Computer Timeline – Page 33 – Yet another site for bright people, crafted by Georgi Dalakov

21 Dec 1936

Alonzo Church

Alonzo Church (14 June 1903—11 August 1995) was an eminent US mathematician and logician with works of major importance in mathematical logic, recursion theory, and in theoretical computer science. He is best known for the lambda calculus, Church–Turing thesis, proving the undecidability of the Entscheidungsproblem, Frege–Church ontology, and the Church–Rosser..Read More

22 Apr 1937

Howard Aiken

Sometime in 1936 or possibly in early 1937, the Harvard physician Howard Aiken started to make plans about an automatic calculation machine. The shift came about while he was doing research for his thesis. The subject of the thesis was space charge. Before long his thesis research came to consist..Read More

10 Aug 1937

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

27 Feb 1938

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

01 Jul 1938

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 in him his passion for calculating machines. ouis Couffignal published several articles and sent several notes regarding calculating machines to the French Academy of..Read More

01 Sep 1938

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

02 Nov 1938

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

14 Apr 1939

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

01 Sep 1939

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

01 Dec 1939

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