Charles Babbage

Charles Babbage

Name: Charles Babbage

Born: December 26, 1791 in London, England

Death: October 18, 1871 (Age: 79)

Computer related contributions

• Designed the first mechanical computer, which he called the "Difference Engine" — a machine that could solve polynomial equations without using multiplication or division. He began developing the machine in 1822, and worked on it for over ten years, but its construction was never completed.
• Invented and developed his Analytical Engine in the late 1830s. Like the Difference Engine, the Analytical Engine was never fully constructed, but its design was highly influential.
• His machine designs were the first to employ several important concepts used in modern computers, including the separation of data and program memory, instruction-based operations, program control using conditional jumps, and a discrete unit for input/output. Because of this, today he is widely considered to be the father of computing.

Publications

• A Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives (1826)
• On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (1835)
• Table of the Logarithms of the Natural Numbers from 1 to 108000 (1841)
• Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)

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Leonard Kleinrock

Name: Leonard Kleinrock

Born: June 13, 1934, New York City

Computer related contributions

• Created the initial idea of the ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet in his first paper entitled "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets" on May 31, 1961.
• Developed Packet Switching.

Publications

• Information Flow in Large Communication Nets
• Honors and awards
• Awarded the National Medal of Science on September 29, 2008.

Website

• Leonard Kleinrock's homepage

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Tim Berners-Lee

Tim Berners-Lee


Name: Tim Berners-Lee

Born: June 8, 1955 in London, England

Computer related contributions

• Invented the World Wide Web (WWW).
• Proposed hypertext.
• Created the first website.
• Founded the World Wide Web Consortium.

Publications

• The World Wide Web
• Weaving the Web
• World-Wide Web: Information Universe

Honors and awards

• In 2017, Berners-Lee received the Turing Award, the most prestigious honor in computer science, with a $1 million prize contributed by Google.
• One of only six members of the World Wide Web Hall of Fame.
• Won the Kilby Foundation's "Young Innovator of the Year" Award.
• Received also the Software System Award from the Association for Computing Machinery.
• Awarded with an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex.
• Time Magazine named Berners-Lee one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century.
• Awarded an honorary degree from The Open University as Doctor of the University.
• Elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• Received the Computer History Museum's Fellow Award, for his seminal contributions to the development of the World Wide Web.
• Named as the first recipient of Finland's Millennium Technology Prize, for inventing the World Wide Web.
• Appointed to the rank of Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (the second-highest class within this Order that entails a knighthood) by Queen Elizabeth II.
• Presented with an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Lancaster University.
• Named Greatest Briton of 2004.
• Received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award.
• Received the Order of Merit, becoming one of only 24 living members entitled to hold the honour, and to use the post-nominals "O.M." after their name.
• Awarded the 2008 IEEE/RSE Wolfson James Clerk Maxwell Award, for "conceiving and further developing the World Wide Web".
• Awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Manchester.
• Awarded an honorary doctorate by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.
• Elected member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.
• Received the Webby Award for Lifetime Achievement.
• Awarded an honorary doctorate by the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
• One of the first three recipients of the Mikhail Gorbachev award for "The Man Who Changed the World".
• Awarded with an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Harvard University.
• Inducted into IEEE Intelligent Systems' AI's Hall of Fame for the "significant contributions to the field of AI and intelligent systems".
• Inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society.

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Computer inventors and pioneers

Computer inventors and pioneers

This section of Learn Computer has been designed as a location to find a basic overview of individuals who have contributed significantly to areas that relate to computers. Here you can find an individuals date of birth, date of death if applicable, a small biography, and information about what contributions the individual has made.

Alphabetical listing
Click on the one of the below letters that corresponds to the first or last name of the computer pioneer you are trying to find. For example, if you were trying to find Bill Gates, you would click "B" in the below chart.





 
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Below is a list of pioneers broken into their respected categories. For example, clicking on Female computer pioneers displays all females who have helped develop and contribute to the computer industry.

African American computer pioneers
Analyst
CEO
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Coined
Computer Engineers
Computer programmers
Computer Scientist
Convict
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Editor
Entrepreneur
Father's of computing
Female computer pioneers
Founder
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Manager
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Personality
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Pioneers on Twitter
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Top 10 visited computer pioneers

• Tim Berners-Lee
• Leonard Kleinrock
• Charles Babbage
• Konrad Zuse
• Steve Wozniak
• Steve Jobs
• Ada Lovelace
• John Atanasoff
• Alan Turing
• Bill Gates

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