Talk:History of computing

Article Checklist for "History of computing"

Workgroup category or categories	Computers Workgroup, History Workgroup [Editors asked to check categories]
Article status	Developing article: beyond a stub, but incomplete
Underlinked article?	Yes
Basic cleanup done?	Yes
Checklist last edited by	Pat Palmer 15:23, 23 April 2007 (CDT)

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first draft

I've copied this initial stuff out of Computers into here. It may seem a bit incomplete or awkward for now, but it's essential to reduce the size of the top-level Computer article. Someone please take this and own it!Pat Palmer 15:23, 23 April 2007 (CDT)

I'll assume the helm, lieutenant. Stand down! --Robert W King 15:28, 23 April 2007 (CDT)

Thank you! It's a big job.Pat Palmer 18:47, 23 April 2007 (CDT)

I'm considering blanking the whole article and starting over. Any objection? The wikipedia entry was/is such a mess to sort through.--Robert W King 13:08, 24 April 2007 (CDT)

I am totally re-writing the article with more completeness, so it doesn't look like a long essay. In fact it almost looks like the original wikipedia version came from someone's term paper.--Robert W King 13:55, 24 April 2007 (CDT)

more source material?

There might be some useful source material in this archive.Pat Palmer 18:46, 23 April 2007 (CDT)

suggestions for structure

It might be helpful to cover each previous century separately, and then in 20th century have a section for each decade. Or something.Pat Palmer 18:48, 23 April 2007 (CDT)

brainstormed list of items to include

Please add to this list anyone you think might ought to be included somewhere; we can mark them off once dealt with.Pat Palmer 09:29, 11 May 2007 (CDT)

• Charles Baggage
• Eniac (and its inventors)
• Grace Hopper - compilers
• Edvac - important early machine
• Colossus - important early machine
• DARPA, IETF and RFC's - led to invention of networks
• Alan Turing - key computational theorist
• Turing awards - as important in computing as, say, Nobel is is physics
• John Von Neumann - influential mathematician working on early computers
• Claude Shannon - first associated boolean algebra with hardware switching algebra
• Thomas Edison - for Edison effect, which led to triode, which became vacuum tube switch

I confess, I have been seriously slacking on this article. There's a lot more to be worked in of course, and I'll try to get into it more today and the following week.--Robert W King 09:15, 11 May 2007 (CDT)