Computer History

Histoire de l'informatique

Une très brève histoire de l'informatique Ceci est une traduction (aimablement autorisée par l'auteur) de A Very Brief History of Computer Science, texte écrit en 1995 (et revu en 1999) par Jeffrey Shallit pour ses étudiants de l'Université de Waterloo (Canada). La plupart des notices biographiques obtenues en cliquant sur les noms cités font partie de l'excellente base de données MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, développée et gérée par John O'Connor et Edmund Robertson à l'Université de St Andrews (Ecosse).

Avant 1900 Les machines à calculer sont utilisées depuis des milliers d'années : on trouvait probablement des abaques à Babylone en 3000 avant notre ère. Les Grecs ont fabriqué des calculateurs analogiques très perfectionnés. En 1901, au large de l'île d'Antikythera, on a découvert une épave dans laquelle se trouvait, encroûté de sel, un assemblage d'engrenages rouillés (le mécanisme d'Antikythera), daté d'environ 80 avant notre ère, que l'on a reconstruit : il servait à prédire les mouvements des astres.(D'autres précisions ici.) L'Ecossais John Napier (1550-1617), l'inventeur des logarithmes, fabriqua vers 1610 les règles de Napier pour simplifier la multiplication. En 1641, Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) construisit une machine à additionner. Un travail analogue fut réalisé par Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), qui préconisa l'utilisation du système binaire pour les calculs. On a récemment découvert que Wilhelm Schickard (1592-1635), professeur à l'Université de Tübingen, avait construit une machine de ce genre vers 1623 ou 1624 (avant Pascal et Leibniz), qu'il décrivit brièvement dans deux lettres à Johannes Kepler. Malheureusement, la machine brûla dans un incendie, et Schickard lui-même mourut de la peste bubonique en 1635, durant la Guerre de Trente Ans. Joseph-Marie Jacquard (1752-1834) inventa un métier à tisser dont les motifs était indiqués par des cartons perforés. Charles Babbage (1792-1871) construisit deux machines : la machine différentielle, que l'on peut voir au Science Museum de Londres, et la machine analytique, beaucoup plus ambitieuse (un précurseur de l'ordinateur), mais aucune des deux ne marchait correctement. (Babbage, que l'un de ses biographes traite de «génie irascible», était un peu bizarre. On ignore généralement qu'il est l'inventeur de la dendrochronologie, ou datation des arbres; il ne poursuivit pas ses recherches à ce sujet. Devenu vieux, il consacra une grande partie de son temps à persécuter les joueurs d'orgue de Barbarie.) Une amie de Babbage, Ada Byron, comtesse de Lovelace (1815-1852), est parfois considérée comme le premier programmeur de l'Histoire, en raison d'un rapport qu'elle écrivit sur la machine de Babbage. (Le langage de programmation Ada a été nommé en son honneur.) L'économiste et logicien anglais William Jevons (1835-1882) construisit en 1869 une machine à résoudre des problèmes de logique : «la première machine suffisamment puissante pour résoudre un problème compliqué plus rapidement qu'à la main» (Martin Gardner). La machine se trouve actuellement http://dept-info.labri.u-bordeaux.fr/%7Edicky/HistInfo.html (1 of 7) [03-09-2001 16:03:46]

Histoire de l'informatique

au Museum of the History of Science d'Oxford. Le statisticien américain Herman Hollerith (1860-1929) inventa la carte perforée moderne pour l'utiliser dans une machine destinée à analyser les résultats du recensement de 1890.

1900 - 1939: l'avancée mathématique L'étude des machines à calculer se poursuivait. On construisit des machines destinées à une utilisation particulière: ainsi, en 1919, le lieutenant d'infanterie E. Carissan (1880-1925) conçut et réalisa une merveilleuse machine à factoriser les entiers. L'Espagnol Leonardo Torres y Quevedo (1852-1936) construisit plusieurs machines électromécaniques, dont l'une qui jouait des fins de parties d'échecs. En 1928, le mathématicien David Hilbert (1862-1943) posa trois questions au Congrès International des Mathématiciens : (1) Les mathématiques sont-elles complètes ? (tout énoncé mathématique peut-il être soit prouvé, soit réfuté ?) (2) Les mathématiques sont-elles cohérentes ? (peut-on être sûr que des raisonnements valides ne conduiront pas à des absurdités ?) (3) Les mathématiques sont-elles décidables ? (existe-t-il un algorithme pouvant dire de n'importe quel énoncé mathématique s'il est vrai ou faux ?) Cette dernière question est connue sous le nom de Entscheidungsproblem. En 1931, Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) répondit à deux de ces questions. Il démontra que tout système formel suffisamment puissant est soit incohérent, soit incomplet. De plus, si un système d'axiomes est cohérent, cette cohérence ne peut être prouvée en n'utilisant que les axiomes. La troisième question restait ouverte, en remplaçant «vrai» par «prouvable» (existe-t-il un algorithme pour dire si une assertion peut être prouvée ?) En 1936, Alan Turing (1912-1954) résolut l'Entscheidungsproblem en construisant un modèle formel de calculateur - la machine de Turing - et en prouvant qu'une telle machine ne pouvait pas résoudre certains problèmes, en particulier le problème d'arrêt : étant donné un programme, peut-on dire s'il termine pour n'importe quelle valeur des données ?

Les années 1940 : la guerre fait naître l'ordinateur électronique La complication des calculs balistiques, durant la seconde guerre mondiale, aiguillonna le développement de l'ordinateur électronique. En 1944, à Harvard, Howard Aiken (1900-1973) construisit le calculateur électromécanique Mark I, avec l'aide d'IBM. Le décryptage militaire conduisit aussi à des projets d'ordinateur. Alan Turing, en Angleterre, travaillait à décoder la machine allemande Enigma; les Anglais construisirent un calculateur, le Colossus, pour aider au décryptage. En 1939, à l'Université d'Iowa, John Atanasoff (1904-1995) et Clifford Berry conçurent et réalisèrent

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Histoire de l'informatique

l'ABC, un calculateur électronique pour résoudre des systèmes d'équations linéaires, mais il ne fonctionna jamais correctement. Atanasoff discuta de son invention avec John Mauchly (1907-1980), qui, plus tard, avec John Eckert (1919-1995), conçut et réalisa l'ENIAC, un calculateur électronique destiné à l'origine aux calculs balistiques. On ne sait pas très bien quelles idées Atanasoff transmit à Mauchly; le mérite d'avoir inventé le premier ordinateur revient-il à Atanasoff ou à Mauchly et Eckert ? Ce fut le sujet de batailles juridiques, c'est encore celui d'un débat historique. L'ENIAC fut construit à l'Université de Pennsylvanie, et terminé en 1946. En 1944, Mauchly, Eckert, et John von Neumann (1903-1957) travaillaient à la conception d'un ordinateur électronique, l'EDVAC. Le premier rapport de Von Neumann sur l'EDVAC eut beaucoup d'influence; on y trouve de nombreuses idées encore utilisées dans les ordinateurs les plus modernes, dont une routine de tri par fusion. Eckert et Mauchly reprirent ces idées pour construire l'UNIVAC. Pendant ce temps, en Allemagne, Konrad Zuse (1910-1995) construisait le premier calculateur programmable universel (non spécialisé), le Z3 (1941). En 1945, Vannevar Bush publia As We May Think, un article étonnamment prophétique sur le traitement de l'information, et ses effets sur la société dans les temps à venir. En Angleterre, Maurice Wilkes (né en 1913) construisit l'EDSAC (à partir de l'EDVAC). F. Williams (né en 1911) et son équipe construisirent le Manchester Mark I, dont une version fut opérationnelle dès juin 1948. Certains considèrent cette machine comme le premier ordinateur à programme en mémoire (architecture dite de Von Neumann). L'invention du transistor en 1947 par John Bardeen, Walter Brattain et William Shockley transforma l'ordinateur, et permit la révolution du microprocesseur. Pour cette découverte, ils reçurent le Prix Nobel de Physique en 1956. (Par la suite, Shockley se rendit célèbre pour ses points de vue racistes.) Jay Forrester (né en 1918) inventa vers 1949 la mémoire à noyau magnétique.

Les années 50 Grace Hopper (1906-1992) inventa la notion de compilateur (1951). (Quelques années plus tôt, elle avait trouvé le premier bug de l'histoire de l'informatique, une phalène entrée dans le Mark II de Harvard.) John Backus et son équipe écrivirent le premier compilateur FORTRAN en avril 1957. LISP (List Processing), un langage de traitement de listes pour l'intelligence artificielle, fut inventé par John McCarthy vers 1958. Alan Perlis, John Backus, Peter Naur et leurs associés développèrent Algol (Algorithmic Language) en 1959. Jack Kilby (Texas Instruments) et Robert Noyce (Fairchild Semiconductor) inventèrent les circuits intégrés en 1959.

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Histoire de l'informatique

Edsger Dijkstra trouva un algorithme efficace pour résoudre le problème des plus courts chemins dans un graphe, à titre de démonstration pour l'ARMAC en 1956. Il trouva aussi un algorithme efficace de recherche d'un arbre recouvrant de poids minimal, afin de minimiser le câblage du X1. (Dijkstra est célèbre pour ses déclarations caustiques et péremptoires; voir par exemple son avis sur quelques langages de programmation). Dans un célèbre article de la revue Mind, en 1950, Alan Turing décrivit le test de Turing, l'une des premières avancées en intelligence artificielle. Il proposait une définition de la «pensée» ou de la «conscience» relative à un jeu : un examinateur pose des questions par écrit à un interlocuteur situé dans la pièce voisine, et doit décider, au vu des réponses, si son interlocuteur est une machine ou un être humain. S'il est incapable de répondre, on peut raisonnablement dire que l'ordinateur «pense». En 1952, Alan Turing fut arrêté pour outrage aux bonnes moeurs après qu'une plainte pour cambriolage eut révélé sa liaison avec Arnold Murray. L'homosexualité affichée était tabou dans l'Angleterre des années 1950, et on obligea Turing à suivre un «traitement» hormonal qui le rendit impuissant et lui fit pousser des seins. Le 7 juin 1954, Turing se suicida en mangeant une pomme enrobée de cyanure.

Les années 1960 Dans les années 1960, l'informatique devint une discipline à part entière. Le premier département d'informatique fut créé en 1962 à l'Université de Purdue; le premier Ph.D. d'informatique fut délivré à Richard Wexelblat par l'Université de Pennsylvanie, en décembre 1965. Il y eut une percée dans les systèmes d'exploitation. Fred Brooks (IBM) conçut System/360, une série d'ordinateurs de tailles variées, avec la même architecture et le même ensemble d'instructions. Edsger Dijkstra, à Eindhoven, conçut le système multiprogramme THE. De nombreux langages de programmation virent le jour, tels que BASIC, développé vers 1964 par John Kemeny (1926-1992) et Thomas Kurtz (né en 1928). Les années 1960 virent émerger la théorie des automates et des langages formels : on peut notamment citer Noam Chomsky (qui se fit plus tard remarquer par la théorie suivant laquelle le langage est «câblé» dans le cerveau, et pour sa critique de la politique étrangère des Etats-Unis) et Michael Rabin. On commença aussi à utiliser des méthodes formelles pour prouver la correction des programmes. Les travaux de Tony Hoare (l'inventeur de Quicksort) jouèrent un rôle important. Vers la fin de la décennie, on commença à construire ARPAnet, le précurseur d'Internet. Ted Hoff (né en 1937) et Federico Faggin (Intel) conçurent le premier microprocesseur en 1969-1971. Donald Knuth (né en 1938), auteur du traité The Art of Computer Programming, posa des fondements mathématiques rigoureux pour l'analyse des algorithmes.

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Histoire de l'informatique

Les années 1970 Les travaux d'Edgar Codd sur les bases de données relationnelles permirent une avancée majeure dans la théorie des bases de données. Codd reçut le Turing Award en 1961. Le système d'exploitation Unix fut développé aux Bell Laboratories par Ken Thompson (né en 1943) et Dennis Ritchie (né en 1941). Brian Kernighan et Ritchie développèrent C, un important langage de programmation. On vit apparaître de nouveaux langages, tels que Pascal (inventé par Niklaus Wirth) et Ada (réalisé par une équipe dirigée par Jean Ichbiah). La première architecture RISC fut commencée par John Cocke en 1975, chez IBM. Vers cette époque, des projets analogues démarrèrent à Berkeley et Stanford. Les années 1970 virent aussi naître les super-ordinateurs. Seymour Cray (né en 1925) conçut le CRAY-1, qui apparut en mars 1976; il pouvait exécuter 160 millions d'opérations par seconde. Le Cray XMP sortit en 1982. Cray Research (à présent repris par Silicon Graphics) continue à construire des ordinateurs géants. Il y eut aussi des progrès importants en algorithmique et en théorie de la complexité. En 1971, Steve Cook publia son article fondamental sur la NP-complétude, et, peu après, Richard Karp montra que de nombreux problèmes combinatoires naturels étaient NP-complets. Whit Diffie et Martin Hellman publièrent un article fondant la théorie de cryptographie à clef publique; le système de cryptage RSA fut inventé par Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir, et Leonard Adleman. En 1979, trois étudiants de Caroline du Nord développèrent un serveur de nouvelles distribué qui finalement devint Usenet.

Les années 1980 Cette décennie vit apparaître le micro-ordinateur personnel, grâce à Steve Wozniak et Steve Jobs, fondateurs de Apple Computer. Les premiers virus informatiques apparurent en 1981 (leur nom est dû à Leonard Adleman). En 1981, l'Osborne I, le premier ordinateur vraiment portable, fut mis sur le marché. En 1984, Apple commercialisa le Macintosh. En 1987, l'US National Science Foundation démarra NSFnet, qui devait devenir une partie de l' Internet actuel.

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Les années 1990 et au-delà On continue à développer des ordinateurs parallèles. L'informatique biologique, avec les récents travaux de Leonard Adleman sur l'utilisation de l'ADN comme calculateur non déterministe, ouvre de grandes perspectives. Le projet Génome Humain cherche à séquencer tout l'ADN d'un individu. Peter Shor découvre que l'on peut efficacement factoriser des entiers sur un ordinateur quantique (théorique), ce qui ouvre la voie à la programmation quantique. Les autoroutes de l'information relient de plus en plus les ordinateurs du monde entier. Les ordinateurs sont de plus en plus petits; naissance de la nano-technologie.

Quelques liens pour l'histoire de l'informatique En français ●

La page de P.-E. Mounier-Kuhn, chercheur en Histoire de l'Innovation

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Le Musée d'Histoire Informatique de Philippe Dubois (musée virtuel de l'informatique et des jeux vidéo) Histoire de l'informatique, par François Guillier

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En anglais ●

History of Computing (Virginia Tech)

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A Brief History of Computer Technology

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Past Notable Women of Computing

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The Machine That Changed the World

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Historic Computer Images

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Charles Babbage Institute, Center for the History of Information Processing

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Turing Award Winners, 1966-1998

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The Retrocomputing Museum (old programs and programming languages)

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The ENIAC Virtual Museum at the University of Pennsylvania

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COMMPUTERSEUM -- The Commercial Computing Museum (Waterloo, Ontario)

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The Computer Museum (Boston, Massachusetts)

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The Virtual Museum of Computing

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Museum of Obsolete Computers

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Histoire de l'informatique

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Annals of the History of Computing

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Index for History of Computers

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The Theory of Computing Hall of Fame

Jeffrey Shallit (traduction et mise à jour : Anne Dicky)

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THE HISTORY OF COMPUTING

"Who controls the past commands the future. Who commands the future conquers the past." -George Orwell This collection of materials relating to the history of computing is provided courtesy of the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech, and is sponsored in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (CDA-9312611). This site has been chosen by "Edu-Activ", an educational resource site based in Germany.

For other awards click here.

1968 and

A new

addition to our site is the 1969 NATO Software Engineering "take-off" on the ABC show Reports: These very famous "Who Wants to be a reports, not previously readily Millionaire?" in a history quiz. available to our students are now Try your knowledge of the http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/index.html (1 of 6) [03-09-2001 16:07:32]

THE HISTORY OF COMPUTING

available on-line, thanks to Bob McClure, who scanned and reformatted the originals, and with the permission of NATO. These should surely become "must read" items for our SE students!

history of computing here.

INDEX ●

Introduction

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News

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Conferences and meetings

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Courses

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Overviews of the History of Computing

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People and Pioneers

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Companies and Corporations

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Machines (including a special section on Cryptography)

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Programming Languages

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Calculators

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Computer History Organizations and Museums

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Computing at Institutions

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Archives and Collections

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Publications

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Networks and Internet

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On-line emulators of computers and computing systems

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Miscellaneous

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Women in (the) Computing History

INTRODUCTION This WWW page is the initiation of a collection of materials related to the history of computing as collected and written by J. A. N. Lee, until 1995 Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, past chair of the IEEE Computer Society History of Computing Committee and current chair of the IFIP Working Group 9.7 (History of Computing). It was original constructed as part of the course materials for the "Professionalism in Computing" class at Virginia Tech, and in particular as a set of notes and amplification

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of the materials in the video "The Machine That Changed The World", developed and distributed by WGBH (PBS) and the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). We are hoping to expand the coverage of the video by providing stills for each of the topics in the notes. The best way to access items on this page is through your browser's find/search facility. An alternative video series is "The Triumph of the Nerds" that chronicles the development of the PC, starting in the mid-1970s. Information about the series is available from PBS and summaries are posted as part of a course on M.I.S. Organizations and Technology at Northern Illinois University. A collection of materials intended to describe the history of computing to those interested in the 50th Anniversary of Computing in 1996 was used by students at Virginia Tech to develop a Virtual Museum of Computing that you may find very interesting. This list includes several pointers to lists which we have not been able to verify fully. We are VERY aware that some of these lists contain errors of both fact and date and thus recommend that persons who use them recognize that they are foremost secondary, if not tertiary sources, and thus should be independently verified. The materials included here are intended to assist scholars and students in their work, but the use of the materials for other publications (other than links from other pages) requires you to get the appropriate copyright clearance. If you wish to use these materials please send me e-mail During the Fall semester 1996 and Spring Semester 1997, several students have chosen to partially fulfill the requirements of our "Professionalism" class by adding additional background material in support of the video "The Machine That Changed The World" notes. When you find their work, it would be nice if you would drop them a note to appreciate their work. If there are other classes that have had a similar assignment and would like to contribute their materials please let me have a URL as soon as possible. Ultimately I would like to download the material to this site to help preserve the information since student sites tend to disappear frequently. Thus please put a copyright notice on the page, and a note that permission has been granted to transfer it to Virginia Tech. Your comments, thoughts, and possibly contributions, should be sent to me J.A.N. Lee. Links to other pages are particularly welcome. Several contributors have suggested that I add thumbnails for the portraits and figures. Regrettably this page has grown so large that it takes a long time for people to download. If I get time, I will try to separate the page into separate pages for each of the topics in the index and then add thumbnails. Enjoy the page.

Throughout 1996 I wrote a monthly column for IEEE Computer entitled "looking.back". While each of the columns was edited for length (and occasionally for content) and the figures removed, the original submissions are now available, and should be relevent for many years to come! ● January ●

February

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March

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April

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May

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June

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July

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August

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September

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October

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Novembere

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December

CONFERENCES AND MEETINGS ●

Vintage Computer Festival

If you know of a meeting that needs to be advertised send me an e-mail message.

INTERESTING ITEMS (Without enough companions to make a category) A preliminary posting of a bibliography on on-line character recognition (a.k.a. dynamic character recognition, a.k.a. pen computing) by Jean Renard Ward. History of Computing Curriculum - a proposal. Picture of the original bug (now in the Smithsonian Institute) Bug An interesting story of the QWERTY keyboard, its origins and myths. A Computer in a Buddhist Temple -- a press release photograph from the WGBH press kit related to Video Series Questions and Answers from the 1994 ACM/Computer Museum Computer Bowl ComputerBowl For a Trivia Quiz relating to the History of Computing -Click here! The computer was named the Machine of the Year in 1982 by Time Magazine. The rationale for this selection has been extracted from the Time Inc. pages. The Machine That Changed The World -- notes on the WGBH/PBS Television Series TMTCTW; Notes were recently added for episodes 4 and 5, courtesy of Osman Balci (Virginia Tech) and links to "side bars" for the first three episodes were expanded. If you can add links to other places of interest that would help students get an expanded understanding of the topics in this video series, send me e-mail. Talking Machines -- a press release photograph from the WGBH press kit related to Video Series A special page by Amdahl Corporation commemorates the 25th Anniversary of Unix and includes several links to historic information: http://www.amdahl.com/internet/events/unix25.html Humor is a dangerous thing when one is dealing with history since it often distorts the facts and creates myths that outlive the facts. This set of quotations has circulated around newsgroups long enough that it is becoming part of history itself! Accept with a grain of salt. ●

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switch on [email protected] Women in (the) Computing History In keeping with the tradition of documenting women's history through oral histories, the Women in (the) Computing History mailing list hopes to augment traditional resources of women's history and histories of computing by being a repository for women's own stories throughout the history of computing. All women in computing, too, not just those of us formally schooled in the computing sciences. The list is open and will be unmoderated so long as the signal rate remains high. If traffic warrants, a digest option will be made available, but does not currently exist. We would like to gate this list to other networks. Contact the list owner/maintainer, Donna., at [email protected] to work out gating arrangements. PLEASE DO NOT GATE WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE MAINTAINER FIRST. To subscribe to Women in (the) Computing History, send the following command to [email protected] in the SUBJECT of e-mail: SUBSCRIBE To unsubscribe from Women in (the) Computing History, send the following command to [email protected] in the SUBJECT of e-mail: UNSUBSCRIBE To receive help using SmartList's archive server, send the following command to [email protected] in the SUBJECT of e-mail: ARCHIVE HELP Owner: Donna [email protected] Use this information at your own risk. For more information and disclaimer send E-mail to [email protected] with the command INFO NEW-LIST in the body.

AWARDS This site has been chosen by "Edu-Activ", an educational resource site based in Germany.

Selected by Länkskafferiet (the Link Larder), the Swedish School net, 15 December 2000.

Featured on HomeworkSpot.com, September 2000.

A Look Smart Award in January 1997

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A Best of the Web Award in November 1997

The favorite site of The Tech Museum of Innovation in May 1998. Tech 10 focuses on high technology for a

middle school and above audience.

The Links2Go Key Resource Award in July 1998.

CyberTeddy's Top 500 WebSite award, in Fall 1999.

Last updated 2001/07/16 © J.A.N. Lee, 1995-2001.

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3 A Brief History of Computer Technology

Next: 3.1 The Mechanical Era Up: OV Chapter Previous: 2 Computational Science Computer

3 A Brief History of Computer Technology A complete history of computing would include a multitude of diverse devices such as the ancient Chinese abacus, the Jacquard loom (1805) and Charles Babbage's ``analytical engine'' (1834). It would also include discussion of mechanical, analog and digital computing architectures. As late as the 1960s, mechanical devices, such as the Marchant calculator, still found widespread application in science and engineering. During the early days of electronic computing devices, there was much discussion about the relative merits of analog vs. digital computers. In fact, as late as the 1960s, analog computers were routinely used to solve systems of finite difference equations arising in oil reservoir modeling. In the end, digital computing devices proved to have the power, economics and scalability necessary to deal with large scale computations. Digital computers now dominate the computing world in all areas ranging from the hand calculator to the supercomputer and are pervasive throughout society. Therefore, this brief sketch of the development of scientific computing is limited to the area of digital, electronic computers. The evolution of digital computing is often divided into generations. Each generation is characterized by dramatic improvements over the previous generation in the technology used to build computers, the internal organization of computer systems, and programming languages. Although not usually associated with computer generations, there has been a steady improvement in algorithms, including algorithms used in computational science. The following history has been organized using these widely recognized generations as mileposts. ●

3.1 The Mechanical Era (1623-1945)

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3.2 First Generation Electronic Computers (1937-1953)

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3.3 Second Generation (1954-1962)

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3.4 Third Generation (1963-1972)

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3.5 Fourth Generation (1972-1984)

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3.6 Fifth Generation (1984-1990)

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3.7 Sixth Generation (1990 - )

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[email protected]

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Past Notable Women of Computing & Mathematics

Past Notable Women of Computing & Mathematics Honoring the close connection between mathematics and computing, TAP provides information on pioneers in both areas. ●

Past Notable Women of Mathematics

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Past Notable Women of Computing

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TAP's Photo Gallery of Women and Computers

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Other Resources Relevant to the History of Computing

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Pioneering Women in Computer Science, by Denise Gurer, Communications of the ACM, Jan. 1995, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 45-54. 4000 Years of Women in Science

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Biographies of Women Mathematicians

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Charles Babbage Institute

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History of Mathematics Site

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IEEE Center for the History of EE / Rutgers University / 39 Union Street / New Brunswick, NJ 08903 / 908-932-1066 / [email protected] J.A.N. Lee's History of Computing Site

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The Machine that Changed the World

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MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive

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Mike Muus's Historic Computer Images

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Minerva's Machine Documentary celebrating the history of women in computing

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http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/past-women.html (1 of 2) [03-09-2001 16:10:43]

Past Notable Women of Computing & Mathematics

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National Women's History Project

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Science and Mathematics Education Resources (SciEd)

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References - History of Women in Science & Technology

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WWWVL History of Science, Technology, and Medicine

Back to TA P

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The Machine That Changed the World

[1] This site was chosen for a Look Smart Award in January 1997

Index 1. Great Brains 2. Inventing the Future 3. The Paperback Computer 4. The Thinking Machine 5. The World At Your Fingertips 6. A post-viewing Scavenger Hunt! The following "slides" outline the major topics of presentation in each of the episodes of the video series The Machine That Changed the World which was produced by WGBH Television in Boston MA, in cooperation with the British Broadcasting Corp., with support from ACM, NSF and UNISYS. There is a book which accompanied the series that you may want to reference: Palfreman, Jon, and Doron Swade. The Dream Machine: Exploring the Computer Age, BBC Books, London, 1991, 208 pp. For more links to the history of computing pages click here. We would appreciate receiving suggestions for additional links from this page to other pages that amplify the topics covered in this video series, or provide "side-bar" information on topics that were, of necessity, omitted from the show. Please send me e-mail. We also encourage teachers to give homework http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/TMTCTW.html (1 of 8) [03-09-2001 16:13:16]

The Machine That Changed the World

assignments that would result in the development of web pages that could be added to this site. This is particularly important for the last two episodes!. Remember that this video series were originally broadcast in 1991 and in the intervening years many things have happened in the computer business -the World Wide Web for one! So if there are things we need to bring up-to-date, perhaps we can do it through the medium of this Web page rather than attempting to redo the original video.

Episode I - Great Brains Commentary by Paul Ceruzzi (Smithsonian Institute) and Doron Swade (Science Museum, London) What is a computer? The Need for Tables People as Computers Charles Babbage (1791-1871) The Jacquard Loom -- source of the ideas about punched cards The Difference Engine The Analytical Engine Ada Augusta King, Countess of Lovelace, programmer Adaptability of Computers to a Variety of Problems Konrad Zuse (1910-1995) [Not mentioned in the video, Zuse's machines were designated as the Z1 (1935-38), Z2 (1938), Z3 (1941) and Z4 (1945). The Z4 eventually led to s series of machines built by Siemens Corp.] The ENIAC -- Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (unveiled 1946) Built by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. University of Pennsylvania Firing Tables Herman Goldstine, Army Lieutentant Aberdeen Proving Ground The Stored Program Concept (1946) John von Neumann (1903-1957) Patent Problems The First Computer Company The Manchester Machine (1948) "Freddy" Williams, developer (and developer of the Williams Tube) EDSAC -- University of Cambridge (1949) Maurice Wilkes (1913-) Supercomputers Alan M. Turing (1912-1954), a paper by John M. Kowalik, student in CS 3604 COLOSSUS (1943) The Turing Test Donald Michie (1923-) and one who was missed from the video but who is very much involved in breaking the German Enigma Codes with Alan Turing and Donald Michie during the Second World War, and who was involved in the development of the Manchester Machine, is I. J. Good. Good is a faculty member in our Statistics http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/TMTCTW.html (2 of 8) [03-09-2001 16:13:16]

The Machine That Changed the World

department here at Virginia Tech! An excellent story on Jack also appeared in the Roanoke Times. The ENIAC was 50 years old in 1996. The University of Pennsylvania put on a series of events during the year and established a WWW Home Page to keep you abreast of developments. It is intended that this page will also include a simulation of the ENIAC.

Episode II - Inventing the Future The Growing Market for Computers The First Computer Company Bureau of the Census Machine UNIVAC -- A magazine advertisment of the time, courtesy Unisys & GTE Sylvania, through WGBH Press Kit. Magnetic Tape Lyons Electronic Office- LEO John Pinkerton Commercial Applications Cambridge University- EDSAC McCarthyism - Impact on Mauchly Henry Strauss Remington Rand 1952 Presidential Election IBM Enters the field SSEC - Selective Sequence Electronic Computer The First Drum Machine- IBM 650 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Programming Languages- Errors FORTRAN, COBOL Process Control and Automation Bank of America - ERMA Magnetic Ink Character Recognition - MICR The Transistor Brattain, Bardeen, Shockley (this link appears to have disappeared, we are looking for a good replacement) Integrated Circuit- Kilby & Noyce Computers and Space Episode II of "The Machine That Changed the World"" had the opportunity to give credit for the 'invention' of the computer to one John Vincent Atanasoff. Atanasoff, together with a graduate student, Clifford Berry, developed a special purpose computer in the late 1930's that contained many of the elements of the modern computer. However, the development of the machine was hampered by the outset of World War II, and both Atanasoff and Berry moved to other work. In a later court case between Honeywell and Sperry Rand, the judge found the orininal patent claims by John Mauchly and J. Presper http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/TMTCTW.html (3 of 8) [03-09-2001 16:13:16]

The Machine That Changed the World

Eckert to be invalid, stating that the inventor of the computer was "One, John Vincent Atanasoff". Another missing person is Grace Murray Hopper. Dr. Hopper was perhaps the first modern woman to be involved in computers (Ada King, Countess of Lovelace possibly being the first in the 19th century). She started work for Howard Aiken in 1943 on the Harvard Mark I Calculator (also called the IBM ASCC). Sunsequently she became deeply involved in the development of high level languages for computers, creating the concept of a compiler, and two early languages. She was highly influential in the development of COBOL and its usage in military installations. She became the highest ranking female Navy person of her time (Rear Admiral) and a role model to thousands of young women. She is perhaps best known for her discovery of the first computer bug in the Harvard Mark II computer. The bug now resides at the National Museum of American History in Washington DC.

Episode III - The Paperback Computer Books in a Library Commentary by Mitch Kapor and Robert Taylor. Sketchpad - Ivan Sutherland Commentary by Ted Nelson (son of Ozzie and Harriett) Doug Engelbart - The Mouse. Engelbart also produced an extremely foresighted paper on "AUGMENTING HUMAN INTELLECT: A Conceptual Framework" published on 1962. It is a classic that should be on the reading list for all computer science majors. This paper is on-line courtesy of students at the Technical University Aachen, Germany. Xerox PARC- Alan Kay (a biography by Scott Gasch) Children - Jean Piaget Games- Illusions

The Alto Computer Chips - Microprocessors Ted Hoff Altair 8800 Homebrew Computer Club

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Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, photograph courtesy of the Apple Computer Company, through the WGBH new release on this video. See also "The Triumph of the Nerds" and a biography of Steven Wozniak by Manish Srivastava. Blue Boxes - Personal Computers Lee Felsenstein - IBM 5100 IBM PC - 1981 Macintosh - 1984 Macintosh computer interface Environments Users The first spreadsheet by Dan Bricklin Lotus 1,2,3 - Mitch Kapor Microsoft - Bill Gates (an early history by John Mirick and a biography by Stacey Reitz.) Sesame Street Handicapped - Assistive Technology; an article by Christopher R. Murphy (CS 3604, Spring 1997) Chained computers New Projections Illusions Virtual Reality: (Two articles by Scott Tate and Keith Mitchell, CS 3604, Fall 1996.) Henry Fuchs - UNC Fred Brooks, Jr.

Episode IV -- The Thinking Machine. Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) Late 1950s - Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy set up an A.I. Dept. at MIT. 1960 - Slagel's program for freshman calculus; from "number crunching" to intelligent problem solving. Mind vs. Brain approach; mind = software, brain = hardware. (The notion that a thinking computer need not be modeled on the actual biology of the brain is in vogue.) Block stacking program - lack of "common sense." 1970 - Edinburgh University, "Freddie" image recognition application. 1970s - Stanford Kart; motion planning. (Huge computational resources and time required to navigate through a room which a four year old child can do in real time.) Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA. Russian to English language translator - earliest of the non-numerical applications. (Hype not lived up to.) Underestimation of the difficulty of A.I. (Tasks difficult for humans are found easy for computers and vice versa. Computers lack background knowledge.) Future of A.I. looks bleak - Dreyfus' "What Computers Can't Do." Terry Winograd's SHRDLU - intelligence within microworlds. Expert Systems - Feigenbaum's DENDRAL. (Deep but very narrow areas of specialisation. Expert systems found to be "brittle.") http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/TMTCTW.html (5 of 8) [03-09-2001 16:13:16]

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"Idiot savants." Early 1970s - story understanding via scripts and frames. (Minsky.) Modeling commonsense. (Children possess broad and shallow knowledge. People learn by extending the fringe of what they already know, therefore computers make bad pupils as they lack "basic knowledge.") 1984 - Lenat's ten-year CYC project to catalogue "commonsense." (Create an encyclopedia of commonsense basic knowledge.) A new look at modeling intelligence by modeling the biological brain. 1950s and 1960s - Perceptrons. (an article by Michele Estebon, CS 3604, 1997). Late 1970s - Neural networks; Connectionists. Self-driven vehicle - "trained" to drive. Selective training - tank recognition failure. NetTalk. Large networks require large training times. Brain - a collection of special purpose machines --> general intelligence/ commonsense. A.I. - history of fascinating failures.

Episode V -- The World At Your Fingertips. Rapid development of computers. (Forty-five years ago: ENIAC; $3,000,000 cost; believed only ever six needed. Now: millions of cheap computers; interconnected.) Print media --> Digital media. (More options for indexing and searching.) 450 books on one CD. Digital world vs. analog "real world." (Patterns of digital pulses; 1 and 0.) Real world digitized into digital form - permanence; no degradation. (Digitized picture cannot age; perfect memory.) Digitized information amenable to rapid transmission. (Information sent down wires at the speed of light.) Global communications lead to shrinking world - disappearance of "place" as an attribute. Physical presence vs. "electronic presence" --> new forms of social interaction. Global communities - distance no longer an obstacle. (Financial traders part of global financial community - physically separate but part of the same "community.") Stock market. (As many trades in a day as it used to be in a week.) Increase of information travel rate. Timeliness of information. London Stock Exchange - physical "marketplace" rendered redundant. New social gatherings - linked by common interest, not geography. Internet and USENET - new forum for exchange of ideas. Cold fusion - quicker interchange of ideas via USENET news than possible via existing journals. SeniorNet - computer networks entering everyday lives. Electronic presence. (Left by electronic traces we leave behind as part of our day to day lives. Constant information gathering.)

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Data pollution - wrong information propagated between computers and databases. (Disrupts thousands of lives per year.) Invasion of privacy - casual information gathering can give rise to distorted views of individuals. Electronic sweat shops. Technological evolution outpacing social evolution. (Alvin Toffler, "Future Shock.") 1987 Stock Market crash. ("Programmed selling" instigated avalanche of selling leading to 508 point crash.) Speed of light as a constraint. Effect on stability of social systems. Singapore - developed nation status via transformation into an "information society." "Digitization" of Singapore - Land Data Hub. (Database on all aspects of Singapore; complete electronic record.) Singapore - total electronic efficiency. Social engineering and control of people vs. tool for democracy. MINITEL - large growth from one to 12,000 choices. 1986 - Student protests against admissions policies successfully coordinated via MINITEL. The future is digital! Dependence upon computers. Computers programmed in "craftsmanlike" manner. Software errors - no reliable engineering techniques for the production of software. Software bugs - human consequences; Therac-25 radiation machine software malfunction. AT&T telephone system crash caused by a single line of bad code. (Bug causes 20,000,000 phone calls being unable to connect and cripples phone network.) Untestability of large software systems. 1989 - Dallas Fort Worth airport computer failure. Unlike traditional engineering, small errors can completely cripple entire software systems. Wheel turns full circle: Babbage's inspiration stemmed from the desire to eliminate errors. However, computers are still prone to errors via programmers, as in Babbage's time. Communication central to digital future. Uses of computers different from original goals. Computer a medium, not a machine.

Additional stuff and thoughts: This last episode of "The Machine That Changed The World" was produced in advance of the development of the World Wide Web, and thus cannot be expected to cover this development. However, the fact that the WWW is now a part of our lives is a proof of the fast pace of innovation in this field. Though in no way comprehensive, here is a list of some recent developments that might have been included in this series of videos: ● Radio Frequency Technology in Commodity Tracking by Scott Tate, CS 3604, Fall 1996. ●

It has come the ability to circumvent the established telephone systems by the use of the Internet and the WWW. This raises the question of the "Internet Telecommunications Software: Need to Grow or Need to Pay?" by Jacob Chuh, CS 3604, Fall 1996.

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Supercomputers were in vogue in 1990, but they were not part of the video series. One of the key

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persons (some will say THE key person) in the development of modern supercomputers was Seymour Cray. Cray died as a result of a traffic accident in 1996.

Computer Trivia: A good source of computer trivia is the Annual ACM/Computer Museum Computer Bowl. The questions and answers to several year's questions have been published in the Communications of the ACM. The 1994 set were included in the August 1994 issue of ACMemberNet.

The Triumph of the Nerds A 1996 PBS video, based loosely on the book by Robert Cringely "The Rise of Accidental Empires" includes interview and comments from Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and many others. From the Publicity Release Package of WGBH. [1] The video tape series entitled "The Machine That Changed The World" is no longer available for purchase, but information about copies can be obtained from the Association for Computing Machinery (one of the original sponsors of the series). There is no web site or e-mail address available as of 96/10/02. This collection of materials relating to the history of computing is provided courtesy of the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech, and is sponsored in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (CDA-9312611). Last updated 99/09/08 © J. A. N. Lee, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998.

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