Thoughts on early computing history



When you look back at the major milestones in computing history, we moved quickly. We went from abstract models of computing to stored-program computers in a
decade or less. It was truly amazing.

1903 - Alonzo Church was born in Washington, D.C. (USA)
1928 - The Entscheidungsproblem decision problem was proposed by David Hilbert
1936 - Church publishes "An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary Number Theory", Church's Thesis [1]. It is a paper on untyped lambda calculus. American Journal of Mathematics, Volume 58, No. 2. (Apr., 1936)
1936 - Alan Turning publishes a paper on an abstract machine , On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem' Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Series 2, 42 (1936-37). He proposed the concept of the stored-program.
1936 - 1938 - Alan Turing studies under Alonzo Church
1937 - John von Neumann recommends Alan Turing for Fellowship at Princeton.
1938 - Alan Turing receives Ph.D from Princeton
1946 - Alan Turing presents a paper on the stored-program computer (Automatic Computing Engine).
1937+ - John von Neumann gains knowledge from Alan Turing's papers but Turing was not directly related to the development of ENIAC.
1943 - 1946 - Creation of ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer). Note: ENIAC was not a stored-program computer.
1944 - John von Neumann became involved with ENIAC
1945 - John von Neumann publishes paper on Electronic Discreet Variable Computer (EDVAC)
1948 - Manchester Mark I developed at Manchester University, first stored-program computer
1949-1960 - Early stored computers were created, some of the based on von Neumann architecture.
1938 - Donald Knuth was born
1957 - Donald Knuth had access to a computer. "I saw my first computer in 1957, which is pretty late in the history game as far as computers are concerned. There were about 2000 programmers in the entire world"
1963 - Donald Knuth began work on the Art of Computer Programming.
1973 - C programming language appeared.

Note: I presented milestones but some of these events were not directly related.

Image of Alan Turing: "It is believed that the use of this image may qualify as fair use under United States copyright law. Other use of this image, on Wikipedia or elsewhere, may be copyright infringement"

[1] "INTRODUCTION Alonzo Church: Life and Work"

--- Berlin Brown

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