The computing industry is known for its pioneers who have redefined the way we see IT. Here, we present a few people who perceived what very few of their peers imagined
The computing industry is known for its pioneers who have redefined the way we see IT. Here, we present a few people who perceived what very few of their peers imagined
Shaw said that a reasonable man accepts the view of the world, while an unreasonable man makes the world see his point of view, and therefore, for all progress, we should depend on the unreasonable man.
While a lot of people don't always get their due, the Computer History Museum has been doing its bit to recognise people who have made a mark. In 2008, they honoured Jean Bartik (ENIAC), Bob Metcalfe (Ethernet) and Linus Torvalds (Linux).
But of course, these are already well-known people, and in 2008, IT was a hot field. So, we wondered whom did they honour in say, 1999? Or 2000? We deliberately selected awards that were presented, almost a decade ago, in order to show their impact on the world today.
|
|
|
John McCarthy |
|
|
Konrad Zuse |
|
|
Tom Kilburn |
John McCarthy created the LISP programming system while at MIT, where he and Marvin Minsky organised and directed the Artificial Intelligence Project. And while LISP is not very popular and declined in the 1990s, it has experienced some growth of late, with a strong focus being made on open source implementations of Common Lisp. In fact there is actually supposed to be something called the 'Knights of the Lambda Calculus', a semi-mythical organisation of wizardly LISP and Scheme hackers. (1999)
|
|
Vinton Cerf |
|
|
Alan Kay |
|
|
Frances Allen |
Quick, tell me, what is the first high-level non-von Neumann programming language to be designed for a computer, and when? If you know that this is the 'Plankalkul' which was designed between 1943 and 1945, you know who Zuse is. He was also the architect of the 1941 S3, which was made before the Harvard Mark 1. Today, the S3 is widely acknowledged as being the first fully functional automatic digital computer. (1999)
Tom Kilburn worked with Frederic Williams at the University of Manchester in 1947, and they came up with the Williams tube, which is the first random access electronic storage device. When you get a 'low RAM' error, remember that without Kilburn, there would be no RAM. (2000)
He is called the 'Father of the Internet' and this is true even in an industry given to hype. In 1973, while working at DARPA with Bob Kahn, Cerf developed TCP/IP, the computer networking protocol which set the transmission standard for data communications on the Internet. (2000)
Kay was one of the founders of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC), where he led one of the groups that in concert developed those ideas into modern workstations and the forerunner of the Macintosh. Remember him when you resize a window on your computer desktop. (1999)
Having just a fast computer won't do you also need an optimised program that will push the hardware to the limits, and Frances Allen is considered to be one of the pioneers in the field of optimising compilers. In 1989, she became the first woman to be named an IBM Fellow. (2000)
