Inventor of the “Geometry Engine” chip, at Stanford Research
MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) that designed (1925) and Institute, he later founded the Silicon Graphics company and co-
built (1930) an analogical calculating machine on the Babbage model, founded the Internet software company Netscape, with Mark
known as the Differential Analyser.  Andreesen.

Burroughs, William S. (1857-1898) Codd, Edgar F. “Ted” (born 1923)

Inventor of an office calculator of a stronger design than that of Felt
and the ancestor of the office calculating industry.  Relational Database technology and invented the special-purpose
Byron, Ada Augusta (Countess of Lovelace) (1815-1852)
Mathematician, only daughter of the poet Lord Byron, and the first
computer programmer, since she made thepunched cards for
Babbage's Analytical Engine and conceived the computation of
Bernoulli numbers, a programme for the calculation of specialised
calculus operations.  Electrical engineer and designer of the first supercomputers during
Lexical Aid
Binary : a numerical system that uses only the digits “0” and “1” to
represent all other numbers.
CPU : or Central Processing Unit, the “brain” of the computer,
comprising the control unit, the arithmetic/logic unit and the
input/output unit.
Former IBM research scientist who developed a theory that became
database language that became known as SQL (Structured Query
Language), pronounced “sequel” in the early 1970s. It is the
international standard database language and is used in all RDB
applications. 
Cray, Seymour R. (1925-1996)
the 1950s, the Cray series of machines, each of which was faster than
its predecessor. The Cray 2, introduced in 1985, set a record for its
time, performing at 1 billion floating-point operations per second (1
GigaFLOP). 
Crocker, Steve
Internet pioneer and director of the Network Working Group (NWG)
that established the first communication protocols between host
computers, from 1969. He edited the famous “Request For
Comments” (RFC) the ARPANET pioneers' working notes. In 1977,
with John Vittal, he set out the standards for e-mail communication
with the “ Complete Email Specification”. 

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 Lexical Aid
Chip : common nickname for a microcircuit, a miniaturised circuit
engraved upon a small piece, or chip, of treated silicon, e.g. a
microprocessor.
Database : a collection of information organised by a specialised
software programme into files in such a way that they are easy to
retrieve and manipulate.
E-mail : electronic mail is a system that allows computer users
connected to each other through a network to send and receive
messages, in the form of text, like an office memo, or other types of
files, such as images or sounds. It is still the most used service of the
Internet.
Host computer : a large computer in a network or distributed system
that controls or provides services to the other computers connected to
it.
Supercomputer : a computer is said to be a supercomputer when it is
capable of more than one Gigaflop (109 floating point operations) per
second. Certain personal computers are now capable of this.
Davies, Donald
Cf Watts-Davies, Donald
De Colmar, Charles-Xavier Thomas (1785-1870)
Inventor, in 1820, of the Arithmometre, a calculator based upon the
same principles as the Leibnitz machine but capable of division, as
well as being both portable and reliable.
De Forest, Lee (1873-1961)
Inventor of the Audion, the first triode (1907), as well as other
important devices in the field of radio, for which he usually failed to
obtain the patents in time!  Bletchley Park, that built the first Colossus (Dec 1943), an entirely
Dijkstra, Edsger Wybe (1930-2002)
Dijkstra is famous for his shortest-path algorithm, otherwise known as
the Dijkstra algorithm, for which he received the Turing award in 1972.
He also designed and coded the first Algol 60 compiler and was well
known as the leading abolitionist of the GOTO statement from
programming, publishing the article on the subject “Go To Statement
Considered Harmful” in 1968.  Co-inventor, with Dan Bricklin, in 1979, of the first spreadsheet
Drummer, G. W. A. (born 1909)
Engineer at the Royal Radar Establishment in England, who, in 1952,
first proposed “electronics equipment in a solid block with no
connecting wires”, now known as integrated circuits (ICs).  by information technology.
Lexical Aid
Triode : any electronic device equipped with three electrodes.
Eccles, William Henry (1875-1966)
Physicist, pioneer of radio technology, and inventor, with F. W. Jordan,
in 1919, of the flip-flop circuit.
Engelbart, Douglas Carl (born 1925)
Engineer at SRI (Stanford Research Institute, Massachusetts, USA)
and ARPANET scientist who pioneered and demonstrated, in 1968, an
elaborate hypermedia-groupware system called NLS (for oNLine
System). Most of the NLS now-common features were conceived of,
fully integrated, and in everyday operational use by the early 1970s,
and included the “windows”, or graphical user interface, and the now
ubiquitous mouse. The ARC mouse actually had three buttons which
3
could be used for typing, so the user's hand never had to leave it. He
was strongly influenced by reading Vannevar Bush's article “As We
May Think”, in 1945.
Estridge, Philip D.
IBM engineer and one of the architects of the company's Personal
Computer. 
Lexical Aid
Graphical user interface : the part of an operating system that is
visible to the user on screen, providing convenient visual tools, e.g.
windows, menus, pointers, icons and other symbols, with which the
user can manipulate programmes and data, and thus operate the
computer easily and profitably.
Groupware : a software programme that co-ordinates the work of a
group of users on a network, e.g. Lotus Notes
Mouse : a small input device that, when its user slides it across the
desktop, will move a cursor on the computer screen.
Falcon, Louis
Inventor, in 1728, of the first programmable loom, using punched
cards. 
Felt, Don E. (1862-1930)
Inventor of the Comptometre (Chicago 1886), the first keypad
calculator and, in 1889, of the first office calculator with built-in printer. 
Fleming, John (1849-1945)
Inventor of the first vacuum tube, to be known as the Fleming diode
(1904). 
Flowers, Thomas Harold “Tommy” (1905-1998)Engineer and leader
of the team, at the secret British wartime codebreaking department at
electronic machine, that incorporated 2,400 vacuum tubes as logic
relays. It had 5 paper tape loop readers, that each worked at 5,000
characters per second. Its principles were based upon the “bomby”,
developed by the Polish team of Marian Rejewski and was used to
decode Enigma, the German machine-generated, military code.
Frankston, Robert (born 1949)
programme, Visicalc, designed for the Apple II.
Fukuyama, Francis (born 1952)
Philosopher known for his speculations on the ethical problems raised
 
Lexical Aid
Loom : mechanical device used for weaving yarn (that is, twisted
strands of fibre) into textile.
Gassée, Jean-Louis (born 1944)
One of the founders of the company Apple Computers, later CEO of
the computer and software company Be and the designer of the BeOS
operating system which could have been the basis of the new OS that
Apple was looking for in the 1990s, had Gassée not asked too much
money for it. Instead Apple chose Steve Jobs’ NeXTSTEP OS and
Jobs himself. 
Gates, William “Bill” (born 1955) the A-4 rocket control system (Peenemünde, 1941). This rocket
Co-founder, with Paul Allen, of the software company Microsoft that became the infamous V2 (V for “Vergeltungswaffe” – “Vengeance
marketed the PC operating system MS-DOS (a re-working of QDOS) Weapon”) which Hitler used against London, Antwerp in 1944-1945, in
and, later, the Windows operating system.  his vain attempt to stop the Allied advance from the West. Hoelzer
continued working with the Wernher Von Braun team, but this time for
the Americans, when, at the end of the war, the team was spirited off
Gernelle, François
to Fort Bliss, in the USA, in “Operation Paperclip” in May 1945. 
Inventor, in 1973, of the world's first microcomputer, the Micral, when
he was the leading engineer at André Truong's company, R2E. 
Hoerni, Jean (born 1924)
Physicist at the Fairchild Semiconductor company and developer the
Goldberg, Adèle
new planar process (so called because the surface remained flat) to
Pioneer in the development the first graphical user interface, for a
build the first ICs with silicon as the semiconductor. 
computer's operating system, at Xerox PARC at the end of the
nineteen seventies. 
Hoff, Marcian Edward “Ted” (born 1937)
Engineer at Intel who, in 1969, proposed a single-chip, general-
Gosling, James
purpose CPU that could be programmed to perform most desired
Engineer at the computer and software company, Sun Microsystems,
functions. The result was the first microprocessor, the 4004, containing
who led the “Oak” project, which resulted in the cross-
2,300 transistors, capable of 60,000 operations per second and
platform programming language “Java” 
costing $200, introduced by Intel at the end of 1971. 

Lexical Aid
Hollerith, Herman (1860-1929)
Inventor of the Electric Tabulating Machine, a machine for processing
CEO: Chief Executive Officer, the fashionable term for the Chairman punched cards used in the United States for the 1890 population
or President of a company. census. 

Cross-platform : an adjective meaning “able to function with Hopper, Grace Murray (1906-1992)

computers of various types, using operating systems of different Inventor (1951) of the modern concept of the compiler in the computer
origins”. operating system. 

Operating system : also known simply by the initials “OS”, it is the Lexical Aid
fundamental piece of software that manages the operation of the
computer and all its electronic and mechanical parts. It interprets the
Analogue computer : a computer that represents data in analogue
user’s instructions to the machine through intermediary of the
form, i.e. as a continuously varying signal instead of by digital
specialised application programme, e.g. a spreadsheet programme,
increments, as most modern computers do.
that the user has chosen to work with.

Compiler : the software that converts programme code into machine

HAL
code, the code that actually operates the computer’s mechanism.
Name of the on-board computer of the spaceship in the science fiction
film “2001 : A Space Odyssey”, directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Oscilloscope : an instrument for producing a visible display of
variations in electrical quantities, usually by means of a cathode-ray
Hahn, Phillip Mathieus (1730-1790)
tube.
Inventor, in 1773, of the first functional calculator, extending the
principle of the Leibnitz Stepped Drum by using twelve drums. The
manufacture of these machines continued into the early 19th century.  Patented : granted, by the government, sole rights to make use of and
sell an invention.
Hertz, Heinrich Rudolph (1857-1894)
Physicist and inventor of an oscilloscope that allowed him to Transistors : a small semi-conductor device, usually made of silicon,
produced electromagnetic waves and show that they were part of the consisting of a number of electrodes, and capable of modulating a
same spectrum as light, thus making wireless telegraphy a possibility. current flowing between them when a certain voltage is applied to one
The unit of frequency (one cycle per second) was named the hertz in or more specified electrodes.
honour of his work. He also discovered the photoelectric effect. 
Jobs, Steven Paul “ Steve ” (born 1955)
Hartree, Douglas (1897-1958)
When he had just been appointed Plummer Professor of Mathematics
Co-founder of the company Apple Computers, with Steve Wozniak, the
at Cambridge University, Hartree was sent to the USA to assist ENIAC
inventor of the world’s first desktop or homecomputer to use
scientists and he taught them how to take advantage of the device’s
a VDU (initially a TV set), a sound card and a keyboard, the Apple I
great rapidity of action through his programming methods and
and II. Jobs mostly handled the production and marketing of the Apple
understanding. 
computer. He has had tumultuous career at Cupertino, where Apple’s
HQ is to be found, having, in 1985, been pushed out of the company’s
Herzstark, Curt (1902-1988) board of directors by John Sculley the CEO whom he recruited himself!
Inventor, in 1938, of the smallest, mechanical, four-function calculator Jobs then founded the NeXT computer company, which, though not a
to be mass-produced. Capable of calculating up to 15 positions, commercial success, produced a revolutionary design, a model being
his patented Curta machine is still more accurate than most of today's used by Tim Berners-Lee at the CERN laboratory, when the latter was
electronic, pocket calculators and weighs only 300 grammes.  inventing HTML and thus the World Wide Web itself. The NeXT’s
system’s main value was its operating system NeXTSTEP, a reworking
of the UNIX OS for a small system. This provided the basis for the new
Hoelzer, Helmut (1912-1985)
Mac OS X, which Jobs introduced when he was invited back to a
A member of the Wernher Von Braun team of rocket scientists in Nazi
moribund Apple in 1996. Also the founder of the highly successful and
Germany, he was the inventor of an all-electronic,
innovative Pixar animation company, he initially styled himself as
dedicated, analogue computer, built as part of a simulation device of
“adviser”, then “interim CEO” of the Apple. Now, however, he is
4
Apple’s official CEO and media-savvy representative and has led the
company back to financial success, thanks to striking innovations and
designs, as well as a highly stable OS with its attractive user interface.  directed the sending of the first electronic message over the ARPANET
Jordan, F. W.
Inventor, with Eccles in 1919, of the flip-flop circuit, a switch based on
two triodes. 
key functional specifications for the ARPANET (predecessor to the
Internet), and directed its installation. On 20th October1969, he
and he later published the first book describing its workings. At
present, as founder and chairman of Nomadix Inc. and of the
Technology Transfer Institute, he is one of the leading IT scientists
developing nomadic computing.

Kurtz, Thomas (born 1928)

Lexical Aid
Co-inventor, with John G. Kemeny, of the high-level programming
language BASIC in 1963/4. It was designed to be an easy-to-use
Desktop computer : another term for a microcomputer or a personal programming language and it was widely used for home
computer (PC). microcomputer kits in the 1980s, and continues to live on in a variety of
IT dialects. 
VDU: means Visual Display Unit or computer monitor.
Lexical Aid
media-savvy: knowing how to manipulate and exploit the mass media.
Architecture : internal structure and typical arrangement of devices
connected together in a network.
Kahn, Philippe
CEO of the software company, Borland International, and designer of
the Turbo Pascal progamming language.  CEO : initials of Chief Executive Officer, a fashionable way of saying
Managing Director or President of a company.
Kahn, Robert
Originator, with Vinton G. Cerf, of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Minimalism : an IT system having only minimal features in order to be
(V. Cerf and R. Kahn, “A protocol for packet network interconnection” more productive in the hands of an expert user. The converse is the
IEEE Transactions on Communications) and pioneer of the Internet. feature-rich GUI which the ordinary IT user likes to use because of its
He defined what he called the “open network architecture”, the greater facility, but which makes greater demands on the processor,
foundation of today's Internet (i.e., minimalism, autonomy, best effort merely for the purposes of display.
service, stateless routers, and decentralized control). 
Stateless : that does not record all the routing information for a data
Kemeny, John G. (1926-1992) packet, only its departure and arrival points.
Co-inventor, with Thomas E. Kurtz, of the high-level programming
language BASIC in 1963. It was designed to be an easy-to-use
Router : a network device that determines the route a data packet will
programming language and it was widely used for home
take to reach its objective.
microcomputer kits in the 1980s, and continues to live on in a variety of
IT dialects. Professor Kemeny pioneered the introduction of IT into
universities.   

Kernighan, Brian W. (born 1942) Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm von (1646-1716)

Co-author with Dennis Ritchie, of the first book on the high-level Philosopher, mathematician, co-inventor of differential calculus and
programming language “C” and inventor of the AWK scripting language inventor, in 1672/4, of the Stepped Reckoner, a calculating
and the AMPL modelling laguage for mathematical optimisation while machine, developed from Pascal's ideas, which used a cylinder called
working at Bell Labs.  the Stepped Drum, with nine teeth in the form of ridges of increasing
length running parallel to the drum's axis. As well as performing
additions and subtractions, it could multiply and divide, and was
Kharezmi (Abu Abdullah Mohammad Ibn Musa Al-Khawarizmi, died
capable of producing 16 digit answers. A prototype was built by
circa 840)
a craftsman from Paris, named Olivier. 
Mathematician, astronomer and geographer, he is the founder of
algebra, and indeed the very name of the science has its origins in his
most famous book “Al-Jabr wa-al-Mfuqabilah”.  Lelan, Gérard
Leading researcher, with Hubert Zimmerman and Louis Pouzin, in
the development of the “Cyclades” system, a French attempt to create
Kilby, Jack St Clair (born 1923)
an Internet-like network of computer networks, launched in 1972 and
Electrical engineer and inventor, when working at Texas Instruments,
abandoned in 1978, for lack of government funding. However, the
of the integrated circuit (1958), in which all of the components, not just
“Cyclades” team played an important role in the creation of ISO-OSI
the transistor, were held upon one slice of silicon (germanium). He
and the TCP/IP protocols, and Lelan himself worked with Vinton Cerf
headed teams that built both the first military system and the first
at his Stanford laboratory in 1973. 
computer incorporating integrated circuits. He later co-invented both
the hand-held calculator and the thermal printer that was used in a
portable data terminal.  LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) (1951-1981)
The world’s first computer to be designed for managing a business,
that of J. Lyons & Co., a famous Britishcatering company, best-
Kildall Gary (1942 - 1994)
known for its chain of high street teashops. LEO was put into operation
Inventor of CP/M-DOS, the operating system on which QDOS was
on 29th November 1951. The last of the LEO series, the LEO 326, was
based. The “QD” in QDOS is said to have stood for “Quick and Dirty”
finally taken out of service with the Post Office in 1981. The LEO
and it was the OS exploited by Gates and Allen to put PC-DOS and
design was pioneered by John Pinkerton, its system by Derek Hemy
MS-DOS together. 
and its programming by Leo Fantl.
*Bibliographie: “A Computer Called LEO” Georgina Ferry, édit. Fourth
Kleinrock, Leonard Estate 2003
One of the fathers of the Internet and the inventor of data packet
switching, whose theory was published in the paper “Information Flow
 Licklider, J.C.R. (“Lick”) (1915-1990)
in Large Communication Nets” (July, 1961). He laid out some of the
Co-author, with Welden Clark, of the first paper, in 1962, on the
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Internet concept On-Line Man-Computer Communication (the work
that inspired the Internet pioneer Larry Roberts). He was the first
director of the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of
the ARPA, where he coined the nickname Intergalactic Network
(contracted to Internet) for the group of scientists who worked there.
Müller, Johann H.
Officer in the army of the German state of Hesse and designer (1786)
of a “difference engine”, a special-purpose calculator for tabulating
values of a polynomial. His project failed to attract funding and was
forgotten. 

Lexical Aid Lexical Aid

ARPA : the initials of the Advanced Projects Research Agency, a Artificial intelligence : computer software and hardware that imitates
scientific research organisation, set up and funded by the Pentagon in human reasoning to carry out tasks and solve problems.
1957 in order to catch up with the advances in Soviet rocketry and
space science represented by Sputnik and the sending of the dog
Axiom : a saying that expresses some fundemental principle or rule.
Laïka and the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into orbit.

Hierarchical host name : the address of a server that has a specific

Catering company : a company that makes and sells prepared foods.
rôle assigned to it within a structured network.

Coin : to invent a new word or saying.

Craftsman : an artisan, member of a skilled trade.
Prototype : the original model from which improved, or production
versions can be made.
Stanford : the Stanford Research Institute, California, USA.
Mauchly, John W. (1907-1980)
Engineer and builder, with J. Presper Eckert, of one of the first
electronic computers, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and
Calculator), ordered by the US Defense Department in 1946.
Maxwell, James Clerk (1831-1879)
Physicist who defined the electromagnetic field's laws (1873) and
proved that light was part of the same spectrum.
Metcalfe, Bob
Inventor, in 1973 at Xerox PARC, of the Ethernet networking
technology and also founder of the 3Com electronics and
communications company.
Minsky, Marvin
One of the originators of artificial intelligence. 
Scalable : adaptable to, and able to function upon large or small
systems
Update : to bring up to date
Napier, John (Baron of Merchiston) (1550-1617)
Scottish mathematician and inventor of logarithms and of the
calculation system known as Napier's Bones based on rods bearing a
multiplication table for a particular digit (1614).
Nelson, Ted (born 1937)
Author of the Xanadu concept (1960), an online, universal, electronic
publishing system, selling copyrighted materials stored in a hypertext
database, an alternative to today's World Wide Web. He also coined
the word “hypertext” itself (1965). 
Noyce, Robert (1927-1990)
Physicist, co-founder of Intel Corporation and inventor, while working
at Fairchild Semiconductor, of the integrated circuits, at almost the
same moment as J. Kilby, in 1958. The first working IC was a phase-
shift oscillator that operated at about 1.3 megahertz. 
Occam or Ockham, William of, (c.1285-c.1349)
Philosopher-theologian and who, in his theological reasoning, used a
principle sometimes called Occam's razor : “A plurality (of reasons)
should not be posited without necessity”. 

Mockapetris, Paul
Œrsted or Ørsted, Hans Christian (1777-1851)
Inventor of the Domain Name System (DNS), a scalable, distributed
Physicist who, in 1820, discovered the existence of magnetic fields
mechanism for resolving hierarchical host names into Internet
created by electric currents. 
addresses. 

Oikarinen, Jaarko
Moore, Gordon E. (born 1929)
Originator, in 1988, of the protocol for Internet chat-rooms, IRC
Chairman Emeritus of Intel Corporation and its co-founder, with Robert
(Internet Relay Chat). 
Noyce in 1968. In the mid-1970s he rejected as useless an idea for
what would have been a Personal Computer, but he is more widely
known for his axiomknown as “Moore's Law”, in which he predicted Oughtred (Owtred), William (1575-1660)
that the number of transistors that the industry would be able to place Inventor of the circular and rectilinear slide rules (1632). 
on a computer chip would double every year. In 1995, he updated his
prediction to once every two years. 
Lexical Aid

Moreland, Samuel (1625-1695)
Chat-room : an Internet service, using IRC protocol, that allows a
Secretary to Oliver Cromwell and later Master of Mechanics to King
number of users to converse together live on the same channel of
Charles II, he invented a calculating machine, the Moreland Adder, in
communication.
1666.

Slide rule : a mechanical calculating device made of sliding pieces

Morse, Samuel (1791-1872)
marked with graduations allowing the user to make logarithmic or
Inventor of the electric telegraph and the code that bears his name
trigonometric calculations.
(1832). 

Page, Larry (born 1973)

Co-inventor, with Sergey Brin, of the world’s best-known browser,

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Google. Larry Page was awarded his bachelor of science degree in
computer engineering at Michigan State University, where his father,
Dr. Carl Page, is a computer science professor. He obtained his
Master’s degree at Stanford University, embarked upon his PhD
studies there and it was at Stanford that he first met Sergey Brin.
Although they held differing opinions on nearly everything, they
became friends and co-inventors, devising firstly the BackRub
experimental browser and then the Page Ranking system which is
Google’s particularity. The principle of the ranking system is that, by
counting the links used to get to a web page, it is possible to order the
sites according to their popularity, since the multiplicity of links
constitutes a type of “voting” for the quality of the content of a site.
Google became operational for the public in 1998 and caught on with
spectacular rapidity.
Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Mathematician, physicist, philosopher, author and inventor, aged 18
(1642), of the 5-figure calculating machine known as the Pascaline, to
assist his father, who was the tax collector at Rouen. The device
was extendable to 8 digits and is much better known than Schickard's
machine, but was less reliable and unable to subtract. 
Postel, Jon (d. 1988)
One of the founders of the Internet and the editor of the key documents
for its development, exchanged in the form of communications, the
Request For Comments (RFC) which established the Internet's
standards and protocols. He was the inventor of the IP (Internet
Protocol) addressing system, as well as of the domain name system's
authority, IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority). 
Pouzin, Louis
Leading researcher, with Hubert Zimmerman and Gérard Lelan, in
the development of the “Cyclades” system, a French attempt to create
an Internet-like network of computer networks, launched in 1972 and
abandoned in 1978, for lack of government funding. However, the
“Cyclades” team played an important role in the creation of ISO-OSI
and other protocols, particularly Pouzin and Lelan in the development
of TCP/IP protocols  Student of Vannevar Bush at MIT and author of a thesis, in 1937, in
Presper Eckert, John Jr (1919-1995)
Engineer and builder, with John W. Mauchly, of one of the first
electronic computers, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and
Calculator), ordered by the US Defense Department in 1946 (built at
the Moore School of Electrical Engineering of the University of
Pennsylvania).  and, with funding from the Swedish government, went on to construct
Lexical Aid
To catch on: to become popular and well-known.
Quetelet, Lambert Adolphe (Jacques) (1796-1874)
Belgian mathematician, astronomer, and statistician who laid the
foundation for modern-day statistics and social physics with his paper
“Sur l'homme et le développement de ses facultés, essai d'une
physique sociale” (1835). He discovered the Normal Distribution theory
and developed methods for the computation of probabilities, which he
applied to population statistics.
Raskin, Jef (born 19? - )
Inventor of the first truly user-friendly, graphical user interface and of
the whole Macintosh project, of which he was the team leader, at
Apple Computers, Inc. Since he worked at Apple - he was their 31st
employee - he had to continue the fruity theme and so named the
machine after his favorite American apple, the McIntosh. 
Rejewski, Marian (1906-1980)
Polish mathematician and cryptographer, recruited in 1930 by the
Polish military code bureau, where he designed, assisted by
mathematicians Jerzy Rózycki et Henryk Zygalski, the “bomby”, some
of the very first digital electro-mechanical computing machines whose
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purpose was to decode German military code produced by latter's
“Enigma” machine. 
Rheingold, Howard
Author of numerous works on virtual communities and one of the
founder members of “The Well”.
Ritchie, Dennis
Author, in 1969, of the second version, written in the “C” language, of
the Unix operating system, originally created by Kenneth Thompson. 
Roberts, H. Edward (born 1943)
Inventor of the “Altair” home computer kit in 1974, one of the first
computing devices commercially available for amateurs. His MITS
company employed Gates and Allen to devise software for the Altair,
using BASIC, work they then used to found Microsoft.
Roberts, Lawrence
As scientific director of the ARPA (the Advanced Projects Research
Agency), in 1966, he launched the construction of the ARPANET and
directed its development, inspired by the vision of J.C.R. Licklider. In
1972, he designed the first e-mail management programmes, RD.
Rózycki, Jerzy (d. 1942)
Polish mathematician and collaborator with Marian Rejewski and
Henryk Zygalski in the design and operation of the “bomby”, the first
digital, electro-mechanical computing machines.
Lexical Aid
Virtual communities : associations of like-minded people who meet
and converse with each other on the Internet 
Shannon, Claude Elwood (born 1916)
which he proposed the organisation of circuits in a computing machine
be based upon Boolean principles. In 1948, he wrote “A Mathematical
Theory of Communication”, seen as the basis of modern information
theory.
Scheutz, father and son (19th cent.)
Produced a difference engine in 1843, based on the Babbage design,
the Tabulating Engine, in 1853, operating on 15-digit numbers and
producing printed output, as the Babbage machine was to have done. 
Schickard, Wilhelm (1592-1635)
Inventor from Tübingen, Württemberg, and friend of Kepler. He
invented the “Calculating Clock”, based upon the Napier's Bones
approach, a 6-figure machine capable of addition, subtraction,
multiplication and division, indicating an excess sum with a bell chime.
The machine was destroyed by fire but plans for an improved version,
lost during the Thirty Years War but found in the twentieth century,
made it possible for IBM Germany to rebuild it in 1960. It worked.
Schockley, William B. (1910-1989)
Physicist and inventor who shared in the award of the Nobel Prize for
Physics in 1956, with W. H. Brattain and J. Bardeen, his colleagues at
Bell Telephone Laboratories, for his contribution to the invention of the
transistor. 
Schreyer, Helmut (1912-1985)
Electronic engineer, friend of Konrad Zuse and inventor (1938) of logic
circuits using vacuum tubes and neon lamps. He persuaded Zuse to
replace the mechanical relays in the latter's Z1 computer with
electronic ones. The resulting machines, the Z2 prototype, and the Z3
(1942) are often considered as the world’s first digital, electronic
computers. In 1940 he invented a 10-bit adder and designed a memory
unit. 
Stibitz, George (1904-1954)
Inventor of the one-bit binary adder, in 1937, using relays, that he
called the K-Model, since he built it on his kitchen table! With Samuel
Williams, at Bell Laboratories in 1939, he built the Complex Number
Calculator, later known as the Model I Relay Calculator. The machine
used telephone switching parts for its 450 relays and could be
operated from remote, teletype keyboards.
Lexical Aid
Funding : supply of money.
Relays : electrical devices which control the switching on and off of
other devices.
Remote : at a distance. 
Tesla, Nikola (1856-1943)
Inventor of electric logic circuits (before relays, vacuum tubes or
transistors), wireless radio (concurrently with Marconi), as well as the
Polyphase AC motor (1882), the Induction motor (probably 1886/7),
the Tesla Coil (1891), hydro-electric generators (1896), X-ray
photography (before Röntgen), induction lighting, loudspeakers, and
remote control (1898)! He discovered Alternating Current (1882), and
terrestrial stationary waves (1899-1900). He also planned and began
construction of (1900) the “Wardenclyffe” - a global, wireless
broadcasting tower, supposed to be capable of uniting the world's
telecommunications systems into a single medium, and of transmitting
text and images over it, as well as connecting special terminals to it for
electronic messaging! But funding for what could have been the first
Global Network was withdrawn.  government communicationns centre, Bletchley Park, 1939-1940),
Tofler, Alvin
Futurologist who coined the term “The Third Wave” to designate the
Information Society, the two preceding waves being that of the
transition from the hunter-gatherer society to the agicultural one, and
the transition from that to industrial society. 
Tomlinson, Ray
Creator, in 1972, of the first e-mail programmes, SNGMSG and
READMAIL. 
Torvald, Linus
Creator of “Linux”, the version of the Unix operating system that is
scalable, i.e. able to be used on a personal computer or to run an
entire computer network. This free operating system has greatly re-
inforced the Free Software movement and its popularity may lead to
new, non-commercial relationships between software writers and
computer users.  given for technical innovation in that country. He teaches IT skills to
Turing, Alan Mathison (1912-1954)
Mathematician at Cambridge University, UK, where, in 1937, he
published a paper in which he laid thegroundwork for a digital
computer system, today known as “the Turing machine”, capable of
mathematical problem-solving by logical operations.  Zimmerman, Hubert
Lexical Aid
Futurologist : one who writes about the future.
Groundwork : foundation.
Ulam, Stanislaw (1909-1984)
8
Inventor of the “Monte-Carlo method” now widely used in computing, it
solves mathematical problems by statisticalsampling with random
numbers. He also discovered the method of causing the atomic fusion
process, i.e. the explosion of the hydrogen bomb.
Lexical Aid
Sampling : a random set of persons or items selected from a whole
population for purposes of analysis and testing of hypotheses.
Van Dam, Andries “Andy”
Engineer, Director from 1996-1998, in the NSF Science and
Technology Center for Graphics and Visualization and leader of the
team that built the Hypertext Editing System, in 1967.
Von Neumann, John (1903-1957)
Author of the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic
Computer) concept, a stored progamme computer design, which he
described in his paper of 1945 (origin of the term “Von Neumann
computer”) and many other papers on algebra and quantum
mathematics. He devised the mathematical model for the nuclear chain
reaction of the first “A” bomb. A member of the ENIAC team, he was
the only one to be familiar with the Turing Machine of 1937. 
Watts-Davies, Donald
Creator, with Roger Scantlebury, during the nineteen sixties, of the
technology of data packet switching at the National Physical
Laboratory in the United Kingdom. 
Welchman, Gordon
Co-designer, with Alan Turing, of “the Bombe” (at the secret
later known as the Turing Bombe, a machine capable of breaking of
the newest German military ciphers generated by the latters' “Enigma”
device. It was an improved version of the Polish “bomby”, developed
by Marian Rejewski's team, and its added logic circuits greatly reduced
the number of false solutions. 
Wozniak, Steve (born 1950)
Co-founder of the company Apple Computers and the inventor of the
world’s first commercially successful desktop or home computer to use
a VDU (initially a TV set), a sound card and a keyboard, the Apple I
and II. He had been designing home computer kits to rival the Altair kit
while he was still at school and also designed the first commercially-
available terminal to access the ARPANET, the Internet’s predecessor
in 1974. In 1976 he began designing calculator chips for Hewlett-
Packard, but gave up the job to launch Apple in 1979. The other co-
founder, Steve Jobs mainly handled the production and marketing of
the computer. In 1985, Steve Wozniak was awarded the National
Medal of Technology by the President of USA, the highest honour
children part-time in the Los Gatos high school, invests much time and
energy in IT learning projects for children and students and, in 1990
founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that tries
to protect civil liberties in an increasingly networked world. 
Leading researcher, with Louis Pouzin and Gérard Lelan, in the
development of the “Cyclades” system, a French attempt to create an
Internet-like network of computer networks, launched in 1972 and
abandoned in 1978, for lack of government funding. However, the
“Cyclades” team played an important role in the creation of ISO-OSI
and the TCP/IP protocols 
Zimmerman, Phillip
Inventor of the freely available encryption system, PGP (“Pretty Good
Privacy”), with its 128-bit key. 
Zuse, Konrad (1910-1995)
Inventor of the Versuchmodell 1 or Z1 computer, which he built to his
own “storage plan” programme designs, with no external funding, in his
parents’ living-room in Berlin, in 1936/8. It was one of the first binary,
programmable computing machines, all-mechanical, using sliding
metallic plates. With the persuasion of his friend, the electronics
engineer, Helmut Schreyer, th original mechanical relays were
replaced with electrical or electronic ones in the later Z2, Z3 (1941),
which are often considered as the world’s first digital, electronic
computers. The most perfected Z4 (at the time it was called the V4)
design (1945) was smuggled out of Bavaria into Switzerland at the
end of the war and was used in Zürich up to the early fifties. Zuse also
invented the first analogue-to-digital process control system, the S1, in
1942, used in the calculation of wing profiles of the V1 flying bomb,
and, after the war, an algorithmic language he called Plankalkül
(calculus of programmes). He re-founded his computer company Zuse
KG after the war and produced a series of ever more sophisticated,
general-purpose computers that were used in industry (e.g. Leitz
Wetzlar GmbH, manufacturers of the Leica camera) in post-war
Central Europe.

Zygalski, Henryk (d. 1978)

Polish mathematician and collaborator with Marian Rejewski and Jerzy
Rózycki in the design and operation of the “bomby”, the first digital,
electro-mechanical computing machines, that used perforated sheets
called “Zygalski sheets” by the British during the Second World War in
their “Colossus” ENIGMA decoding machine.

Lexical Aid
Encryption system : a system for putting messages into secret code
that only the addressee can decode, thanks to the system’s key.
Smuggled out of : Taken out in secret (like contraband would be).