Free Software :: Computer History

Programming Languages

• Programming Languages (from the Programming Languages section)

Operating Systems & Kernels

• Unix timeline (programmer's manual from 1971)
• Apple
• BSD
• Linux
• The Hurd

People (in chronological order)

1. Blaise Pascal (Inventor of the first mechanical digital calculator. [1623-1662])
2. Luigi Galvani (Discovered the bioelectrogenesis phenomenon, which led to discovery of the electric battery by Volta. [1737-1798])
3. Alessandro Volta (Inventor of the electric battery. [1745-1827])
4. Michael Faraday (Scientist who described many of the theoretical foundations needed for the understanding and usage of electricity. [1791-1867])
5. Charles Babbage (Inventor of the analytical machine. [1791-1871])
6. James Clerk Maxwell (Physicist who described the fundamentals of electricity and magnetism via the Maxwell's Equations. [1831-1979])
7. Alexander Graham Bell (Inventor of the telephone, together with his assistant Thomas A. Watson. [1847-1922])
8. Nikola Tesla (Inventor of the electromechanical motor that uses alternating current to power electronical devices more efficiently. [1856-1943]) (more background)
9. Lee de Forest (Inventor of the audion and the (triode) amplifying vacuum tube. [1873-1961])
10. Albert Einstein (Enigma physicist who developed the universal theory of relativity. [1879-1955])
11. John Logie Baird (Inventor of mechanical television, radar and fiber optics. [1888-1946])
12. Werner Heisenberg (Physicist who discovered the uncertainty principle within quantum mechanics. [1888-1946])
13. John von Neumann (Inventor of the the von Neumann Architecture. [1903-1957])
14. Grace Hopper (Created an english-language driven compiler called Flow-Matic for the Univac computer. The language COBOL was greatly influenced by the new compiler techniques introduced. [1906-1992]) (more background)
15. William Shockley (Inventor of the amplifying semiconductor device, together with Walter Brattain and John Bardeen. [1910-1989])
16. Konrad Zuse (Inventor of the electromechanical binary computer. [1910-1995]) (more background)
17. Alan Turing (Inventor of the Universal Turing Machine. [1912-1954]) (The UTM explained)
18. Edgar Codd (Inventor of the relational database system. [1923])
19. John Backus (Inventor of the first high-level computer programming language, called FORTRAN. [1924])
20. John McCarthy (Principal author of the functional programming language LISP. [1927]) (homepage)
21. Marvin Minsky (Scientist who made many contributions to Artificial Intelligence, cognitive psychology, mathematics, computational linguistics, robotics, and optics. [1927])
22. Brian Kernighan (Principal author, together with Dennis Ritchie, of the C programming language and the Un*x operating system) (interview)
23. Noam Chomsky (Linguist who pioneered linguistic concepts like: the Chomsky hierarchy, Universal Grammar and the Language Acquisition Device. Noam Chomsky is also a vocal opponent of US neo-colonism.) [1928])
24. Edsger Dijkstra (Discovered the shortest subspanning tree algorithm. Helped formalize the computer programming field. [1930-2002])
25. Per Brinch Hansen (Pioneer in the field of parallel programming. Inventor of software monitors and mechanisms for Inter Process Communication, aka IPC.)
26. Doug Engelbart (Head of the Menlo Park research team that invented the mouse input-device and the concept of hypertext.) ("The Demo")
27. Donald Knuth (Algorithm/language/compiler researcher, author of the TeX typesetting system and the MetaFont system, author of 'The Art of Programming' book series. [1938]) (books)
28. Dennis Ritchie (Principal author, together with Brian Kernighan, of the C programming language and the Un*xo perating system. [1941])
29. Jon Postel (Internet technology pioneer. [1943-1998]) (more background)
30. Robert "Bob" Metcalfe (Inventor of the Ethernet, a robust and efficient local area network communication system for computers. [1946])
31. Alexander Stepanov (Principal designer and the original implementor of the C++ Standard Template Library. [1950])
32. Steve Wozniak (Principal Apple PC designer and co-founder of the Apple Computer company (together with Steve Jobs and and Ron Wayne). [1950]) (Woz' homepage) (Apple I tour)
33. Richard Stevens (TCP/IP researcher and author of the "TCP/IP Illustrated" bookserie and several Unix programming books. [1951-1999])
34. Bjarne Stroustrup (Principal designer and the original implementor of the C++ programming language. [1951])
35. Richard Stallman (Founding father of the Free Software movement and principal author of the GNU Compiler Collection and several other important programs. [1953])
36. Guido van Rossum (Principal author of the Python scripting language. [1953])
37. Linus Torvalds (Principal author of the Linux kernel. [1969])
38. Kirk McKusick (part II) (One of the principal authors of the BSD kernel. He has also written several books and given courses on BSD and Un*x in general.)
39. Tim Berners Lee (Inventor of the world wide web based on an HTTP server and an HTML client)
40. Philip Zimmermann (Inventor of the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) cryptography system)
41. Larry Wall (Principal author of the Perl scripting language)
42. Alan Cox (Linux kernel developer)
43. "Gang of Four" (Jim Tsillas, Glenn G. Lai, David Wexelblat, David Dawes. These people were the initial developers of the XFree86 windowing system. Later the following developers also worked on XFree86: Dirk Hohndel, Richard Murphey and Jon Tombs. The following developers worked on the initial Direct Rendering Infrastructure implementation for XFree86 : Jens Owen, Frank LaMonica, Kevin Martin, Daryll Strauss, Brian Paul, Rik Faith, Allen Akin)