Introduction
Nowadays, technology is an essential aspect of daily life, and few average individuals are curious about the origins of computers. Behind the innovations are people who put a specific meaning into their developments, which Walter Isaacson refers to in his book The Innovators. Understanding technology, like any other innovation, requires a historical retrospective since this is how we can trace its evolution and learn more about the functioning of machines.
Discussion
The woman who revolutionized the computer industry and laid the foundation for modern computing is known as Grace Hopper. She was the one who enabled computers to start recognizing language in addition to codes, and Hopper implied it in Mark I. Instead of requiring a hardware or cable reconfiguration, The Harvard Mark I could swap jobs by just receiving new instructions through the punched paper tape (Isaacson, 2015). Grace Hopper was also the one who shared her knowledge with society and made a contribution to the autonomy of machine functioning.
As well as Hopper, Jean Jennings, who was among those who developed the ENIAC, was involved in military operations. The ENIAC women were developing the use of subroutines at the same time Hopper was doing so at Harvard. They were upset that the logical circuits lacked sufficient processing power to compute some trajectories (Isaacson, 2015). The modulation, which allowed for the repetition of selected code segments, was Jenn Jennings’ most remarkable accomplishment and contributed to the advancement of Grace Hopper. Such a development considerably increased the computer’s speed.
John von Neumann, as Grace Hopper, promoted the idea that the humanities and the technical sciences should be complementary. They were acquainted and collaborated on Mark I and John’s mission to discover a machine with a high processor speed. He was also an ENIAC consultant and was familiar with Jean Jennings’ work. The construction and logical operation of the hypothetical stored-program computer were detailed by von Neumann, who also explained why it was “tempting to conceive the entire memory as one organ” (Isaacson, 2015). The three researchers collaborated extensively on computer-related projects, except that Hopper focused on computer languages, Jean on calculating trajectory, and Newman on quantum mechanics.
Like the software developers mentioned above, William Shockley, whose accomplishments are related to transistors, was a well-rounded man who valued humanities. Like a choreographer can envision a dance, Shockley could imagine how quantum theory explained the movement of electrons. His coworkers claimed that he could detect the electrons in semiconducting materials (Isaacson, 2015). The explorer collaborated with Walter Brattain, who frequently expressed skepticism about Shockley’s theories, since the war began, history did not prove who was right.
During the war, they were all hired by their nation to work for its demands, but this only served to make transistors more prevalent. Also involved in the research was John Bardeen, a leading specialist in applying quantum theory to the study of electricity. He was renowned for working well with theorists and experimentalists (Isaacson, 2015). Consequently, these scientists developed the bipolar transistor at Bell Labs, which was the primary component in creating integrated circuits. John Bardeen worked on the study of solids, whereas Shockley focused on semiconductors, a more specific subject.
Conclusion
To sum up, the history of how software and the transistor were developed shows that everything depends on people and their capacity for interaction. The war also had a stimulating effect on these scientists, which on the one hand, put a stop to regular research but, on the other, sped up the development of machines. Scientists like Grace Hooper, Jean Jennings, John Von Neumann, John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain produced significant discoveries, but their impact grew when they were stacked together.
Reference
Isaacson, W. (2015). The innovators: How a group of hackers, Geniuses, and geeks created the Digital Revolution. Simon & Schuster.