Chapter 1 - The Advent of Computers

  • Herman Hollerith put punched cards into practice while working at the US Census Bureau in the late 19th century
  • Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company, later consolidated to form IBM.
  • Lehmer sieves could factor mathematical expressions, part electronic part mechanical
  • Vannevar Bush's differential analyzer
  • Konrad Zuse built the Z1 in his parents' apartment
  • Howard Aiken and the Mark I - IV
  • Godel Escher Bach mention in relation to the Entscheidungsproblem
  • Alonzo Church and lambda calculus
  • Church-Turing thesis
  • John von Neumann
    • von Neumann architecture - where code and data are stored in the same unit
    • First Draft of a report on EDVAC (1945) - "contains the first published description of the logical design of a computer using the stored-program concept, which has controversially come to be known as the von Neumann architecture."
  • the transistor - bell labs, shockley semiconductor, fairchild semiconductor (and the "traitorous eight")
    • two of the traitorous eight formed Intel - Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore
  • machine language and assembly and COBOL and FORTRAN oh my