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Alan Turing, the Inventor of Software

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-broke-my-turing-machine dept.

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."

3 of 371 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Turing was also... by flyneye · · Score: 0, Redundant

    The English used to cure homosexuality with castration back in those days.bet he was threatened with that too.

    --
    *Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
  2. Wouldn't Babbage Be the First Software Developer? by bbagnall · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Wouldn't Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace be the first developers of software? I know both of them had several programs ready to go once Babbage had his computer completed in the 1800's. Unfortunately funding stopped. However, this is better than Turing ever did, because his Infinite machine was even more theoretical than Babbages.

  3. This story is a troll... by jjsjeff · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Al Gore invented software!

    -J