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http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/general/278242/top-10-most-important-people-in-the-history-ofcomputers
Regardless of the fact that his computer was never built while he was alive, Babbage opened the
floodgates to a new world of computing machines. Without him, we may not have the modern
computers we have today.
9. Alan Turing (23 June 1912 - 7 June 1954)
Alan Turing was principally a mathematician, most famous for helping break the German's
Enigma code during World War II at Bletchley Park. It was here, though, that Turing turned to
computers to help break codes faster, saving millions of lives in the process and shortening the
length of the war.
The initial machine Turing created was the Bombe: an electromechanical device devised to help
the code-breakers device the key of the day the German's were
using on their Enigma machines. Using a menu provided by the
codebreaking team from a crib (a selection of plaintext that
corresponded to ciphertext), the Bombe operators could quickly set
up the machine and let it calculate possible Enigma settings, which
could then be verified by hand. The design on the Bombe was
enhanced by Gordon Welchman, and the rest, as they say, is
history.
After the war Turing was an influential figure and came up with the
Turing Test: a method by which to test artificial intelligence.
Prosecuted for homesexual acts, Turing committed suicide in 1954,
and we'll never know the full extent of where his fierce intellect
could have led us.
8. Tommy Flowers
Another member of the Bletchley Park World War II team, Tommy Flowers was instrumental in
building the world's first electronic computer: Colossus. The principle purpose of the machine
was to break the Lorenz Cipher, used by high-level Germans, including Adolf Hitler.
Built using valves, the computer was five times faster and more flexible than its predecessor,
Heath Robinson. Colossus was the first programmable, digital,
computer and revolutionary at the time. It's success in code breaking
was demonstrated when Eisenhower was handed a decrypt showing
that Hitler wasn't going to move more troops into Normandy and the
D-Day landings stood a high-chance of success.
After the war Flowers' achievements went largely overlooked until
the '70s, due to the secret nature of the work. However, he continued
to have a profound impact at the General Post Office, helping to
design the all-electronic telephone exchange.
original Macintosh (1984) that changed things: it was the first computer to have a graphical user
interface and mouse rather than a command line interface.
The Macintosh really highlights Jobs' ability to take existing technology and improve it, making
it desirable. In the case of this computer the graphical user interface
had been developed by Xerox and the mouse by Douglas Engelbart;
it was Apple that made them successful.
In 1985 Jobs was relieved of his duties as head of the Macintosh
and Apple's fames and fortunes took a nosedive. It wasn't until Jobs
was brought back on board in 1996, after Apple bought his NeXT
Computer company that Apple's fortunes turned round and it started
to make a profit.
Since his return, Apple has produced the iPod, the most popular MP3 player in the world, the
iPhone, which has sparked an entirely-new industry with Apps and the iPad. With OS X and the
move to Intel hardware, Apple is a leading company in the personal computer market.
His influence outside of the computer industry has been immense, too, with his Pixar company
(later acquired by Disney) kick-starting computer-generated films with the incredibly Toy Story.
4. Philip Don Estridge (23 June 1937 - 2 August 1985)
Philip Don Estridge, known as Don Estridge, led the development of the IBM Personal
Computer (PC), arguably the most important computer in the history of computers. It's the
creation of this computer that's led to the types of computer that we have today.
The IBM PC was designed as a way for the company to get into the small computer market,
dominated at the time by Commodore, Atari and Apple. The
revolutionary part about the computer was that it was designed by
using off-the-shelf parts available from OEMs, rather than creating
brand-new technology. This let IBM create the PC in less than a
year and keep prices down to affordable levels.
Even more surprising for the time was that IBM decided to use an
open architecture, so that other manufacturers could produce and
sell peripherals without having to purchase a license. As we all
know, this open architecture also meant that other companies could
start creating their own IBM-compatible computers. It's this
architecture that exists today and even Apple has changed to
embrace it when it switched to using Intel processors in its Mac
computers.
The IBM PC also opened up the door for Intel's and Microsoft's success. Without Don Estridge
and IBM the world would be a very different place.