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The Babbage Engine
The Babbage Engine was a design created by Charles Babbage and is one of the first automatic computation machines. While he designed computers he never built them. It wasn't until 153 years later his design was actually built. About Babbage -
"First Computer Programmer" Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace is credited with being the first computer programmer. Her significance becoming more important because she was a woman and most during that time weren't mathematicians. What she did was write the world’s first machine algorithm for an early computing machine that existed only on paper. More about Lovelace -
Claude Shannon Digital Circuits
Shannon showed how logical algebra of 19th-century mathematician George Boole could be implemented using electronic circuits of relays and switches. This most fundamental feature of digital computers' design--the representation of "true" and "false" and "0" and "1" as open or closed switches, and the use of electronic logic gates to make decisions and to carry out arithmetic.
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Stored-program computer (Turing & Von Neumann)
Developed the idea of the modern computer and artificial intelligence. During the Second World War he worked for the government breaking the enemies codes. Turing delivered a paper, about a universal machine (Turing machine) capable of computing anything that is computable. He also came up with "Computing machinery and intelligence," and proposed an experiment known as the “Turing Test.”
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First computer designed for U.S. business
Eckert and Mauchly, now with their own company (later sold to Remington Rand), design UNIVAC (UNIVersal Automatic Computer)—the first computer for U.S. business. Its breakthrough feature: magnetic tape storage to replace punched cards.
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Inventor of the Microprocessor
Ted Hoff's knowledge of computers (still very large machines at the time) allowed him to design the computer-on-a-chip microprocessor (1968), which came on the market as the Intel 4004 (1971), starting the microcomputer industry.
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First laptop computer is designed
William Moggridge, the designer of that first laptop; he is also widely viewed as a father of the field of interaction design, a discipline that focuses on improving the human experience of digital products. More on Moggridge -
Inventor of the Internet Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee is an English computer scientist, best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He made a proposal for an information management system in March 1989 and he implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet sometime around mid-November of that same year.
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First Web Browser
Marc Andreessen is a co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used Web browser and co-founder of Netscape. More on Andreessen -
Internet Access for All
CompuServe, America Online, and Prodigy start providing dial-up Internet access. More on Internet Access
