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HISTORY OF COMPUTING & PROGRAMMING

This collection of information is curated for spanitis by the author of "The Programmer's Odyssey" Garth Eaglesfield and covers a wide and varied range of historical computer technology topics. Please email garth@spanitis.com to recommend additional content for the collection.

Programming

  • How Aristotle paved the way for computer logic (Atlantic monthly article)

  • In 1843 Ada Lovelace became the first computer programmer (New Yorker article)

  • Calculating Ada a BBC documentary on Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage

  • How modern symbolic logic replaced Aristotelian logic

  • Meet Admiral Grace Hopper, the mother (yes, mother!) of the COBOL programming language

  • The CIS COBOL portable compiler technology clearly explained by Peter Brown

  • An infogram summarising the history of programming

  • Working as a programmer in the 1970s

  • In 1951 Mary Coombs became the first female commercial programmer

Software
Hardware, Networks, Videos

Background
  • What If He Is Right? Tom Wolfe's legendary 1965 'new journalism' article about Marshal Mcluhan and the furore he was causing with his predictions about the social and cultural effects of technology

  • The heyday of UK computing in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s

  • UK women in computing

  • What is Information? Professor Jim Al-Khalili thinks it's a basic component of the universe - like energy

Computer Museums

The links below will lead you to the major computer technology museum web sites in the UK and the US and in some cases to 3D views of their contents

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