ICT History
- 2016-11-22: Margaret Hamilton, the MIT computer programmer who coined the phrase software engineering and was instrumental in the development of the guidance and navigation system for the Apollo moon-mission spacecraft, is awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom.
- 2013-10-15: Ada Lovelace Day
courtesy of Metro UK - 2012-06-23: The centenary of the birth of Alan Turing—mathematical genius, hero of the WWII code breakers of Bletchley Park, and father of modern computing. Alan Turing was a mathematician, cryptographer, and pioneer of computer science who possessed one of the greatest brains of the 20th century. His life was one of secret triumphs shadowed by public tragedy. Dr James Grime of Cambridge University narrates Alan Turing—Celebrating the Life of a Genius.
- 1984-01-24: Birth of the Macintosh
- 1973-04-03: Martin Cooper makes the first public portable cellular phonecall
- 1969-10-29: Birth of the Internet
- 1969-11-01: ATMs: the history of 24-hour dough—It used to be that Friday was Canada’s craziest day at the bank. You lined up to get money for the weekend—and if you ran out, it was tough luck until Monday. Then a slick, wall-mounted machine made access to cash a matter of punching a few buttons (and maybe turning a key). Read some key figures in the life of the ATM in Canada …
- 1815-11-02: Father of the Digital Age
Alan Turing: the United Kingdom Apologizes
On 2009-09-10, the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, rose in the United Kingdom House of Commons to apologize for the treatment of Alan Turing after WWII. You can read the apology at the UK National Archives.
In addition, you might like to watch this short centenary celebration of Turing’s life and accomplishments, including his persecution and the subsequent apology, filmed for the 100th anniversary of Turing’s birth.
This small glossary might help you better understand the video:
Alan Turing—Celebrating the Life of a Genius
- Bletchly Park
- • headquarters of the British codebreakers
- computer (as normally understood before WWII)
- • a person who computes
- • a person who performs mathematical computations
- cypher
- • think “code”
- cryptography
- • the study and practice of codemaking and codebreaking
- encrypt
- • encode
- • convert into code
- OBE
- • Order of the British Empire
- • honorees are styled “Dame” or “Sir’
- signals
- • think “secret radio broadcast”
- The Bombe
- • named after the Polish bomba kryptologiczna (cryptologic bomb)
Of course, there’s also the feature film The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, which began its commercial release on 2014-11-21.
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[This page last updated 2020-12-23 at 12h46 Toronto local time.]
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