A HISTORY OF COMPUTING
Prof. Ömer Eğecioğlu Department of Computer Science, University of California, Santa Barbara Visiting Sabancı University
This is the story of some of the prominent people and ideas that paved the way for today's computers. Computing has a long history. The concepts on which computers are based have an even longer history. Modernday computers are built upon the ideas developed over the centuries by numerous thinkers and mathematicians. We can view computers as both abstract logical machines and physical realizations of such machines. The same logic underlies room-sized computers, mainframes, PCs, PDAs, etc. The ideas that led to these developments did not arise from nowhere in the 1940s. Many individuals contributed to this story, which is a testament to the value of vision and abstract thought. Ideas have consequences! In this expository talk I will discuss several of the key individuals and their contributions to logic and computing that paved the way for the "universal mac hines" of today and tomorrow. These scientists include Gottfried Leibniz George Boole Gottlob Frege Georg Cantor David Hilbert Kurt Gödel Alan Turing 1646-1716 1815-1864 1848-1925 1845-1918 1862-1943 1906-1978 1912-1954