1939
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

1940
01 Apr 1940

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

1941
30 Oct 1941

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

1942
01 Sep 1942

Paul Eisler (printed circuit board)

After the remarkable genius and self-taught Viennese engineer and inventor Gustav Tauschek, another Viennese engineer and inventor, named Paul Eisler, made a significant contribution to the modern electronics industry and computers with the invention of the printed circuit board (PCB) while working in London in the second half of the..Read More

1943
01 Dec 1943

Max Newman and Tommy Flowers

WWII hindered the progress of computer inventors like Atanasoff and Zuse, but had the opposite effect on the first British steps toward the creation of an electronic computer. During the war, the Department of Communications of the British Foreign Office created machines, which used electronic circuits to assist the British..Read More

1945
30 Jun 1945

John von Neumann

The famous mathematician John Louis von Neumann (1903-1957) was born in a prosperous Jewish family in Budapest, Austro-Hungarian Empire, as János Lajos Neumann. A child-prodigy, János received his Ph.D. in mathematics from Pázmány Péter University in Budapest at the age of 22, simultaneously earning a diploma in chemical engineering from..Read More

01 Nov 1945

John Mauchly and John Eckert

For more than 25 years ENIAC was considered the first digital electronic computer in the world. As late as the beginning of the 1970s this assertion was proved false. First, by the famous trial Sperry Rand Corporation vs. CDC and Honeywell, which started in 1971, and later by the information,..Read More

1946
01 Mar 1946

Murray Leinster

Murray Leinster (1896-1975) was a nom de plume of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, a famous American writer of science fiction and alternate history. He wrote and published over 1500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays. n the March 1946 issue of the American science..Read More

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