The Innovators

The Innovators walks you through the history of the digital revolution, showing how it was a combined effort of many creative minds over decades, that enabled us to go from huge, clunky machines to the fast, globally connected devices in your pocket today.

We all know computers are somehow rooted in mathematics, but few people know just how much. In the early 1800s, Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, furiously studied both mathematics and art, as she had a burning passion for one and felt the other helped discipline herself.

However, her creative genius only really came to fruition when she started attending English polymath Charles Babbage’s weekly salons about science and technology, where great minds came together. Star of the show was Babbage’s Difference engine, a mechanical machine that could calculate polynomial functions (but would take forever to build).

Lovelace later used her sense for poetry and mathematical ability to expand upon an improved version of the Difference engine, the Analytical engine. This machine would be able to process different problems and even switch between what to solve on its own. When translating a transcript of Babbage’s description, Lovelace added her own notes, which ended up being twice as long, much more valuable and would describe the first computer program.

Essentially, she described computers as we know them, versatile general-purpose machines, in 1843.

You may be aware that in the early days of software, a fierce competition between Apple and Microsoft took place. Yet, both of them borrowed from a company named Xerox and so really, the first operating systems were a “combined effort.” But not just that, hardware was a group effort too.

The humble beginnings of the personal computer can be traced back to the Homebrew Computer Club, where the hippies that took apart devices in the 60s to understand them, now became hackers in the 70s, who tried to build them. From 1975 onwards, the club met bi-weekly and it’s where tech nerds Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak first learned about the Altair 8800, the first computer hobbyists could use.

Discussion about it at the club was lively, and once orders for $397 went through the roof after a feature on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine, Jobs and Woz knew they were on to something with Apple as well.

Some people are critical connections in any given process, with major responsibility for the eventual outcome. Vannevar Bush is one of those people. The dean of MIT’s School of Engineering, top military science advisor and founder of computer company Raytheon brought the three crucial parties behind the internet together. The National Science Foundation, which brings together experts from various industries, backgrounds and companies for basic research,…