[SIGCIS-Members] My column on Turing and the Invention of the Computer

Chuck House housec1839 at gmail.com
Sat Jan 18 06:23:22 PST 2014


I want to bear witness to Len’s comments here.  He has a really great ‘rubber chicken circuit speech’ on this; it should be posted and required reading for all of us.  He gave it for one of our local senior citizens groups and they all got out their canes and stomped ‘em in appreciation.

Chuck
Exec Director
InnovaScapes Institute


On Jan 17, 2014, at 5:31 PM, Len Shustek <lshustek at computerhistory.org> wrote:

> At 12:47 PM 1/17/2014, Thomas Haigh wrote:
>> > ...You may be interested in my newly published Communications of the ACM Column "Actually, Turing Did Not Invent the Computer."
>> > ... I think also that the public really has room in its collective memory for just one famous person per technology, usually its inventor. ...
> 
> 
> 
> There is indeed a public craving for lone heroic inventors. As an amateur historian I enjoy giving a talk whose title will make the professional historians here cringe: "Who Invented The Computer, and Why Don't You Know?". (The audience is often senior citizens. This is sometimes called the "rubber chicken circuit"; see wiki/Rubber_chicken.)
> 
> You will be relieved to know that I don't answer the question. I talk about Babbage, Zuse, Turing, Atanasoff/Berry, Aiken, Eckert/Mauchly, William/Kilburn, Von Neumann, and Wilkes. All this in 50 minutes! I do confess to the audience that if I were subjected to torture and required to answer the question, I would unapologetically name Babbage as the first inventor of a computer that was never built.
> 
> An excellent article, Tom, and a fun read.
> 
> -- Len
> 
> Dr. Leonard Shustek
> Chairman, Computer History Museum
> www.computerhistory.org
> 
> 
> 
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