Computer Timeline – Page 31 – Yet another site for bright people, crafted by Georgi Dalakov

23 Feb 1909

Percy Ludgate

The modest Irish accountant Percy Ludgate (1883-1922) is a very interesting figure in the world of calculating machines. Starting some time about 1903 to work on his hobby (calculating machines) nightly, until the small hours, and initially completely independently from the great Charles Babbage, he managed to design an extremely..Read More

01 Apr 1909

James Bassett

In 1909 the young inventor James Hunter Bassett (1888–1932) from Chicago, Illinois, started the production of adding device, quite similar in construction to the earlier Ribbon Adder of Charles Webb. In contrast with Ribbon Adder, however, the device of Bassett (called Bassett Adder) had much better market success (at the..Read More

01 Nov 1911

Wilhelm Ostwald

Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932) was a famous German chemist, one of the founders of the field of physical chemistry, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1909 for his work on catalysis, chemical equilibria, and reaction velocities. n 1910 Ostwald was in Brussels, where he met Paul Otlet,..Read More

14 Jun 1912

John Hammond

While studying at the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University in 1907-1910, the young American John Hays Hammond Jr. (1888–1965) became interested in the new study of radio waves, and he was taken under the wing of Alexander Graham Bell, who not only became his mentor, but the two would..Read More

12 Feb 1920

Alban Roberts

After taking part in WWI, the New Zealand inventor Alban Joseph Roberts (1880-1950), who lived in England, started his work on automata. In early February 1920, he demonstrated “Kaiser” the Robot—an automaton that he controlled by remote control light waves. Next year, in 1921, Roberts demonstrated another life-size automaton controlled..Read More

11 Nov 1920

Karel Čapek

The robot word was conceived at the beginning of 1920 by the Czech writer and playwright Karel Čapek (with the help of his brother Josef, an acclaimed painter, graphic artist, writer, and poet), and was introduced in his drama R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), published in November 1920 (see the lower..Read More

02 Sep 1926

Alexander John Thompson

Dr. Alexander John Thompson was a British statistician, the author of the last great table of logarithms, published in nine parts from 1924 to 1952. His table, the Logarithmetica Britannica, gives the logarithms of all numbers from 1 to 100000 to 20 places and supersedes all previous tables of similar scope,..Read More

09 May 1927

Emanuel Goldberg

In the 1920s the German scientist Emanuel Goldberg (1881-1970) of Zeiss Ikon, Dresden, pioneered electronic retrieval technology and library automation. Goldberg designed, built, and demonstrated a “photoelectric microfilm selector” which contained many, if not all, of the concepts history of science professionals now associate with Vannevar Bush. It seems this..Read More

14 Jun 1927

The Robots of Westinghouse

1. Herbert Televox Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co’s first robot was Herbert Televox, built in 1927 by Roy Wensley at their East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania plant. The robot was based on the patents of Wensley, filed in 1923, 1927and 1929. The Televox could accept a telephone call by lifting the telephone..Read More

30 May 1928

Gustav Tauschek

Gustav Tauschek (1899-1945) was a genius self-taught Viennese engineer, with more than 100 patents in Austria, Germany, the USA, and France, mainly in the computing field (from 1922 to 1945) to his credit, who used to work for IBM and who besides the first OCR device, invented also many devices..Read More