Charles_Babbage

Charles Babbage, FRS (26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor, and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer. Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs. A Difference Engine is an automatic, mechanical calculator designed to tabulate polynomial functions. Both logarithmic and trigonometric functions can be approximated by polynomials, so a difference engine can compute many useful sets of numbers. The Analytical Engine incorporated an arithmetical unit, control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops, and integrated memory, making it the first Turing-complete design for a general-purpose computer. The computer language, ADA, was commissioned in 1979 by the United States Department of Defense. Based on the language PASCAL, ADA is a general-purpose language designed to be readable and easily maintained. It is efficient for machines, yet easy to use. It was intended to become a standard language to replace the many specialized computer languages then in use. John von Neumann (December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian American mathematician who made major contributions to a vast range of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, continuous geometry, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis, hydrodynamics (of explosions), and statistics, as well as many other mathematical fields.  * Set theory is the branch of mathematics that studies sets, which are collections of objects. *  functional analysis is the branch of analysis concerned with the study of the vector spaces in which limit processes can be defined. * Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. * Numerical analysis is the study of algorithms that use numerical approximation (as opposed to general symbolic manipulations) for the problems of continuous mathematics (as distinguished from discrete mathematics). UNIVAC was designed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly (designers of the ENIAC). Their company, the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company, was purchased by Sperry-Rand. The UNIVAC handled both numbers and alphabetic characters equally well. The UNIVAC I was unique in that it separated the complex problems of input and output from the actual computation facility. Howard Hathaway Aiken (March 8, 1900 – March 14, 1973) was a pioneer in computing, being the original conceptual designer behind IBM'sHarvard Mark I computer.