Research

Activity
(Introduction to Computing)

Submitted to: Mr. James Gañas

Submitted by: Denmark M. Mahumot
 Charles Babbage
British inventor and mathematician
December 26, 1791 – October 18, 1871

 Credited with having conceived the first automatic digital computer. [a]
 He helped found the Analytic Society, whose objective was to introduce
developments from European continent into English mathematics in 1812. [b]
 He was instrumental in founding the Royal Astronomical (1820) and Statistical
(1834). [c]
 In 1812 or 1813, Charles Babbage first idea of mechanically calculating
mathematical tables first came. [d]
 In 1823, he obtained government support for the design of a projected machine
which is the Difference Engine. The Difference Engine was a digital device and
has a 20-decimal capacity which surpass his previous invention of small
calculator that could only perform certain mathematical computations to eight
decimals. [e] The Difference Engine calculated and printed mathematical tables
and was powered by cranking a handle. The machine was called a “Difference
Machine” after the mathematical theory on which the machines operation was
based. [f]
 Analytical Engine plans was developed by Charles Babbage during the mid-
1830s. It was considered a forerunner of the modern digital computer. In
Analytical Engine, Babbage envisioned the capability of performing any
arithmetical operation on the basis of instructions from punched cards, a memory
unit in which to store numbers, sequential control, and most of the other basic
elements of the present-day computer. [g] Analytical Engine would be more
powerful than the original Difference Machine and when built would be the first
working computer for general-purpose computation. [h] The machine was also
intended to employ several features subsequently used in modern computers,
including sequential control, branching and looping. [i]

References: [a],[b],[c],[d],[e],[g ]- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Babbage; [f],[h] -

https://www.famousscientists.org/charles-babbage/; [i] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage
 Ada Lovelace
British Mathematician
December 10, 1815 – November 27, 1852

 In 1843, Ada Lovelace translates and annotate an article written by the Italian
mathematician and engineer Luigi Federico Menabrea, “Notions sur la machine
analytique de Charles Babbage” (1842; “Elements of Charles Babbage Analytical
Machine”). [a]
 The early programming language Ada was named for her [b] and often referred to
as the ‘first programmer’. [c]
 She has been referred to as ‘prophet of computer age’. Certainly, she was the
first to express the potential for computers outside mathematics. [d]
 Ada Lovelace's notes were labelled alphabetically from A to G. In note G, she
describes an algorithm for the Analytical Engine to compute Bernoulli numbers. It
is considered to be the first published algorithm ever specifically tailored for
implementation on a computer. [e]

References

: [a],[b] - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ada-Lovelace; [c],[d] - https://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/adalovelace/; [e] -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace#First_computer_program
 Alan Turing
British Mathematician and Logician
June 23, 1912 – June 7 1954

 Turing invented the Universal Turing Machine, an abstract computing machine

that encapsulates the fundamental logical principles of the digital computer.
 Church-Turing Thesis is an important step in Turing’s argument about
Entscheidungsproblem that everything humanly computable can also be
computed by the Universal Turing Machine.
 In 1936, Turing showed that Church’s thesis was equivalent to his own, by
proving that every lambda-definable function is computable the Universal Turing
Machine and vice-versa.
 During 1939 and 1940, Turing designed a machine related to Bomba (Polish
word for ice cream), but very different, code-breaking machine known as Bombe
and it supplied the Allies with large quantities of military intelligence.
 Alan Turing was recruited in NPL (National Physical Laboratory) in London to
create an electronic computer. He designed the ACE (Automatic Computing
Engine), it was the first complete specification of an electronic stored-program
all-purpose digital computer. A much smaller ACE machine was built in 1950 and
was named Pilot Model ACE.
 In June 1948, he went to University of Manchester after NPL lost the race to build
the world’s first working electronic stored-program digital computer. He took the
deputy directorship of the Computing Machine Laboratory in that year.
 Alan Turing’s main contributions to the computer’s development were to design
an input-output (I/O) system using Bletchley Park Technology and to design its
programming system.
 Turing also wrote the very first programming manual, and his programming
system was used in the Ferranti Mark I, it is the first marketable electronic digital
computer in 1951.
 Turing was a founding father of artificial intelligence and of modern cognitive
science, and he was a leading early exponent of the hypothesis that the human
brain is in large part a digital computing machine. He theorized that the cortex at
birth is an “unorganized machine” that through “training” becomes organized “into
a universal machine or something like it.” Turing proposed what subsequently
became known as the Turing test as a criterion for whether an artificial computer
is thinking (1950).

Reference: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alan-Turing/Computer-designer
 Gordon Moore
American Engineer and Entrepreneur
January 3, 1929 (age 93)

 Gordon Moore is a key figure in the development of semiconductor electronics,

making major contributions to the origin and perfection of the integrated circuit
(IC) as a viable technology. [a]
 Gordon Moore was one of the labeled “traitorous eight” by Shockley by resigning
at Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory and joining in Fairchild Camera and
Instrument Corporation which they formed new company, Fairchild
Semiconductor Corporation in 1957. [b]
 Moore and Noyce left Fairchild and established Intel Corporation in 1968 which
they decided to merge theory and practice by forcing research scientists and
engineers to work directly on the production of chips, especially the magnetic
oxide semiconductor memory chips that became Intel’s first big commercial
success. [c]
 In 1965, for a special issue of the journal Electronics, Moore was asked to predict
developments over the next decade. In reviewing past increases in the number of
transistors per silicon chip, Moore formulated what became known as Moore’s
law: The number of transistors per silicon chip doubles each year. [d]
 In 1975, as the rate of growth began to slow, Moore revised his time frame to two
years. His revised law was a bit pessimistic; over roughly 40 years from 1961,
the number of transistors doubled approximately every 18 months. Magazines
regularly referred to Moore’s law as though it were inexorable-a technological law
with the assurance of Newton’s laws of motion. [e]
 In 1968, Moore cofounded Intel Corporation with Robert Noyce. Intel has become
a world leader in the design and manufacturing of semiconductors and is the
largest semiconductor company in the world. Among other awards, Moore holds
the IEEE Medal of Honor (2008) and the US National Medal of Technology
(1990). [f]

References: [a],[b],[c],[d],[e] - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gordon-Moore; [f] - https://computerhistory.org/profile/gordon-

moore/
 Douglas Engelbart
American Inventor
January 30, 1925 – July 2, 2013

 In 1950’s Douglas Engelbart work begin that led to his patent for the computer
mouse. [a]
 Engelbart also developed the basic graphical user interface (GUI) [b], a method in
which users interact with their computer. [c]
 Douglas also developed hypertext in 1960’s which considered revolutionary
during those times due to the idea that clicking on some text can link to another
form of text, thus creating a major shift in the way that data was stored and
accessed. [d]
 Engelbart also developed the word processing and video conferencing. [e] He’s
the first to develop the idea that individuals could video conference with each
other. He first demonstrated this idea at a tech demo in 1968, when he and his
team ran 30 miles of cable, connecting his office to the demonstration site. As a
result, he was able to host a live video conference with people at his office, this
showing the potential power of communications to connect ordinary people for
work purposes. [f]
 Douglas Engelbart was an internet and computer pioneer. [g] Engelbart’s
laboratory became the second site on the ARPANET (Advanced Research
Projects Agency Network) in 1967, it is the primary precursor to the internet. [h]
Engelbart hypertext became a document center and storage for the ARPANET.
As such, Engelbart was intimately involved in the creation of the internet. [i]
 Douglas Engelbart also demonstrated in a computer conference on December 9,
1968 a working real-time collaborative computer system known as NLS (oN-Line
System). [j]
 Engelbart also founded the Bootstrap Institute, a research and consulting firm. [k]

References: [a],[b],[e],[h],[j],[k] - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Douglas-Engelbart; [c],[d],[f],[g],[i] - https://history-

computer.com/douglas-engelbart-complete-biography/
 Steve Jobs
American Businessman
February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011

 Steve Jobs is a cofounder of Apple Computers Inc. which is now Apple Inc.
 Jobs along with his friend and colleague Stephen Wozniak build their first logic
board which they call Apple I; built in the Jobses’ family garage which was
improved later on by Jobs encouragement and called it Apple II on 1977. It is a
model with a keyboard and arranged to have a sleek, molded plastic case
manufactured to enclose the unit.
 Steve Jobs led a small group of Apple engineers to a technology demonstration
at PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) to see how the Graphical User Interface
(GUI) could make computers easier to use and more efficient.
 After Jobs left the engineering team, he redesigned to exploit and refine the
PARC ideas along with a smaller group and called it Macintosh or Mac.
 Steve Jobs also is the founder of NeXT Inc. which designing powerful
workstation computers for the education market.
 Jobs also acquired a controlling interest in Pixar, a computer graphics firm that
had been founded as a division of Lucasfilm Ltd., which later on was sold to the
Disney Company in 2006.
 While in near bankruptcy of Apple Computer Inc. in late 1996, Gilbert Amelio
brings back Steve Jobs in Apple as a consultant. And in June 1997, Steve Jobs
lead the Apple once again and he innovate and reinvent its product. He was not
tempted to make machines that ran Microsoft’s Windows OS rather believed that
Apple, as the only major personal computer maker with its own operating system,
was in a unique position to innovate.
 And in 1998, Steve Jobs introduced the iMac, an egg-shaped, one-piece
computer that offered high-speed processing at a relatively modest price and
initiated a trend of high-fashion computers.
 The following year, he triumphed once more with the stylish iBook, a laptop
computer built with students in mind, and the G4, a desktop computer sufficiently
powerful that it could not be exported under certain circumstances because it
qualified as a super computer.
 Steve Jobs reinvent Apple in 2001. He introduced iTunes, a computer program
for playing music and converting music to the compact MP3 digital format
commonly used in computers and other digital devices.
 Also in 2001, Apple began to sell iPod, a portable MP3 player which later on sold
more than one billion songs and videos in 2006 through iTunes store.
 iPhone enter the market in 2007 as Jobs took the company into the
telecommunications business. And in 2008, iPhone and iPod became supported
 on gaming which brings their products not only on telecommunication business
but also in gaming business.

Reference: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Steve-Jobs/Saving-Apple
 Philip Don Estridge
American Computer Engineer
June 23, 1937 – August 2, 1985

 Known as the “father of the IBM PC”. [a]

 Mr. Estridge joined IBM in June 1959 as a junior engineer in Kingston, New York,
and held various positions in the Federal Systems Division, including working on
the manned and unmanned programming support for NASA/Goddard. [b]
 In 1969 he joined the General Systems Division and from 1975 to 1979 he was
the Series/1 programming manager. During 1979-1980, he had responsibility for
the development of a Series/1 integrated product. [c]
 In 1980, Philip Don Estridge took control of the IBM Entry Level Systems with the
goal of developing a low-cost personal computer. [d]
 Don Estridge published the specification of the IBM PC, which allowing many
third-party after market hardware business to take advantage of their machine’s
expansion card slots. [e]
 Entry Systems Division combines entry systems activities and office workstation
product activities. Don Estridge has responsibility for worldwide development and
product management, and U.S. manufacturing, for IBM's general purpose, low-
cost, personal-use computer systems. [f]

References: [a],[d],[e] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Don_Estridge#:~:text=Philip%20Donald%20Estridge%20(June

%2023,father%20of%20the%20IBM%20PC".; [b],[c],[f] - https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/builders/builders_estridge.html
 Bill Gates (William Gates III)
American Computer Programmer, Businessman and Philanthropist
October 28, 1955 (66 years old)

 Bill Gates is the cofounder of Microsoft Corporation, the world’s largest personal-
computer software company. [a] Gates has had a tremendous part in the personal
computing development, and surely the technology industry today would be
different without him. [b]
 While Gates is still in high-school, he helped a small group of programmers who
computerized their school’s payroll system and founded Traf-O-Data, a company
that sold traffic-counting systems to local governments. [c]
 Along with Paul G. Allen, they develop software while they are in Harvard
University for the first microcomputers by adapting a popular programming
language used on a large computer which is BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose
Symbolic Instruction Code). [d] While BASIC was designed in 1963, it wasn’t until
Gates and Allen produced a version for the Altair 8800 that it really started to fly.
In 1975, the two sold the code to MITS for $3,000. [e]
 After leaving Harvard along with Allen, they formed Microsoft and made their first
OS, MS-DOS. [f] In 1980 Gates life would be changed forever as they made a
partnership with IBM. [g]
 In 1990’s, Bill Gates had become the PC industry’s ultimate kingmaker. [h]
 The Microsoft IBM partnership was ready to come to an end in 1992 due to a
difference in the direction the company wanted to take. [i]
 Beginning in 1995 and 1996 where the public interest was in the Internet, Gates
refocused Microsoft on development of consumer and enterprise software
solutions for the Internet. Then he developed the Windows CE, an operating
system platform for networking noncomputer devices such as home televisions
and personal digital assistants. [j]

References: [a],[c],[d],[f],[h],[j] - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bill-Gates; [b] - https://www.123helpme.com/essay/The-

Contribution-Of-Bill-Gates-Technology-And-706270; [e],[g],[i] - https://faculty.wagner.edu/lori-weintrob/bill-gates-the-birth-of-the-
computer/
 Tim Berners Lee
British Scientist
June 8, 1955 (67 years old)

 Tim Berners Lee is generally credited as the inventor of the World Wide Web
(WWW), [a] an Internet-based hypermedia initiative for global sharing. His
specifications of URI’s (Uniform Resource Identifier), HTTP (Hypertext Transfer
Protocol) and HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) were refined as web
technology spread. [b]
 He is the co-founder and CTO of Inrupt.com, a tech start-up which uses,
promotes and helps develop the open-source Solid platform. Solid aims to give
people control and agency over their data, questioning many assumptions about
how the web has to work. Solid technically is a new level of standard at the web
layer, which adds things never put into the original spec, such as global single
sign-on, universal access control and a universal data API so that any app can
store data in any storage place. [c]
 Berners Lee developed a program for himself while he’s at CERN that could
store information in files that contained connections (“link”) both within and
among separate files – a technique that became known as hypertext. [d]
 In 1984, Tim Berners Lee he works on the design of the laboratory’s computer
network, developing procedures that allowed diverse computers to communicate
with one another and researchers to control remote machines. [e]
 Berners-Lee drew up a proposal for creating a global hypertext document system
that would make use of the Internet in 1989. His goal was to provide researches
with the ability to share their results, techniques, and practices without having to
exchange e-mail constantly. [f]
 Between October 1990 and the summer of 1991, Berners-Lee wrote the software
for the first Web server and the first Web client (browser). [g]
 From 1991 to 1993, Berners-Lee evangelized the Web and in 1994 he
established the World Wide Web (W3) Consortium. [h] It develops interoperable
technologies (specifications, guidelines, software and tools) to lead the Web to its
full potential. [i]
 Berners-Lee is a founding Director of the Web Science Trust (WST) launched in
2009 to promote research and education in Web Science and multidisciplinary
study of humanity connected by technology. [j]

References: [a],[d],[e],[f],[g],[h] - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tim-Berners-Lee; [b],[i],[j] -

https://www.internethalloffame.org/inductees/tim-berners-lee#:~:text=In%201989%2C%20Tim%20Berners-Lee,refined%20as
%20web%20technology%20spread; [c] - https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/
 Linus Torvalds
Finnish Computer Scientist
December 28, 1969 (52 years old)

 He is the person behind the development of the Linux operating system when he
decided to create his own PC-based version of UNIX. [a] Linus was inspired by
Minix, it is an operating system developed by Andrew S. Tanenbaum. He wanted
to develop a capable Unix-like operating system that could be run on a PC. [b]
 Because Linux is modifiable that anyone with knowledge of computer
programming, in 1991 many programmers helped Torvalds retool and refine the
software. [c]
 In 1994, Linux Kernel (original code) version 1.0 was released. [d] The Linux
Kernel is the main component of a Linux operating system and is the core
interface between a computer’s hardware and its processes. It communicates
between the 2, managing resources as efficiently as possible. [e] Torvalds wrote
the kernel of the Linux operating system at the age of 21 from his mother’s
apartment in Helsinki. [f]
 In 1990s, Linux evolved into a remarkably reliable, efficient system that rarely
crashed, Netscape Communications Corp., Corel Corp., Oracle Corp., Intel
Corp., and other companies announce plans to support Linux as an inexpensive
alternative to Windows since it is free. [g]
 Many organizations and governments have expressed security reservations
about using any kind of software that contains code that cannot be viewed. [h]
 Linux Foundation was formed in 2007 when OSDL (Open Source Development
Lab) merged with the Free Standards Group. [i]

References: [a],[c],[d],[g],[h],[i] - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Linus-Torvalds; [e] -

https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/linux/what-is-the-linux-kernel; [f] - https://www.internethalloffame.org/inductees/linus-torvalds; [b] -
https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/l/Linus_Torvalds.htm