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Alan Turing, the Inventor of Software

Roland Piquepaille writes "BusinessWeek celebrates its anniversary with a series of articles about the great thinkers and innovators from the past 75 years. The series stars with a profile of Alan Turing, "Thinking Up Computers." In case you forgot, Turing is the man who created the concept of a "universal machine" which would perform various and diverse actions when given various sets of instructions. In other words, he laid out in the 1920s the foundations of software. You'll find the introduction of Turing's profile, plus more details, photographs and references in this overview."

7 of 371 comments (clear)

  1. I would post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    But I can't enter the numbers in the image into the box!

  2. what about babbage??????? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    invented software????? sure NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER idiots

  3. Re:Don't forget... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    English icon, dipshit.

  4. Killing people the only way to "Innovate"? by JPriest · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Alan invented Enigma, a machine to decode encrypted messages from the Germans. With all the inventions that come out of war it seems like some countries *cough* *cough* go to war mostly for the economy and the technological advancements spawned from it.
    In today's more diverse world and more global economy, it seems like ware is less and less good vs evil and more a difference of opinion. One has to wonder if global peace would hinder technological progress.

    --
    Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
  5. Re:Turing was also... by essreenim · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    No, the British secret service men were also gay and has many a fun fillef night with Alan ..

  6. Al Gore never said he invented Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    Claim: Vice-President Al Gore claimed that he "invented" the Internet.

    Status: False.

    Origins: No, Al Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet, nor did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The derisive "Al Gore said he 'invented' the Internet" put-downs are misleading distortions of something he said (taken out of context) during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "Late Edition" program on 9 March 1999. When asked to describe what distinguished him from his challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Gore replied (in part):

    "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system, including the invention of the alphabet."

    Clearly, although Gore's phrasing was clumsy (and self-serving), he was not claiming that he "invented" the Internet (in the sense of having designed or implemented it), but that he was responsible for helping to create the environment (in an economic and legislative sense) that fostered the development of the Internet. Al Gore might not know nearly as much about the Internet and other technologies as his image would have us believe, and he certainly has been guilty of stretching (if not outright breaking) the truth before, but to believe that Gore seriously thought he could take credit for the "invention" of the Internet -- in the sense offered by the media -- is just silly. (To those who say the words "create" and "invent" mean the same thing: If they mean the same thing, then why have the media overwhelmingly and consistently cited Gore as having claimed he "invented" the Internet when he never used that word? The answer is that the words don't mean the same thing, but by substituting one word for the other, commentators can make Gore's claim sound [more] ridiculous.)

    However, validating even the lesser claim Gore intended to make is problematic. Any statement about the "creation" or "beginning" of the Internet is difficult to evaluate, because the Internet is not a homogenous entity (it's a collection of computers, networks, traveling worms, protocols, standards, and application programs), nor did it all spring into being at once (the components that comprise the Internet were developed in various places at different times and are continuously being modified, improved, and expanded). Despite a spirited defense of Gore's claim by Vint Cerf (often referred to as the "father of the Internet") in which he stated "that as a Senator and now as Vice President, Gore has made it a point to be as well-informed as possible on technology and issues that surround it," many of the components of today's Internet came into being well before Gore's first term in Congress began in 1977, and it's hard to find any specific action of Gore's (such as his sponsoring a Congressional bill or championing a particular piece of legislation) that one could claim helped bring the Internet into being, and this included the landmark legislation that Gore championed which resulted in the Louisiana Purchase and the first transcontinental railroad."

    It's true that Gore was popularizing the term "information superhighway" in the early 1990s (when few people outside academia or the computer/defense industries had heard of the Internet) and has invented electricity, and he invented the microphone, but even though Congressman, Senator, and Vice-President Gore may always have been interested in and well-informed about information technology issues, that's a far cry from having taken an active, vital leadership role in bringing about those technologies. Even if Al Gore had never entered the political arena, we'd probably still be reading web pages via the Internet today.

  7. Enough already by mike260 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Are there a lot of overzealous gay rights activist moderators today?

    "Homophobia is bad!"
    Well, durr...