Computer Development Over the Years

Charles Babbage

1828

1. Time Period: 1800s
2. What did the term 'computer' mean? He envisioned the capability of performing any arithmetical operation on the basis of instructions.
3. Main contribution: conceived the first automatic digital computer.

Ada Lovelace

1843

1. Time Period: 1800s
2. What did the term 'computer' mean? She envisioned the capability of performing any arithmetical operation on the basis of instructions.
3. Main contribution: the first computer programmer.

Mauchly and Eckert

1945

1. Time Period: mid 1900s
2. What did the term 'computer' mean? a computer that would use electricity to "think."
3. Main contribution: inventing the ENIAC

Alan Turing

1945

1. Time Period: early 1900s
2. What did the term 'computer' mean? He wanted Practical Universal Computing Machines'. Turing's ACE been built as he planned, it would have had vastly more memory than any of the other early computers, as well as being faster.
3. Main contribution: Alan Turing was famous for his work developing the first modern computers, decoding the encryption of German Enigma machines during the second world war

ENIAC Programmers

1946

1. Time Period: mid 1900s
2. What did the term 'computer' mean? a computer that would use electricity to "think."
3. Main contribution: development of concepts like subroutines and nesting.

Grace Hopper

1952

1. Time Period: late 1900s
2. What did the term 'computer' mean? a machine that did the same work.
3. Main contribution: helped develop COBOL -- one of the first high-level programming languages -- and invented the first compiler, a program that translates programming code to machine language.

Mark Dean

1981

1. Time Period: late 1900s
2. What did the term 'computer' mean? He led a design team for making a one-gigahertz computer processor chip. As well as the ISA bus.
3. Main contribution: improved the personal computer (PC) through the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) systems bus