THE PIONEERS OF COMPUTING

1) BLAISE PASCAL

He was born on June 19, 1623 in

Clermont; was a mathematician, physicist,
Catholic philosopher and writer.

The devices of Pascal and Leibniz were

the ancestors of today's desktop
computers , and derivations of these
machines, including the Curta calculator ,
continued to be produced until the early
1970s when their electronic equivalents
finally became readily available and cheap.

Work for the construction of the

"Pascalina" calculating machine in 1641.

Publication of the theorem known as

"Pascal's Theorem" (in Essai sur les
coniques ). (1640)

He died in Paris on August 19, 1662.

2) GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ

In the 1670s, the Gottfried Leibniz did
German baron the calculation
mechanical one
step ahead of its
predecessors.
Leibniz, who
entered university
at the age of
fifteen and
received his
bachelor's degree at the age of
seventeen, once said: "It is unworthy
of excellent men to waste hours like
slaves in the work of calculation,
which, if machines were used, could
safely be relegated to anyone.”
Leibniz extended the ideas of Blaise
Pascal and, in 1671,introduced
he
Staffelwalze/StepReckoner (also
known as the SteppedReckoner, or Leibniz
machine), a device that, as well as
executing additions and subtractions, could
multiply, divide,
and evaluate square roots by a series of addition
steps.

3) CHARLES FRANCIS XAVIER

Charles Francis Xavier (also called Professor X)

is a fictional character belonging to the Marvel
Universe, one of the most powerful mutants in
the world, founder and leader of
thehttp://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue
%c3%b1o_de_Xavier He was created by Stan Lee
and Jack Kirby and first appeared in issue #1 of
The Uncanny X-Men comic book collection in
September 1963.

Throughout most of his history Xavier is a

paraplegic (and during the Wolverine and the X-
men series he is unconscious for 21 years),
although he has the most powerful mutant mind in
the world. As a telepath , Xavier can read,
control and influence the human mind . He is a
scientific genius with a superhuman ability to
absorb information, and is also a leading
authority on genetics, mutation , and psionic
powers.

Xavier's mission is to promote the peaceful

assertion of mutant rights, mediate peaceful
coexistence between mutants and humans, and
protect society from dangerous mutants, including
his old friend Magneto. To achieve his goal, he
has founded the Xavier School for Talented
Young People (later called the Xavier Institute)
to teach mutants how to explore and control
their powers. His students consider him a
visionary and often refer to his mission as
Xavier's Dream. His first group of students were
the original X Men.
4)HERMAN HOLLERITH (1860-1929).

Herman Hollerith Buffalo, New York, February

29 , 1860 — November 17 , 1929) was an American
statistician who invented the tabulating machine.

He is considered the first computer scientist, that

is, the first to achieve automatic processing of
information (Informatics = Information +
automatic).

American engineer. I created the tabulating

machine that employed cards
perforated, it was used in a US census. His
success, Hollerith founded what is now IBM.

This card was used in the 1920 census; this

template was created that was placed in a type of typewriter, on the
operator's side. The pantograph machine transferred the operator's movement
to the actual card, thus allowing about 500 cards to be written per day.

5) VANNEVAR BUSH

He was born on March 11, 1890 in Everett,

Massachusetts and studied at Tufts College,
Harvard University .

The first hypertext system, "Memex" or

Memory Extended, was described by Vannevar
Bush, Scientific Advisor to the President of
the United States.
Roosevelt, in a 1945 essay "As weMayThink."

Memex (Memory Extended)

Without a doubt, the device best known for its influence on the vision of
hypertext and the Internet was the Memex. Memex was a mechanical device
in which an individual could store all of his books, recordings and
 communications. It was mechanized so that the stored information could be
consulted in a fast and flexible (non-linear) way.
Physically, the Memex looked like a table with two monitors operated by a
stylus and a scanner. Indexed information composed of both text and images
would be stored inside, following universal standards.

6)ALAN TURING

Alan Turing is considered the father of computer science and computing

methodology.

It provided an influential formalization of the concepts of algorithm and

computing: the Turing machine. He formulated his own version of the now
widely accepted Church-Turing Thesis, which postulates that any existing
computational model has the same algorithmic capabilities, or a subset, of
those that a Turing machine has.
During World War II, he worked in decipher
the codes Nazis,
particularly those of the Enigma machine; for a
time he was the head of the Naval Enigma
section at Bletchley Park. After the war he
designed one of the first digital programmable
electronic computers at the National Physical
Laboratory in the United Kingdom and shortly
afterwards built another of the first machines at the University of
Manchester. Among many other things, it also contributed in a particular and
even provocative way to the enigma of whether machines can think, that is, to
Artificial Intelligence.
 7) JOHN VON NEUMANN (December 28 , 1903 - February 8th
of 1957) He was a Hungarian mathematician.
American who made fundamental contributions in
quantum physics, functional analysis , set
theory, computer science , economics, numerical
analysis, cybernetics, hydrodynamics, statistics
, and many other fields. He is considered one of
the most important mathematicians in modern
history.

John von
Neumann.
Mathematical
American of Hungarian origin. I create new programming. paradigms of

8) CLAUDE ELWOOD SHANNON

He was born in Michigan, April 30, 1916, American electronic engineer and
mathematician , remembered as "the father of
information theory . "

Study the flow of electromagnetic waves through a

circuit. And it understands that through binary code
all types of information (texts, sounds, images...) can
be homogenized. Clearly distinguish between message
and the medium by which it is transmitted. At the
same time, it analyzes how to measure the
effectiveness of a communication channel through the
concept of entropy, taken from the second law of
thermodynamics. Entropy measures the losses derived
from 'noise ' in the transmission of information in a message, and, at the
same time, the possibility of eliminating losses and uncertainty, through
redundancy and numerical coding at the origin of the communication process
and its decoding in the reception phase. After more than half a century of his
findings, Shannon's work is still considered the key piece in the development
that leads communication to acquire a central character in today's society.
From the study of 'Boolean' algebra, he theorizes about binary code, the
basis of language
digital, based on basic units of information, defined by two states: 'yes ' and
'no ' , 0 and 1, open/closed, true/false, white/black. The 0 and 1 appear as
the atom of information, as the constructive basis of the message. dies
February 24, 2001

9) NORBERT WIENER

Norbert Wiener born November 26, 1894 Columbia

(Missouri) was an American mathematician , known
as the founder of cybernetics. He coined the term
in his book Cybernetics or Control and
Communication in Animals and Machines , published
in 1948.

His father, Leo Wiener, was a professor of Slavic

languages at Harvard University. Norbert was
educated at home until he was seven years old, at
which age he began attending school, but for a
short time. He continued his studies at home until
he returned to school in 1903, graduating from Ayer High School in 1906.
Died March 18, 1964, Stockholm, Sweden.

10) CHARLES BABBAGE

He was a British mathematician and astronomer. Like his colleagues, he could

have made do with the calculating machines available in the 1830s. There
were numerous models of these machines, all of them capable of performing
the four arithmetic operations. But Babbage was passionate about technology
and his project was much more ambitious: he wanted to build a universal
calculator that could automatically chain any sequence of operations and return
the final result.

The architecture of Babbage's machine was incredibly modern for its time. In
it you could find all the elements that make up our computers today:

• A unit of calculation. Where all operations are carried out.

• A memory unit. Where all results are held

intermediates so that they can be searched and recovered when the
calculation requires it.
 A unit of command. Who directs the order of operations and ensures
that everything is executed correctly.

The entire set was completely mechanical, based on wheels, cam cylinders and
punched cards, which were already used in the textile industry. Furthermore,
Babbage's machine required the problems to be solved to be translated into
sequences of operations, and this is where the first programmer in history
comes in.

For quite some time, Babbage sent the plans for his calculator while Ada was
in charge of writing programs that could be solved. If she encountered
difficulties, she suggested appropriate modifications to resolve them. She was
the first programmer in history.

11) ADA BAYRON

Ada Augusta Byron King was born on December 10,

1815, London, United Kingdom described Charles
Babbage's analytical engine, she is currently
considered the first programmer, since she wrote
the manipulation of symbols, according to the
standards for an analytical machine. Charles
Babbage that had not yet been built. ( Charles
Babbage's Analytical Engine).

Ada is mainly remembered for having written a

description of Charles Babbage's early analytical
engine , and for having developed instructions for
doing calculations on an early version of the
computer.

In her notes, Ada Augusta says that the "analytical machine" could only
provide available information that was already known: she saw clearly that it
could not originate knowledge. Her work was forgotten for many years,
attributing her exclusively to the role of transcriber of Babbage's notes.

Today, Ada Byron is recognized as the first person to describe a general

programming language interpreting Babbage's ideas, but with full recognition of
her
authorship and originality of their contributions. Ada Byron is the mother of
computer programming.
In 1843, Ada published a series of influential notes on Babbage's computer,
his "analytical engine" that was never built, although she signed them with her
initials for fear of being censured for being a woman. Ada Byron called
herself an analyst , a truly modern concept for the time. Died 27 November
1852, London, United Kingdom .

12) GEORGE BOOLE

George Boole born November 2, 1815 was a British mathematician and

philosopher .

As inventor of Boolean algebra, which marks

the foundations of computational arithmetic
modern, boole is
considered one of the founders of the field
of Computer Science . In 1854
public
"An Investigation of the Laws of Thought" in
which he developed a system of rules that
allowed him to express, manipulate and
simplify logical and philosophical problems
whose arguments admit two states (true or
false) by mathematical procedures. You could
say that he is the father of logical operations and thanks to his algebra today
it is possible to manipulate logical operations.

In 1847, the English mathematician George Boole used it in algebraic

equations, establishing the foundations of what would become computer logic.
He died on December 8, 1864 .
13) LEONARDO TORRES QUEVEDO

Leonardo Torres Quevedo was born in Santa

Cruz de Iguña (Molledo) , Cantabria, 28 of
December 1852 was a Spanish civil engineer ,
mathematician and inventor of the late 19th and
early 20th centuries.

Leonardo Torres Quevedo, Spanish engineer and

inventor, precursor of modern robotics,
considered a precursor of computing. Madrid
dies, December 18, 1936.

14) JOHN BERNERS-LEE

Sir Timothy "Tim" John Berners-Lee, OM, KBE (TimBL or TBL) was born on
June 8, 1955 in London, United Kingdom, and
graduated in Physics in 1976 from Queen's
College, University of Oxford. He is considered
the father of the web.

Faced with the need to distribute and exchange

information about its research in a more
effective way, Berners-Lee development
the ideas
fundamentals that structure the web. He and his
group created what is called HTML Language
(HyperText Markup Language) or hypertext tag
language, the HTTP protocol (HyperText
Transfer Protocol) and the object location system on
the web.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator).
15) LINUS BENEDICT TORVALDS

Born December 28, 1969 , Helsinki, Finland, he is a Finnish software engineer

, known for initiating and maintaining the development of the Linux kernel ,
based on the free Minix operating system created by Andrew S. Tanenbaum
and in some tools, various utilities and compilers developed by the GNU
project. Torvalds is currently responsible for coordinating the project. He
belongs to the Swedish-speaking community in
Finland.

His parents took their name from Linus Pauling

(American, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1954) . He
began his computing adventures at age 11 when
his grandfather, a mathematician and statistician
at the University, bought one of the first
Commodore microcomputers in 1980 and asked him
for help using it.

In 1988 he was admitted to the University of

Helsinki, where he obtained his master's degree
in Computer Science. That same year, Professor
Andrew S. Tanenbaum brings to light the OSMinix for educational purposes. 2
years later, in 1990, Torvalds begins to learn the C programming language at
his university.

At the end of the 80s he came into contact with IBM computers, PCs , and in
1991 he acquired a computer with an Intel model 80386 processor .

At the age of 21, with 5 years of programming experience (in C) , I already

knew enough about the Minix operating system to borrow some ideas and start
a personal project. Based on Design of the Unix Operating System , published
by Maurice J. Bach in 1986, would create an implementation that will execute
any type of program, but on a compatible computer architecture, IBM/PC.

This personal project ended on October 5, 1991 with the announcement of the
first version of Linux capable of running BASH ( Bourne
Again Shell ) and the compiler known as GCC ( GNU Compiler Collection ).

In January 1992, the General Public License (GPL) for Linux was adopted.
This adds freedoms of use to Linux that are totally opposite to those of
proprietary software, allowing its modification, redistribution, copying and
unlimited use. This licensing model facilitates what is known as the bazaar
development model, which has given unprecedented stability and functionality
to this operating system.

In 1997 Linus Torvalds receives the 1997 Nokia Foundation Award from Nokia
and Lifetime Achievement Award at Uniforum Pictures . That same year he
completed his higher education (1988 - 1997) after a decade as a student
and researcher at the University of Helsinki, coordinating the development of
the OS core. since 1992.

Torvalds worked at Transmeta from February 1997 to June 2003. He

currently works for the Open Source Development Labs in Beaverton, Oregon.
Only 2% of the current Linux code is written by him, but the paternity of this
core of the operating system continues to rest on his person.

Torvalds owns the trademark "Linux" and oversees use of the trademark through
the non-profit organization Linux International.

16) WILLIAM HENRY GATES III

Born on October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington,

better known as Bill Gates, he is a businessman. and
philanthropist United States,
co-founder of the software company Microsoft,
producer of the most used operating system for
personal computers in the world, Microsoft Windows.
17) STEVEN PAUL JOBS

Born San Francisco, California, February 24 , 1955. best known

Like Steve Jobs, he was an entrepreneur and
business magnate in the computer sector and the
American entertainment industry . He was co-
founder and executive chairman of Apple Inc. and
the largest individual shareholder of The Walt
Disney Company. He died in Madrid, December 18,
1936.

18) ALAN SHUGART

Born in Los Angeles, California, he graduated

from the University of Redlands, receiving his
degree in engineering physics.

He began his career at IBM in 1951, in San

Jose, California, repairing punch card accounting
machines. He worked on the IBM project
RAMAC 305 (Random Access Method of
Accounting and Control) that allowed 5 million
characters of data to be stored. Within the
projects he was also a participant in the IBM
1301, a 50 MB disk which was the basis for
multiple service companies. He held important positions until he was the Direct
Access Storage Product Manager, responsible for storage products; which was
at that time one of the most profitable businesses at IBM. Among the groups
that reported to Shugart was the group that invented the floppy disk.

In 1969 he left IBM and went to Memorex; In 1972 he left Memorex to

found Shugart Associates in 1973, later acquired by Xerox. Then he and Finis
Conner started Shugart Technology in 1979, changing its name to Seagate
Technology.
With Shugart as Chief Executive Officer, Seagate became the world's largest
independent manufacturer of hard drives and related components.

In 1997 he received the IEEE "Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage

Systems Award".

Shugart died on December 12, 2006 in Monterey, California, due to

complications in his heart from surgery performed six weeks earlier.

20) RICHARD STALLMAN

Richard Matthew Stallman was born in

Manhattan, New York, March 16, 1953, often abbreviated as "rms", is an
American programmer and founder of the free software movement in the
world.

His notable achievements as a programmer include

the development of the GNU Emacs text editor ,
the GCC compiler, and the GDB debugger , under
the rubric of the GNU Project. However, it is
mainly known for establishing a moral, political and
legal framework for the free software movement,
as an alternative to the development and
distribution of non-free or proprietary software .
He is also the inventor of the concept of copyleft
(although not the term), a method of licensing
software in such a way that its use and modification always remain free and
remain in the community.
21) HOWARD HATHAWAY AIKEN

He was born in New Jersey (USA),

raised in Indianapolis, where he
studied at Arsenal Technical School,
graduating in 1919. After that he
studied at the University of
Wisconsin, where he specialized in
electronics. While I studied
was working as engineer
worker in Madison Gas and
Electric Company from 1919 to
1923. He graduated as engineer
electronic in 1923.
In 1937, before the war, Aiken presented the project to build a
computer, for which he obtained the support of IBM. Thus was born the
MARK I (or IBM ASCC), completed in 1944 at a cost of $250,000.
Immediately after completion, the US Navy requisitioned both the machine
and its inventor for use during World War II, Aiken achieved the rank of
Commander, and the MARK I was used to calculate naval Artillery tables.

For the design of the MARK I, Aiken studied the works of Charles
Babbage, and thought of the MARK I project as if it were the completion of
Babbage's unfinished work, the analytical engine, with which the MARK I had
much to offer. in common.

In addition to the MARK I, Aiken built more computers: MARK II (1947),

MARK III and MARK IV (1952).

After the war, in 1946, Aiken returned to Harvard as a mathematics

professor. In addition, he was named director of the university's new
computer laboratories in 1947. Aiken had the collaboration of Grace Hooper,
in charge of programming MARK I.

In 1964, Aiken received the Harry M. Memorial Award. Goode, of the

Computer Society , for his contribution to the development of automatic
computers, and for the construction of the MARK I.
22) JOHN WILLIAM MAUCHLY

John William Mauchly, born August 30, 1907, was an

American physicist who, together with John Presper
Eckert, designed the ENIAC, the first program and
the first general-purpose electronic digital computer ,
as well as the EDVAC, the Binac and the UNIVAC.
And the first commercial computer made in the United
States.

The two started the first computer company, the

Eckert-Mauchly computer
Corporation and pioneered some fundamental computer
concepts, including the “stored program,” subroutines,
and programming languages. His work, as set out in his
first draft of the EDVAC report (1945) and as
explained in the Moore School Lectures (1946), influenced an explosion in
computer development in the late 1940s everywhere. of the world. January 8,
1980.

23) BOUGLES CAIL ENGERLTART

This computer genius, whose full name is Douglas

Carl Engelbart, was born on January 30, 1925 in
Portland, Oregon (United States) and grew up on a
small one-acre farm near Portland during the years
of the Great Depression, where I helped milk the
cows, feed the chickens, and take care of the
garden. Since he was little, his professional
orientation was very clear. In 1942 he finished high
school and went to Oregon where he began to study
Electrical Engineering at the State University in
Corvallis, studies that he would soon have to
abandon to go to war like so many other young men.
His destination was the Philippines. During World
War II Engelbart worked for two years as a
technician of a recent invention, radar, which used an innovative system of
displaying information through a screen. Although Engelbart had not the
slightest interest in military technology, he did find attractive this new
technology that would probably be the seed of his future vision of how
machines could display
“If a radar monitor can do this, so can a computer,” thought Engelbart.

24) VINTON GRAY CERF

Winton 'Vint' Gray Cerf is an American computer scientist , considered one of

the 'fathers' of the Internet. Born in
Connecticut (United States) in 1943, of Jewish origin, graduated in
mathematics and computer science from Stanford University
(1965). During his subsequent stay at the University of
California (UCLA) he obtained a master's degree in science
and a doctorate.

In the early 1970s he began working with Robert Kahn on

the development of a set of communications protocols for
the military network, funded by the government agency
DARPA . The objective was to create a "network of
networks" that would allow interconnecting the different
networks of the United States Department of Defense, all
of them of different types and operating with different
operating systems, independently of radio connection type:
links, satellites and telephone lines.

The research, led by Vinton Cerf, first from the University of California
(1967 -1972) and later from Stanford University (1972 -1976) , led to the
design of the set of protocols that are known today as TCP/IP (Transmission
Control). Protocol/Internet Protocol), which was introduced by Vinton Cerf and
Robert Kahn in 1972.

Between 1976 and 1982, working at DARPA, he was a pioneer in the

development of packet radio and satellite transmission, responsible for the
Internet project and the network security research program. Always
concerned about networking problems, Cerf established the Internet
Configuration Control Board (later renamed the Internet Activities Board) in
1979 and was its first president.
Between 1982 and 1986, Cerf designed MCI MAIL, the first commercial email
service to connect to the Internet.

In 1992 he was one of the founders of the Internet Society and its first
president.

Vinton Cerf is currently the global vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist
of Google, an occupation he combines with the position of president of
ICANN. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Oscar
Niemeyer International Cultural Center of Avilés, Asturias.