
Claude Shannon
Claude Shannon is a famous American mathematician, electronic engineer, and geneticist sometimes titled the father of information theory. Claude Elwood Shannon (1916–2001) was an outstanding student, and after receiving in 1936 two bachelor’s degrees (one in electrical engineering and one in mathematics) at the University of Michigan, he began graduate..Read More
George Stibitz
On a late evening in November 1937, a research mathematician at the Bell Labs, George Stibitz, left his working place to go home, taking from the Bell stockroom two telephone relays, a couple of flashlight bulbs, a wire, and a dry cell. At home, Stibitz sat behind the kitchen table..Read More
Louis Couffignal
The French Mathematician and Cybernetics pioneer Louis Pierre Couffignal (1902-1966) was a pupil of the prominent French mathematician and engineer Philbert Maurice d’Ocagne (1862-1938), who instilled him with his own passion for calculating machines. ouis Couffignal published several articles and sent several notes to the French Academy of Science regarding..Read More
Konrad Zuse
While studying civil engineering at the Technical College (Technischen Hochschule) of Berlin Charlottenburg Konrad Zuse stumbled upon a serious problem, during his work with the construction of buildings and roads. This type of construction requires solving huge systems of linear equations, which was very hard to be done by means..Read More
Herbert Wells
Herbert George Wells (1866–1946) is an internationally famous English author, and a prolific writer in many genres, including contemporary novels, history, and social commentary, best known however for his work in the science fiction genre. Wells is often referred to as The Father of Science Fiction. Everybody knows his The Time..Read More
Jorge Luis Borges
In 1939 the famous Argentine writer and librarian Jorge Luis Borges published in Buenos Aires an essay entitled La bibliotheca total (The Total Library), describing his fantasy of an all-encompassing archive or universal library. A universal library is supposed to contain all existing information, all books, all works (regardless of..Read More
Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush (1890-1974) was an American engineer, policymaker, and science administrator, known primarily for his work on analog computing and his political role in the development of the atomic bomb. In 1945, in the article, As We May Think (the paper was originally written in 1939, but was published in..Read More
John Atanasoff
Working on his doctoral thesis in theoretical physics at the University of Wisconsin in 1929, the young scientist John Vincent Atanasoff (1903-1995) first time met a severe computational problem, being forced to perform complex calculations, using traditional computing tools like the slide rule and mechanical calculator Monroe type. fter returning..Read More
Edward Condon
In April 1940, in the Westinghouse Pavilion at the World’s Fair in New York (together with Westinghouse’s robots Elektro and Sparko) was shown an electromechanical computer, playing the Nim game. The originator of the idea was the American physicist Edward Uhler Condon (1902-1974), who in 1937 was employed at Westinghouse..Read More
Isaac Asimov
In the March 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine the American writer Isaac Asimov introduced The Three Laws of Robotics in his short story “Runaround” (see the story). The Three Laws are: 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to..Read More