Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace's detailed notes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine were labelled alphabetically from A to G. In note G, she describes an algorithm for the Analytical Engine to compute Bernoulli numbers. It is considered the first published algorithm ever specifically tailored for implementation on a computer, and Ada Lovelace has often been cited as the first computer programmer for this reason. However, Babbage's engine was never completed, so her program was never tested.
TOPAlan Turing
In 1936, Turing published a paper that is now recognised as the foundation of computer science “On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem”. He analysed what it meant for a human to follow a definite method or procedure to perform a task, and invented the idea of a ‘Universal Machine’ that could decode and perform any set of instructions. Ten years later he turned this revolutionary idea into a practical plan for an electronic computer, capable of running any program.
TOPGrace Hopper
Grace Hopper created the first compiler for a Programming language and was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer (1944), an electro-mechanical machine based on the Analytical Engine. The regular programmers of the ENIAC computer included six women mathematicians; Marlyn Meltzer, Betty Holberton, Kathleen Antonelli, Ruth Teitelbaum, Jean Bartik, and Frances Spence. Adele Goldstine was one of the teachers and trainers of the six original programmers of ENIAC computer.
TOPDouglas Engelbart
In late 1968 Douglas Engelbart and a group of 17 researchers from the Augmentation Research Center, Stanford Research Institute, California, made a 90-minute demonstration (now known as “The Mother of all Demos”) to about 1,000 computer professionals. They showed the online system they’d been developing since 1962, with the first computer mouse, hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration over a network, with live audio and video. In 1968.
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