These Are Your Numbers
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The Enchantress Of Numbers: Ada Lovelace
4It may surprise you to know that the world’s first computer programmer did not actually own a computer. In fact, she lived and died almost a century before the first computer was even built. The first person to write a computer program was none other than Ada, Countess of Lovelace, a remarkable mathematician and writer…
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The Godfather Of HAL 9000 And The Useless Machine: Marvin Minsky
The computing world mourned the loss of a legend last week when AI visionary and inventor Marvin Minsky passed away. Many technical communities have paid their respects over the last week, from AI researchers and roboticists to hackers and supporters of open source methodology.
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Why A Computer Mouse Is Called A Mouse: Douglas Engelbart
Why is a mouse called a mouse? For that matter, who came up with the idea of a computer mouse — the idea may seem like common sense these days, but it would have taken a creative mind to come up with the initial concept. Meet early computer engineer, Douglas Engelbart, for whom his famous…
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The Hacker Who Inspired Apple: John ‘Captain Crunch’ Draper
In the spirit of Lifehacker’s evil week, this week’s profile focuses on a programmer who — while not actually evil in any sense of the word — operated on the wrong side of the law more often than not. Notable both for being an iconic figure in the hacking community and for working with Apple’s…