Computers (and related technology)

Computers and related technologies are indisputably a part of all our lives now, and quiz questions are being asked that are about computers but cannot (IMHO) in any way be classified as science. This page covers the stuff that I do class as scientific, including the history of computer science. There is more about computers, that I don't consider to be science (it is a bit of a moot point), in the General Knowledge section – please click here.

People

Cambridge mathematician (1792–1871): proposed a machine for calculating astronomical and mathematical tables – the "difference engine" – to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1822; granted £700 by the government to build it, but was unable to make parts to the precision and in the quantity required; described a mechanical (steam–driven) "analytical engine" in 1837, whose logical structure was essentially the same as that of an electronic computer; failed to complete construction of any of his machines due to conflicts with his chief engineer and inadequate funding. (A functioning difference engine, based on his original plans, was built at the Science Museum 1989–91.)			Charles Babbage
English computer scientist (born London 1955), inventor of the World Wide Web: proposed an information management system in March 1989, while working at CERN, and on Christmas Day 1990 implemented the first successful communication between an HTTP client and server via the Internet			Tim Berners–Lee
US inventor (1860–1929) of a mechanical tabulating machine used successfully in the 1890 census			Herman Hollerith
Rear Admiral in the US Navy (1906–92): a pioneer of programming, who popularized the idea of machine–independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL			Grace Hopper
French textile manufacturer (1752–1834), invented a punched card system for programming designs on a carpet–making loom			Joseph Marie Jacquard
Widely recognised as the first computer programmer: the only daughter of Lord Byron – a gifted mathematician; created a programme for Babbage's Analytical Engine, to calculate a series of Bernoulli numbers – but it never ran because the machine was never finished			Ada (Countess of) Lovelace
US programmer: sent the first email, on ARPANET (an application created by the US Department of Defense, described as the precursor of the Internet) in 1971, and is credited with inventing email; died in 2016, aged 74			Ray Tomlinson
English mathematician and computer scientist, 1912–54, often considered the father of modern computer science and of artificial intelligence; carried out vital work in breaking the German Enigma codes in World War II; devised a test, in 1950, to determine whether a computer was behaving intelligently, as a human being would (artificial intelligence), which was named after him; a memorial was unveiled in Sackville Gardens, Manchester (previously Whitworth Gardens) in 2001; also has part of Manchester's inner ring road named after him; won the public vote for the Greatest Person of the 20th Century, in the BBC's Icons series (2019)			Alan Turing

General

Babbage's later machines (i.e. successors to the Difference Engine) – programmable using punched cards		Analytical Engine
Mobile phone operating system introduced by Google in 2008		Android
Developed in 1964 by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz, at Dartmouth College (USA), to make computers accessible to students in fields other than science and mathematics		BASIC
One bit per second (transmission rate across a network)		Baud
'Bit' is short for		Binary digit
The amount of memory required to hold one character		Byte
Shows where the next character will appear on the screen		Cursor
Babbage's name for his first mechanical calculating machine, designed to compute the values of polynomial functions		Difference Engine
Language developed by IBM in the 1950s for scientific and technical applications: still widley used in those fields in the 21st century		Fortran
Manufacturer of the 80286, (80)386, (80)486, and Pentium processors; co–founded (1968) by Gordon Moore (originator of Moore's Law)		Intel
Language developed by James Gosling of Sun Microsystems, and released in 1995: designed to run on any platform without amendment; rapidly became one of the most widely used		Java
Open UNIX–based operating system with a penguin as its logo		Linux
The Intel 404 was the first ever		Microchip
Formulated in 1964: holds that every 18 months, the price (of processors) halves and the power doubles		Moore's Law
Hand–controlled input device used to control a pointer on a screen; invented in 1964 by Douglas Engelbart at Stanford Research Institute (SRI); his 1967 patent application described it as an "X-Y position indicator for a display system". (The first ball mouse was developed in 1972 by Bill English, who had previously worked with Engelbart at SRI, at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, PARC)		Mouse
Half a byte (four bits – the amount of storage needed to store one hexadecimal digit)		Nibble
Single dot on a screen (contraction of 'picture element'); also used to describe the resolution of digital cameras (typically with the prefix 'mega' to indicate 1 million)		Pixel
Language developed in the late 1980s by Dutch programmer Guido van Rossum, who took the name from a British comedy television programme that he was a fan of (as it was intended to be fun to use); named in 2018 as the third most popular language (behind Java and C)		Python
Operating system developed at AT&T's Bell Laboratories (New Jersey) in the 1970s, by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (among others): licensed to outside parties from the late 1970s, becoming the first portable operating system; clones include Linux and Apple's macOS		UNIX

© Haydn Thompson 2017–24