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"Tech Heroes" From Ada Lovelace to Jamie Z
An anonymous reader writes "The Web 2.0 Journal has launched a search for what it calls "the all-time heroes of i-Technology" (its own shorthand for 'Internet technologies'), reaching as far back as to The Countess of Lovelace, though whether or not Ada Lovelace is truly the first programmer is not discussed. As an exercise in reminding ourselves whose shoulders we are standing on when hurtlng towards the 21st-century, richer Web it's not a bad start. Naturally there are sins of omission..."
a Web 2 "journal" that doesn't even validate and uses tables for presentation (not to mention 20+adverts per page) spread over 18 pages
if that's what web 2 is all about i'm dreading Web 3
A journal with that name just has to be a joke. Yes I did try to read the fucking article, but it was obscured by a large photograph of a bridge. I guess this was an advert.
Well I'm glad to see this web 2.0 is so user friendly.
Douglas Engelbart, the true father of desktop computing. At a time when computers were used merely for data processes, he envisioned they could be used in the everyday life.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the list is missing John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, the guys who invented the transistor (With their manager, William Shockley, they won the Nobel prize in physics for it).
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Who Are The All-Time Heroes of i-Technology?
I wonder how many people, as I did, found themselves thrown into confusion by the death last week of Jean Ichbiah (pictured below), inventor of Ada.
Learning that the inventor of a computer programming language is already old enough to have lived 66 years (Ichbiah was 66 when he succumbed to brain cancer) is a little like learning that your 11-year-old daughter has grown up and left home or that the first car you ever bought no longer is legal because it runs on gasoline in an age where all automobiles must run on water. How can something as novel, as new, as a computing language possibly already be so old-fangled that an early practitioner like Ichbiah can already no longer be with us?
The thought was so disquieting that it took me immediately back to the last time I wrote about Ichbiah, and indeed about Ada Lovelace for whom his language was named. It was in the context of my quest a couple of years ago to identify the Top Twenty Software People in the World.
It began as an innocent enough exercise, inadvertently kick-started by Tim Bray writing in his popular "Ongoing" blog about how he rated Google's Adam Bosworth as "probably one of the top 20 software people in the world." Already famous for Quattro Pro, Microsoft Access, and Internet Explorer 4 even before he joined BEA as VP of engineering in 2001, when BEA bought Crossgain, the company he'd by then cofounded after leaving Microsoft, Bosworth went on to become BEA's chief architect before leaving to join Google. Definitely a shoo-in for the Top Twenty then. But the question naturally arose - or at least it did in my mind - who are the other 19?
I knew that it would not be easy to answer, and not because there are too few candidates but because there are too many. The names of today's leading i-technologists - whose collective smarts Internet technologies rely on for their unceasing innovation and ingenuity - trip off most people's tongues in a heartbeat: just think of Sergey Brin, Bill Joy, Linus Torvalds, Tim Berners-Lee, James Gosling, Anders Hejlsberg, Don Box, Nathan Myhrvold, W. Daniel Hillis, Mitch Kapor... all clear members of the "technorati" or "digerati" - call them what you will - the undisputed aristocrats of the online world.
But what about those who came before, the precursors of the current crop of talent? I wrote at the time:
"Can a list of the Top 20 i-Technologists possibly be compiled that doesn't cause the online equivalent of fistfights when published? Obviously not. But that shouldn't deter us from trying."
My inbox soon began to throb with the deluge of nominations, and within days I was able to list forty mind-bogglingly gifted candidates, as follows (click on the name for a brief description of the individual concerned):
* Tim Berners-Lee: "Father of the World Wide Web" and expectant father of the Semantic Web
* Joshua Bloch: Formerly at Sun, where he helped architect Java's core platform; now at Google
* Grady Booch: One of the original developers of the Unified Modeling Language
* Adam Bosworth: Famous for Quattro Pro, Microsoft Access, and IE4; then BEA, now Google
* Don Box: Coauthor of SOAP
* Stewart Brand: Cofounder in 1984 of the WELL bulletin board
* Tim Bray: One of the prime movers of XML, now with Sun
* Dan Bricklin: Co-creator (with Bob Frankston) of VisiCalc, the first PC spreadsheet
* Larry Brilliant: Cofounder in 1984 of the WELL bulletin board
He's an absolutely huge omission from the list.
If you're unaware, he wrote a memo in 1945 titled 'As we may think' which laid down a lot of seminal ideas about information, computing devices (the Memex) and the way in which we interact with it - specifically the concept of hypertext.
If you haven't already read his memo, give it a shot. Along with Alvin Toffler's book 'Future Shock', this changed the way I view technology for ever... oh, stick Alvin Toffler on the list too, Bill Gates for 'commoditising' the PC, Gordon Moore, pretty much anyone who ever worked at Xerox PARC and the guy who invented the MP3 codec. They're all important to why we're sat here today.
It's apt... The first mention was the specification, the second was the implementation body. Welcome to the world of Ada :)
Paul (Ex Ada coder)
Paul Leader
"In 1924 and 28, Nyquist and Hartley published the limits to communication over a noisy channel. In 1949, Shannon and Weaver published a book on the same subject. Shannon got the credit for Nyquists' and Hartley's work. He also claimed the 34 year old sampling theorem as his own work.
H. Nyquist, "Certain Factors Affecting Telegraph Speed," Bell Systems Tech. Jour., vol. 3, April 1924, p. 324
H. Nyquist, "Certain Topics in Telegraph Transmission Theory," A.I.E.E. Trans., vol. 47, April 1828, p. 617
R. V. L. Hartley, "The Transmission of Information"Bell Systems Tech. Jour., vol. 7, July 1928, pp. 535-564"
http://www.analog-rf.com/mixer.shtml
I'd say Shannon is a candidate for someone who got credit that belonged to someone else.
Lamarr was in Hollywood in 1937.
U.S. Patent Number 2,292,387, August 11th, 1942, [was awarded to Hedy Lamarr] under the name 'Hedy Keisler Markey' (her married name) and George Antheil, for a 'Secret Communications System.' Nomination for the EFF Pioneer award
Lamarr's first husband was an independent munitions maker interested in control systems whose European properties were confiscated by the Reich in 1938. George Antheil, an avant-garde composer interested in the related problem of synchronizing non-traditional "instruments" in concert performance. Advanced Weaponry of the Stars
Hitler wanted to win by bluff and before the war started, invited public figures from England and the US to see how invincible his military was.
Hitler was always alert to the propaganda value of massive displays of troops and guns and planes.
But he was not such a fool as to prematurely expose the secret technologies of jet propulsion, radar, guided missiles, the Enigma, etc., that, in the end, might prove decisive.
I'd include Steve Wozniak. He was the one who designed the Apple. The Apple II and The Trash-80 were the real home computers available for the masses. The earlier computers where you had to get them from Heathkit or toggle in your boot loader, didn't quite make it in the home and the business.
Also I would add Jonathan Rotenberg. He founded the Boston computer Society in 1977. The BCS served as a incubator for new products and companies. Many of the large computer companies made presentations and announcements to the BCS. Several companies used groups of people at the BCS as source for focus groups and and source for beta groups (back in the days where they didn't consider customers their alpha testers).
Fight Spammers!
He was not the father of the modern computer at all. Dr Tommy Flowers was
It appears they worked together, so it is hard to say. Turing used electro-mechanical relays, and Flowers replaced the designs with vacuum tubes because of his experience in phone systems. Thus, he may have simply "upgraded" the switches to faster technology rather than reinvent the entire computer design itself.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't know James Long, Ph.D, but he seems to have an ax to grind. Most people who met Hedy Lamarr would verify she was extremely intelligent. Her husband in the early 30's, Fritz Mandal, was an engineer and producer of aircraft, artilery, and early weapons guidance. It would appear Hedy learned a thing or two during their time together.
There are many accounts of Lamarr explaining the process by which she and George Antheil invented the concept of frequency hopping. At the outbreak of WWII Hedy had in idea for a torpedo guidance system. Antheil suggested a way to sync the necessary systems together using a roll of punched paper (as in a player piano)