Mechanical Computer Inventors

Charles Babbage was an

English polymath. A mathematician,
philosopher, inventor and mechanical
engineer, Babbage, along with Ada
Lovelace, is best remembered for
originating the concept of a
programmable computer.

Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of

Lovelace was an English mathematician and
writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles
Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose
computer, the Analytical Engine. Her notes on
the engine include what is recognized as the
first algorithm intended to be carried out by a
machine. As a result, she is often regarded as
the first computer programmer.

Creator of Pascals Calculators

Blaise Pascal was a

French mathematician, physicist, inventor,
writer and Christian philosopher. He was a child
prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax
collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest work was in
the natural and applied sciences where he
made important contributions to the study
of fluids, and clarified the concepts
of pressure and vacuum by generalizing the
work of Evangelista Torricelli. Pascal also wrote
in defense of the scientific method. In 1642,
while still a teenager, he started some pioneering work on calculating machines.
After three years of effort and fifty prototypes, he built 20 finished machines
(called Pascal's calculators and later Pascalines) over the following ten
years, establishing him as one of the first two inventors of the mechanical
calculator.

Harold "Hal" Abelson is a Professor

of Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science at MIT, a fellow of the IEEE, and
a founding director of both Creative
Commons[2] and the Free Software
Foundation. Abelson is also a founding
director of Creative Commons and Public Knowledge, and a director of
the Center for Democracy and Technology

Modern Computer Inventor

Alan Mathison Turing was a pioneering

English computer
scientist, mathematician, logician, cryptanal
yst and theoretical biologist. He was highly
influential in the development of theoretical
computer science, providing a formalization
of the concepts of algorithm and
computation with the Turing machine,
which can be considered a model of a
general purpose computer. Turing is widely
considered to be the father of theoretical
computer science and artificial intelligence.