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Joseph Marie Jacquard
Born on July 7, 1752. Invents a loom that uses punched wooden cards to automatically weave fabric designs. Early computers would use similar punch cards. -
Charles Babbage
Born December 26, 1791. Invents the steam driven calculating machine that would be able to compute tables of numbers. Eventually led to the first computer. -
Herman Hollerith
Born February 29, 1860. He designs a punch card system to caclulate the 1880 census. He would eventually establish the company that would become IBM. -
Alan Turning
Born June 23, 1912. He comes up with the idea of a universal machine later called the Turning machine, it could computer anything. What today's computers are based off of. -
J.V. Atanasoff
Born on October 4, 1903. He attempted to build the first computer without gears, cams, belt or shafts. This would have been a huge step in computers to make it have less parts, like our computers and laptops today. -
John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert
Born on August 30, 1907 and April 9, 1919. They are funded by the Census Bureau and build the UNIVAC. It is the first commercial computer for business and government use. -
Grace Hopper
Born on December 9, 1906. Develops the first computer language which is called COBOL. This helps the UN to keep tabs on Korea during the war. -
Jack Kilby
Born on November 8, 1923. He unveils the integrated circuit known as a computer chip. He gets a Nobel Prize for his work. This is what we use now, just a little upgraded. -
Douglas Engelbart
Born on January 30, 1925. He shows off his prototype computer with a mouse and a GUI. This is where people see computers are for the general public too.