People and Ideas
Broad surveys of computing history, early software and the people behind the field.
Start here · Essential guide
A broad, carefully hedged tour of computing from tally marks and the abacus through mechanical calculators, electronic machines, personal devices and the web.
Before electronic machines, a computer was a person. This article looks at human computers, printed tables and the mechanical aids that came before electronics.
A survey of the machines of the 1930s and 1940s, and why the answer to which was the first computer depends entirely on how you define the word.
What counts as the first program? This article follows early software from Lovelace's notes and punched-card control to the stored programs of the late 1940s.
A cautious look at quantum, neuromorphic, optical and other research directions in computing, treated as open questions, with lessons from past predictions.
How computer science grew from 1930s logic and mathematics into a university discipline, with its own departments, journals and curricula by the 1960s.
An even-handed account of Alan Turing's theoretical work, his wartime codebreaking role and his postwar ideas, placed among the many people who shaped computing.
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