The Fathers of Computing

by Debra Donston; illustrated by Brian Moore

Father of the Programmable Computer: Charles Babbage

In the early 1800s, seeking to remove the high rate of error with human “computers,” Babbage set out to create an engine that would calculate a series of values mechanically. Babbage’s difference and analytical engines were never completed, but their basic architectures are very similar in principle to that of a modern computer.

Father of Computer Science: Alan Turing

Turing’s theoretical Turing Machine-described in 1936-provided a blueprint for what would eventually become the digital computer.

“Father” of Computer Programming: Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper

A true pioneer, Hopper was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I system and developed the first complier for a computer programming language. She was on the team that developed the UNIVAC 1, and she worked on validation software for COBOL. She was also a pioneer in the implementation of standards for testing computer systems and components.

Father of the Microprocessor: Ted Hoff

Employee No. 12 at Intel, Hoff was charged in the late 60s with working on the design for a small calculator that called for 12 different semiconductor-based chips. Hoff came up with the idea of instead developing a chip set with a general-purpose logic device at its core-the beginnings of the microprocessor.

Father of the modern PC: Steve Wozniak

Co-founder of Apple and creator of the Apple I and Apple II computers, Wozniak played a big role in ushering in the personal computer revolution in the late 1970s.

Father of ASCII: Bob Bemer

Bemer contributed to the design of COMTRAN and FLOW-MATIC (the latter of which was created by one of the mothers of computing, Grace Hopper), and in 1960 he served on the committee that designed the ASCII character code set. Bemer contributed several characters that had not been used before by computers.

Father of the Relational Database: Edgar F. Codd

A British computer scientist, Codd made important contributions to the theory of relational databases. While working for IBM, he created the relational model for database management.

Father of the Mouse: Douglas Engelbart

Engelbart was a pioneer in the areas of human-computer interaction, hypertext, networking and GUIs, but he is perhaps best known for inventing the computer mouse (patented in 1970).

Fathers of Silicon Valley: Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard

Hewletts and Packards famous garage is now a historical landmark, but it spawned, among other things, the 200A audio oscillator, an industry and a computer Mecca.

Father of DOS: Gary Kildall

Put very simply, Kildall developed the CP/M operating system, a clone of which, QDOS, was licensed by IBM and became PC-DOS.

Fathers of the Computer Modem: Dennis Hayes and Dale Heatherington

That unmistakable sound of connecting via modem may be recognizable to fewer and fewer people, but the device invented in the 1970s by Hayes and Heatherington fueled the Internet revolution.

Father of E-Mail: Raymond Tomlinson

In 1971, Tomlinson implemented the first e-mail system on different hosts connected to the ARPAnet. He used the @ sign to separate the user from the machine, a convention that’s been in use ever since.

Father of the Laser Printer: Gary Starkweather

Introduced in 1971, the laser printer came into being when Starkweather modified a Xerox copy machine.

Father of the Internet: Vint Cerf

Involved in the early design of the ARPAnet, Cerf played a key role in the creation of the Internet and TCP/IP.

Father of Internet Search: Alan Emtage

When he was a student at McGill University, in 1990, Alan Emtage created Archie, the first tool for searching the Internet (and archive without the ‘v’).

Father of the LAN: Bob Metcalfe

As a researcher at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, Metcalfe developed Ethernet, the thread by which most LANs were connected as they started to spring up in the ’80s.

Father of Networking: Ray Noorda

Noorda set in motion what would become the first widely used network operating system, or NOS: NetWare.

Father of the Web: Tim Berners-Lee

While at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee (you can call him “Sir”) developed a prototype called Enquire, a project based on the concept of hypertext. Hypertext plus the Internet equaled the World Wide Web. He designed and built the first Web browser and editor, as well as the first Web server.

Father of the Spreadsheet: Dan Bricklin

In the 1970s, Bricklin developed the VisiCalc spreadsheet, the first spreadsheet program for personal computers (and, some say, the reason why many people bought a PC in the first place).

Father of Open Source: Richard Stallman

In 1983, software developer Stallman launched the GNU Project, which began the free software movement.

Father of Java: James Gosling

Gosling invented the Java programming language in 1994 and implemented the first Java compiler and virtual machine.

Father of Computer Collaboration: Ray Ozzie

Ozzie, founder of Groove and now with Microsoft, was best known at one time for his role in creating what would become known as Lotus Notes.

Father of the Graphical Web Browser: Marc Andreessen

Andreessen was co-author of the first widely used graphical Web browser, Mosaic, which was released to the public in 1993 and would morph into Netscape Navigator.

Father of the Wiki: Ward Cunningham

Computer programmer Cunningham’s WikiWikiWeb software, implemented in the mid-1990s, was the first wiki.