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