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Russian scientists -
computer engineers
and informatics

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Informatics is a very young science compared to mathematics, with which it is closely related. However, it also has its own interesting and complex history. In particular, the history of Russian informatics knows many remarkable names. About some of them, the most striking and significant, we will tell you today. Our Russian scientists, relying on outstanding mathematical knowledge, carried out serious developments in the field of informatics, invented electronic computers, conducted theoretical research, and published scientific papers.

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It so happened that basically all the achievements in the field of informatics and computer technology are associated with the names of foreign researchers, mostly American and English. However, this is not entirely fair.

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In the US and England, they relied on a strong commercial base and well-established supply chains, on industrial standards and a huge class of qualified managers. In our country, which survived a terrible war, every little thing had to be invented from scratch and entire industries created from scratch. Therefore, Soviet achievements are largely based on creative insights, unique technologies and the talent of their creators.

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Alexey Andreevich Lyapunov
Soviet mathematician, one of the founders of cybernetics, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Specialist in the field of the theory of the function of a real variable and mathematical issues of cybernetics.
(1911 - 1973)

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The development of the computer industry in the USSR began in the late 1940s almost simultaneously in two centers: in Kyiv and Moscow. In Kyiv, at the Institute of Electrical Engineering, under the guidance of the scientist Sergei Alekseevich Lebedev, in 1948, a small electronic calculating machine (MESM) began to be created, which later turned out to be the first computer in Europe.

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Sergei Alekseevich Lebedev
The founder of computer technology in the USSR, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1953), Hero of Socialist Labor. In 1945 S.A. Lebedev created the country's first electronic analog computer for solving systems of ordinary differential equations, which are often encountered in problems related to energy.
(1902 - 1974)

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MESM, 1951
Work on the machine was of a research nature and was carried out in order to experimentally verify the principles of building universal digital computers. After the first successes and in order to meet the vast needs in computer technology, it was decided to complete the layout to a full-fledged machine capable of solving real problems. It turned out to be the first computer in continental Europe. It has been successfully used in the nuclear, space, and military industries.

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BESM-6 (large electronic calculating machine), 1967
BESM-6 is a masterpiece of creativity of the team of the Institute of Fine Mechanics and Computer Engineering (ITM and CT) of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the first supercomputer of the second generation.

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BESM-6
The BESM-6 electronic circuits used 60 thousand transistors and 180 thousand semiconductor diodes, its speed reached 1 million operations per second. It was a new generation machine, reliable and easy to operate.

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American ILLIAC-IV
The direct competitor of the BESM-6, the American ILLIAC-IV, was completed later, cost much more and was inferior to the Soviet design in terms of speed.

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Isaac Semenovich Brook
Soviet scientist, mathematician, specialist in the field of electrical engineering and computer technology, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939). I. S. Bruk published more than 100 scientific papers. A scientist of broad erudition, I. S. Brook had the talent of an inventor and experimenter. He received more than 50 copyright certificates for inventions, 16 of them in the last 5 years of his life, being already at an advanced age.
(1902 - 1974)

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Automatic digital computer M-1, 1950
M-1 performed computational operations at a speed of 15-20 op/s and had a memory capacity of 256 numbers. The element base consisted of about 500 electron tubes, as well as several thousand semiconductors, which were first used in the design of a computer. These were captured German rectifiers.

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Mikhail Aleksandrovich Kartsev
An outstanding scientist and engineer, designer of electronic computers of four generations and powerful real-time computing systems, author of fundamental works in computer technology, including arithmetic and architecture of electronic digital machines. Under the leadership of I.S. Brook took part in the development of a small computer of the first generation "M-1". Later he headed the design and manufacture of computers intended for the defense industry (M-2, M-4, etc.).
(1923 – 1983)

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We will only learn about some of the record developments of the Soviet era. Such is the M-10 machine (for missile defense systems) created in the early 1970s under the leadership of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Kartsev, which was faster than the American counterpart Cray-1. The average uptime of the M-10 was 90 hours, which was very high (the Cray-1 could only work 50 hours).

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Viktor Mikhailovich Glushkov
One of the founders of Russian informatics. The main works are devoted to theoretical and applied cybernetics: the theory of digital automata, automation of computer design, the use of cybernetic methods in the national economy. Based on the new principles of computer construction developed by him, the Kyiv, Dnepr-2 and Mir series machines were created, which anticipated many features of personal computers that appeared later.
(1923 – 1982)

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MIR-1 and MIR-2 (Engineering Calculation Machine)
In MIRs, the task was set so that any engineer could write programs in his usual notation and style. The uniqueness of such a computer is evidenced even by the fact that at an exhibition in London in 1967 it was bought by the American company IBM.

The development of ideas about information before the advent of computer science as a science

Remark 1

Informatics as a science was formed in the middle of the 20th century, however, in the first half of it, separate teachings already appeared, the authors of which sought to explore information as a fundamental property of the surrounding world. Original authors worked in Russia and the USSR, leaving a noticeable scientific legacy in this direction.

One of the most prominent theorists of the early 20th century. was Alexander Alexandrovich Bogdanov (1873-1928). Having begun his conscious life as a professional Bolshevik revolutionary, in 1911 he moved away from political practice and focused on the development of a new science of social consciousness - tektology. In his books, revealing the patterns of development of nature and society, he argued that biological and social systems develop on the basis of the principle of balance inherent in objects of inanimate nature. By this, he anticipated the ideas of Norbert Wiener, who considered in his cybernetics complex systems that exist in the process of balancing entropy with internal information.

One of the forerunners of computer science was semiotics - the study of the principles of building languages, in particular programming languages. Before their appearance, the object of study of semiotics was human speech. Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman (1922-1993) was the largest representative of Russian semiotics. Under his leadership, a school for the study of sign systems was created.

Academician Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863 - 1945) made a major contribution to the formation of ideas about the importance of information exchange for humanity as a biological species, who created the doctrine of the noosphere (sphere of knowledge) as a new "superstructure", above the biosphere. One of the main trends in the development of society, he considered the formation of a planetary information system, common for all earthlings, anticipating the idea of ​​the Internet.

Figure 1. V. I. Vernadsky's ideas about the noosphere. Author24 - online exchange of student papers

Ideological contradictions in the development of domestic informatics

After 1917, the development of science in our country, in connection with the established dominance of communist ideology, went along a "special path." This quite often led to lagging behind the advanced ideas that appeared in the West. In particular, after the end of World War II, the USSR got involved in the process of creating electronic computers rather late. In the 1950s, this lag was successfully overcome, but the fruitful ideas of cybernetics, which affirmed the commonality of information processes for living matter, societies and technical systems, did not find a response in Soviet science, and were often criticized. In the Soviet Union, the development of computer technology in the 1940s-1950s. was utilitarian in nature and was aimed at solving the problems of the national economy. Attempts to link the study of information technology with biology and sociology were often considered reactionary.

Figure 2. A critical article on cybernetics in a Soviet journal. m

The reasons for the USSR lagging behind the capitalist countries were also excessive centralization, bureaucratization, and the secrecy of developments in the field of electronic computers. However, by the mid-1950s Soviet scientists, creators of the BESM computer S.A. Lebedev, M.A. Lavrentiev, V.A. Trapeznikov and D.Yu. Panov managed to achieve the publication of diagrams and descriptions of his development, which gave impetus to a wider dissemination of knowledge about the principles of information processing in our country.

Professor Alexander Ivanovich Kuznetsov (1905 - 1988) made a great contribution to overcoming the theoretical backwardness of the USSR in the field of informatics and establishing international contacts in this area. In the 1960s he took an active part in the activities of international organizations that developed the general principles of informatics, popularized knowledge about the principles of obtaining, storing, processing and transmitting information in the Soviet Union.

The formation of modern domestic informatics

Until the mid 1980s. In the USSR, computer science, although it was not an object of popularization, successfully developed in academic circles. Domestic informatics was formed by scientific schools headed by such prominent scientists as:

• Aksel Ivanovich Berg,
• Isaac Semenovich Brook,
• Leonid Vitalievich Kantorovich,
• Sergey Alekseevich Lebedev,
• Alexey Andreevich Lyapunov,
• Andrei Andreevich Markov.

In the field of cybernetics, computational mathematics and programming, such researchers as Mikhail Alexandrovich Gavrilov, Yuri Ivanovich Zhuravlev, Nikolai Andreevich Krinitsky, Vasily Vasilyevich Nalimov, Sergey Vsevolodovich Yablonsky made a significant contribution. In Leningrad since the early 1980s. the Programmer's Seminar worked.

In Novosibirsk, a team of researchers led by Andrei Petrovich Ershov has been developing a methodology for teaching computer science at school since the early 1980s. With the beginning of Perestroika in 1985, the leadership of the CPSU and the government of the USSR, realizing the seriousness of the problem of lagging behind Western countries in information education, adopted a resolution on the mandatory teaching of computer science in secondary schools. After that, A.P. Ershov and his staff made a great contribution to the preparation curriculum and methods of teaching a new subject already at the All-Union level. Their contribution to the creation of methodological institutes for the study and teaching of informatics at the Academy of Sciences is also great.

Figure 3. Logo of the school of programming named after A.P. Ershov. Author24 - online exchange of student papers

Original scientific schools that studied information technologies were formed in Yerevan, Taganrog and other cities of the USSR.

Municipal educational institution

"Krasnogorsk secondary school No. 2"

Section "Informatics"

Research work

Completed by 7th grade students

Moshkov Rail

Levit Kirill

scientific adviser

Romanov K.M.

p. Krasnogorsky

2017

Content:

Chapter 1.

Introduction

Chapter 2

Objective of the project

Project objectives

Research hypothesis

Practical significance of the project

Stages of work on the project

Estimated result

Progress

Chapter 3

Conclusion

Useful Resources

Introduction:

The programmer must have the ability of a first-class mathematician for abstraction and logical thinking, combined with Edison's talent to build anything from zero and one. He must combine the accuracy of an accountant with the insight of an intelligence officer, the fantasy of a writer of detective novels with the sober practicality of an economist. And besides, the programmer must have a taste for teamwork, understand the interests of the user, and much more.

A.P. Ershov

characteristic feature modern society is the active use of computer technology in all spheres of human activity. Beginning programmers always face the same question. What to program? Of course, it is better to start with the most understandable and simple programming language. VBA is one of the easiest programming languages ​​to learn and use today.

VisualBasic6.0 is a visual programming system designed to create object programs. Using this programming language, you can quickly and easily create custom applications. Once you learn how to develop applications for one office program, you can easily create applications for other office programs.

Computer science is a very young, modern and progressive science, and although you can find great mathematicians who lived 2000 years ago and great physicists who lived 300 years ago, all the great computer scientists are our contemporaries, below are some of them.

Now there are a lot of computer scientists in the world. Among them are a huge number of great personalities who left an indelible mark on the development of this wonderful science.

We like computer science lessons. We work at computers, do practical work, tasks in workbooks, learn to program.

We chose this topic not by chance:

We are interested in computer science as a subject and as a science, and therefore we wanted to learn more about the great computer scientists who made a significant contribution to its development.

In our work, we will talk about the great people of Russia who have made a significant contribution to the development of computer science.

From here arose fundamental question :

How to leave a mark in history?

Problem questions:

Which computer scientist left a mark on history?

What contribution did this or that person make to the development of informatics and society?

Age group: 5-7 grades

Duration of work on the project6 2 weeks

The purpose of our work : Learn the basics of programming in the programVisualBasic6.0, thereby increasing their own interest in the study of computer science and motivating schoolchildren of grades 6.7 to study this subject.

We have set ourselves the followingtasks :

Familiarize yourself with controls and basic VBA constructs.

Develop algorithms and write program codes.

Make a project on the topic "Great Informaticians of Great Russia"

Research hypothesis : Creating projects using programming languages ​​helps to increase the cognitive interest of schoolchildren in grades 6.7 in the field of computer science and leads to an improvement in the quality of knowledge.

The practical significance of our project: The materials of our project can be used when conducting computer science lessons, extracurricular activities.

Object of study: Programming systemVBA. Implementation of the finished product.

Stages of work

Definition of the topic of work.

Setting goals and objectives of the project.

Development of the structure of the presentation.

Development of the overall design of the presentation.

Learning the Essential Visual Basic 6.0 Controls

The study of the basic algorithmic constructions, the possibilities of variables and how to work with them.

Writing a program (program code) for slides with programming elements in Visual Basic 6.0.

Debugging of program codes.

Analysis of the application of this project at school.

Estimated result

We assume that the use of such projects will increase the interest of schoolchildren, both in the study of computer science, and increase the number of students who want to engage in project activities.

We decided to apply some programming language controlsVBA:

Togglebuttonis an interface control that has two fixed states (on/off).

Textbox- this is a text box - a field for entering information in a dialog box.

commandbuttonis a control button - an interface element used to activate some event.

In the process of working on the project, we got acquainted with the concept of a variable. In our code, variables store the values ​​of text fields in the computer's RAM.

Progress:

Let us consider the place of computer science in the traditionally established system of sciences (technical, natural, humanitarian, etc.). In particular, this would make it possible to find a place for the general education course in computer science in a number of other academic subjects.

Recall that, according to the definition of A.P. Ershov, informatics is a “fundamental natural science”. Academician B.N. Naumov defined informatics "as a natural science that studies the general properties of information, processes, methods and means of its processing (collection, storage, transformation, movement, issuance)".

We decided to use the Visual Basic 6.0 object-oriented programming system to create this project, since this programming language is more understandable to us, because last year we created the Infoknower Goes to Lesson test project using this programming language. After reviewing a huge amount of material, we settled on these great people:

Sergei Alexandrovich Lebedev. It is this person who is the founder of domestic electronic computing technology. Under his leadership, the first domestic electronic digital computer MESM was created, which is one of the first in the world and in Europe.

We became interested in what changes have occurred since the creation of this machine to the present, and only 60 years have passed, because February 14 is not only a holiday for lovers, but also a significant date in the history of the development of computer technology, since on this day In 1946, the first electronic computer was presented to the general public -ENIACI

The first Soviet electronic computer MESM was put into operation on December 25, 1951.
The main parameters of the first Soviet computer:

Performed operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, shift, comparison with sign, comparison by absolute value, transfer of control, transfer of numbers from a magnetic drum, addition of commands. The speed of work is about 3000 operations per minute. Initial data input - from punched cards or by means of a set of codes on a plug-in switch. The area of ​​the room is 60 square meters. The number of electronic tubes-triodes is about 3500, diodes 2500. Power consumption - 25 kW.

The main hopes in the coming years in the field of information technology are associated with optical (photonic) computers. The idea of ​​optical (photonic) computing - calculations performed using photons that are generated by lasers or diodes - has a fairly long history. The advantages are obvious: using photons (moving with it is possible to achieve incomparably higher signal transfer rates than using electrons (as in today's computers).

Computers of the future are planned to be endowed with elements of advanced artificial intelligence. Non-traditional branches of mathematics, such as fuzzy set theory and fuzzy logic, as well as possibility theory and probability theory, are increasingly being used to solve artificial intelligence problems. We think that in the near future we will figure out what these theories are, while this is all incomprehensible to us, but interesting.

Mikhail Romanovich Shura-Bura. One of the patriarchs of domestic programming. In the mid-1950s, the programming department, headed by Shura-Bura, was involved in calculating the trajectories of artificial earth satellites; in 1963, one of the translators from the ALGOL-60 language for the M-20 was created, followed by programming systems for BESM-6 and other computers.

We became interested in how many satellites of the Earth were in the 60s, and how many of them have become at the present time, which satellites are planned to be launched in the near future. Here's what we found:

After ground tests, the first satellite was taken to the spaceport on October 4, 1957. At 22:28 Moscow time, the rocket with the world's first artificial Earth satellite launched, opening the way for mankind into outer space.

Exactly a month later, on November 3, 1957, the second artificial Earth satellite in history was launched into orbit, on board of which, in a cabin equipped with everything necessary for life, there was a dog Laika.

The third Soviet artificial Earth satellite was launched on May 15, 1958.

16,800 artificial objects fly over our heads, including 6,000 satellites, the rest are considered space debris - these are boosters and debris. There are fewer active devices - about 850.

Since the launch of the first artificial satellite in 1957 to January 1, 2008, about 4,600 launches have been made - this is about 6,000 satellites. 400 of them are outside the earth's orbit. Of the remaining 5,600, about 800 are working. Communication with the rest has been lost. Plus a huge amount of all sorts of fragments and remains - from screwdrivers lost in orbit to fuel tanks. The scale is amazing. This is one of the global problems of all mankind, while there are no methods and solutions for collecting space debris.

Space satellites of the future in balloons

The launch of Bloostar satellites will be carried out directly from the stratosphere, where payloads will be delivered using balloons. The technology itself is not new, and such launches have been practiced since the middle of the last century. The peculiarity and significant advantage of Bloostar is that at an altitude of more than twenty kilometers, the aerodynamic properties of the aircraft that will be launched are practically of no importance. That is why Bloostar is made in the form of concentric ring-steps. Which work on the usual principle of a three-stage rocket. At the moment, the system can put into orbit 600 km about 75 kilograms of payload.

Bashir Iskandarovich Rameev. One of the founders of domestic computer technology. One of the creators of the Strela machine, the first computer mastered in industrial production in the USSR. Under his leadership and with direct participation, an arithmetic device, memory on a magnetic drum, an element base onvacuum tubes, not relays.

Vladimir Andreevich Melnikov. An outstanding scientist and designer of high-performance computing systems, student and colleague of Academician S.A. Lebedev, under whose leadership Melnikov participated in the creation of a number of universal computers "BESM".

Mikhail Alexandrovich Kartsev. An outstanding scientist and engineer, designer of electronic computers of four generations and powerful real-time computing systems, author of fundamental works in computer technology, including arithmetic and architecture of electronic digital machines.

Andrey Petrovich Ershov. Outstanding programmer and mathematician.Under the leadership of Ershov, some of the first domestic programming programs were developed ("integral developments" of the language and systemprogramming).Became one of the founders of the so-called "school informatics" and the recognized leader of the domestic school informatics, became one of the world's leading experts in this field.

We became interested in what computer science textbooks were the very first, and what our parents, grandparents studied.

The first computer science textbook was written in 1985 under the guidance of Academician A.P. Ershov, a world-famous scientist, developer of one of the most advanced domestic programming systems.

In the first trial tutorial in computer science, the emphasis was on studying the basics of algorithmization and programming elements in the BASIC language for personal computers.

Order of the Ministry Education of the Russian Federation in 1999, a minimum content of education in informatics was approved, which is mandatory for all educational institutions.

In the course of the project, we created a user-friendly interface with "More details" buttons to learn more about these programmers

During the execution of the program, we got acquainted and created the code for the transition from one form to another:

Private Sub Command1_Click()

Form2.Visible = True

Form1.Visible = False

end sub

We learned how to work with forms and buttons, create a color, a form background, and created a small test.

Private Sub Command1_Click()

If Option1 Then

MsgBox "True", "Test"

Else

MsgBox "Invalid", "Test"

End if

end sub

Private Sub Command2_Click()

Form12.Visible = True

Form8.Visible = False

end sub

Private Sub Form_Load()

Option1 = False: Option2 = False: Option3 = False

end sub

Conclusion: We really enjoyed creating this project. We learned a lot of new and interesting things. In the future, we want to connect our work with programming. During the execution of this work, we studied the possibilities of Visual Basic 6.0, and using this programming language, we created this software product.

Bibliography

1. L. D. Sleptsova . VBA Programming in Microsoft Office 2010Publisher: Dialectika, Williams, 2010

2. - a course of lectures on VBA.

Leonardo da Vinci For over 300 years Blaise Pascal was believed to be the inventor of the first calculating machine. However, in 1967, two volumes of unpublished manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci (), one of the titans of the Renaissance, an Italian painter, sculptor, architect, scientist and engineer, were found in the National Library of Madrid. Among the drawings, they found a sketch of a thirteen-bit adder with ten-tooth wheels. For advertising purposes, it was collected by the firm. However, in 1967, two volumes of unpublished 1BM manuscripts were found in the National Library of Madrid and it turned out to be quite workable.

Wilhelm Schickard Ten years earlier, in 1957, a previously unknown photocopy of a sketch of a calculating device was discovered in the city library of Stuttgart, from which it followed that another project of a calculating machine appeared at least 20 years earlier than the "Pascal wheel". It was possible to establish that this sketch is nothing more than a missing appendix to a previously published letter to J. Kepler from a professor at the University of Tübingen, Wilhelm Schickard (from), where Schickard, referring to the drawing, described the calculating machine he invented. The machine contained a summing and multiplying device, as well as a mechanism for recording intermediate results. In another letter (from) Schickard wrote that Kepler would be pleasantly surprised if he saw how the machine itself accumulates and transfers to the left a ten or a hundred, and how it takes away what it keeps in its "mind" when subtracting. Wilhelm Schickard () appeared in Tübingen in 1617 and soon became professor of oriental languages ​​at the local university. At the same time, he corresponded with Kepler and a number of German, French, Italian and Dutch scientists on issues related to astronomy. Drawing attention to the outstanding mathematical abilities of the young scientist, Kepler recommended that he take up mathematics. Shikkard heeded this advice and achieved significant success in the new field. In 1631 he became professor of mathematics and astronomy. And five years later, Shikkard and members of his family died of cholera. The works of the scientist were forgotten...

Blaise Pascal Blaise Pascal () one of the most famous people in the history of mankind. Pascal died when he was 39 years old, but despite such short life, he went down in history as an outstanding mathematician, physicist, philosopher, writer, who also believed in miracles. Some of Pascal's practical achievements were awarded the highest distinction today, few people know the name of their author. For example, now very few will say that the most common car is the invention of Blaise Pascal. He also came up with the idea of ​​omnibuses of multi-seat horse-drawn carriages with fixed routes, the first type of regular public public transport. Being very young (1643), Pascal created a mechanical device, a summing machine, which made it possible to add numbers in the decimal number system. In this machine, the numbers were set by corresponding rotations of the disks (wheels) with digital divisions, and the result of the operation could be read in the windows, one for each number. The disks were mechanically connected, and the addition took into account the transfer of one to the next digit. The units disk was connected to the tens disk, the tens disk to the hundreds disk, and so on. The main drawback of Pascal's summing machine was the inconvenience of performing all operations with it, except for addition.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz () entered the history of mathematics primarily as the creator of differential and integral calculus, combinatorics, and the theory of determinants. But his name is also among the outstanding inventors of counting devices. Leibniz was born in Leipzig and belonged to a family known for its scientists and politicians. In 1661 Leibniz became a student. He studies philosophy, law and mathematics at the universities of Leipzig, Vienna and Altdorf. In 1666, he defended two dissertations at once for the title of associate professor in jurisprudence and mathematics. In 1672, Leibniz met the Dutch mathematician and astronomer Christian Huygens. Seeing how many calculations an astronomer had to do, Leibniz decided to invent a mechanical device for calculations, which he completed in 1694. Developing the ideas of Pascal, Leibniz used the shift operation for bitwise multiplication of numbers. One copy of the Leibniz machine came to Peter the Great, who presented it to the Chinese emperor, wanting to impress him with European technical achievements. Leibniz came close to the creation of mathematical logic: he proposed using mathematical symbols in logic and for the first time expressed the idea of ​​the possibility of using the binary number system in it, which later found application in automatic computers.

George Bull George Bull (). After Leibniz, many eminent scientists conducted research in the field of mathematical logic and the binary number system, but the real success came here to the English self-taught mathematician George Boole, whose determination knew no bounds. The financial situation of George's parents allowed him to finish only an elementary school for the poor. Some time later, Buhl, having changed several professions, opened a small school where he taught himself. He devoted a lot of time to self-education and soon became interested in the ideas of symbolic logic. In 1854, his main work, "Investigation of the laws of thought on which the mathematical theories of logic and probability are based," appeared. After some time, it became clear that Boole's system is well suited for describing electrical switching circuits: the current in the circuit can either flow or be absent, like how a statement can be either true or false. Already in the 20th century, together with the binary number system, the mathematical apparatus created by Boole formed the basis for the development of a digital electronic computer.

Herman Hollerith A significant contribution to the automation of information processing was made by an American, the son of German emigrants, Herman Hollerith (). He is the founder of the counting and punching technique. Dealing with the processing of statistical information from the US census in 1890, Hollerith built a manual puncher that was used to apply digital data to punched cards (holes were punched on the card), and introduced mechanical sorting to lay out these punched cards, depending on the place of punching. He built a summing machine, called a tabulator, which "felt" the holes on punched cards, perceived them as the corresponding numbers and counted these numbers. The tabulator card was the size of a dollar bill. It had 12 rows, in each of which 20 holes could be punched, corresponding to such data as age, gender, place of birth, number of children, marital status, etc. The agents participating in the census recorded the answers of the respondents in special forms. The completed forms were sent to Washington, where the information contained in them was transferred to cards using a puncher. Then the punched cards were loaded into special devices connected to a tabulator, where they were strung on thin needles. The needle, falling into the hole, passed it, closing the contact in the corresponding electrical circuit of the machine. This, in turn, led to the fact that the counter, consisting of rotating cylinders, moved one position forward.

John Vincent Atanasoff In 1973, through the court, it was established that the patent rights to the basic ideas of digital electronic machines belong to John Atanasov. Bulgarian by birth, John Vincent Atanasoff () became an American in the second generation. Atanasov began searching for ways to automate calculations in 1933, when he supervised graduate students who studied elasticity theory, quantum physics, and crystal physics. Most of the problems they faced involved partial differential equations. To solve them, one had to use approximate methods, which, in turn, required the solution of large systems of algebraic equations. That is why the scientist began to make attempts to use technical means to speed up calculations: Atanasov decided to design a computer based on new principles, while taking vacuum tubes as an element base. In the fall of 1939, John Atanasoff and his assistant Clifford Berry began building a specialized computer machine designed to solve a system of algebraic equations with 30 unknowns. It was decided to name it ABC (Atanasoff Berry Computer). The initial data, presented in decimal notation, had to be entered into the machine using standard punched cards. Then, in the machine itself, the decimal code was converted to binary, which was then used in it. The main arithmetic operations were addition and subtraction, and multiplication and division were already performed with their help. There were two storage devices in the car. By the spring of 1942, work on the machine was largely completed; however, at this time the United States was already at war with Nazi Germany, and wartime problems pushed work on the first computer into the background. Soon the car was dismantled.

Konrad Zuse The German engineer Konrad Zuse (), who loved to invent since childhood and, even when he was at school, designed a model of a machine for exchanging money, is considered the creator of the first operating computer with program control. He began to dream of a machine capable of performing tedious calculations instead of a person. while still a student. Not knowing about the work of Charles Babbage, Zuse soon set about creating a device much like the Analytical Engine of this English mathematician. In 1936, in order to devote more time to building a computer, Zuse quit his job. On a small table in his parents' house, he arranged a "workshop". Approximately two years later, the computer, which already occupied an area of ​​​​about 4 m2 and was an intricacies of relays and wires, was ready. The machine, which he named 21 (from 7, from Zuse's German spelling of the last name), had a data entry keyboard. In 1942, Zuse and Austrian electrical engineer Helmut Schreyer proposed the creation of a fundamentally new type of device, based on vacuum electron tubes. The new machine was supposed to operate hundreds of times faster than any of the machines available at that time in warring Germany. However, this proposal was rejected: Hitler imposed a ban on all "long-term" scientific development, because he was sure of a quick victory. In the difficult post-war years, Zuse, working alone, created a programming system called Plankalkul (Plankal-kül, "plan calculus"). This language is called the first high-level language.

Sergey Alekseevich Lebedev Sergey Alekseevich Lebedev () was born in Nizhny Novgorod, In 1921 he entered the Moscow Higher Technical School (now the Moscow State Technical University named after N.E. Bauman) at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. In 1928, Lebedev, having received a diploma in electrical engineering, became at the same time a university teacher, from which he graduated, and a junior researcher at the All-Union Electrotechnical Institute (VEI). In 1936, he was already a professor and author (together with PS Zhdanov) of the book "Stability of parallel operation of electrical systems", widely known among specialists in the field of electrical engineering. In the late 1940s, under the leadership of Lebedev, the first domestic electronic digital computer MESM (small electronic calculating machine) was created, which is one of the first in the world and the first in Europe computer with a program stored in memory. In 1950, Lebedev moved to the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Technology (ITM and VT of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR) in Moscow and became the chief designer of BESM, and then the director of the institute. Then BESM-1 was the fastest computer in Europe and was not inferior to the best computers in the USA. Soon the machine was slightly modernized and in 1956 it began to be mass-produced under the name BESM-2. On BESM-2, calculations were performed during the launch of artificial satellites of the Earth and the first spacecraft with a person on board. In 1967, the series created under the leadership of S.A. began to be mass-produced. Lebedev and V.A. Melnikova, the original BESM-6 architecture with a speed of about 1 million operations per second: BESM-6 was among the most productive computers in the world and had many of the "features" of the machines of the next, third generation. She was the first large domestic machine, which began to be supplied to users along with advanced software.

John von Neumann American mathematician and physicist John von Neumann () was from Budapest, the second largest and most important cultural center of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire after Vienna. With his extraordinary abilities, this man began to stand out very early: at the age of six he spoke the ancient Greek language, and at eight he mastered the basics of higher mathematics. He worked in Germany, but in the early 1930s he decided to settle in the United States. John von Neumann made a significant contribution to the creation and development of a number of areas of mathematics and physics, and had a significant impact on the development of computer technology. He performed fundamental research related to mathematical logic, group theory, operator algebra, quantum mechanics, statistical physics; is one of the creators of the "Monte Carlo" method, a numerical method for solving mathematical problems based on the simulation of random variables. "According to von Neumann" the main place among the functions performed by a computer is occupied by arithmetic and logical operations. For them, an arithmetic-logical device is provided. Its operation and, in general, the entire machine is controlled by a control device. The role of information storage is performed by RAM. Information is stored here for both the arithmetic logic unit (data) and the control unit (commands).

Claude Elwood Shannon Already in his teens, Claude Elwood Shannon () began to design. He made models of airplanes and radio devices, created a radio-controlled boat, connected his house and a friend's house with a telegraph line. Claude's childhood hero was the famous inventor Thomas Alva Edison, who was also his distant relative (however, they never met). In 1937, Shannon submitted his dissertation "Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits", working on which he came to the conclusion that Boolean algebra can be successfully used to analyze and synthesize switches and relays in electrical circuits. We can say that this work paved the way for the development of digital computers. The most famous work of Claude Elwood Shannon is published in 1948 "The Mathematical Theory of Communication", which presents considerations regarding the new science of information theory he created. One of the tasks of information theory is to find the most economical coding methods that allow you to convey the necessary information using the minimum number of characters. Shannon defined the basic unit of quantity of information (later called a bit) as a message representing one of two options: heads, tails, yes no, and so on. A bit can be represented as 1 or 0, or as the presence or absence of current in the circuit.

Bill (William) Gates Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955. He and his two sisters grew up in Seattle. Their father, William Gates II, is a lawyer. Bill Gates' mother, Mary Gates, was a schoolteacher, board member at the University of Washington, and chairman of the charity United Way International. Gates and his high school buddy Paul Allen entered the world of entrepreneurship at the age of fifteen. They wrote a program to regulate traffic and formed a company to distribute it; earned dollars on this project and did not go to high school anymore. In 1973, Gates entered his first year at Harvard University. During their time at Harvard, Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote the first operating system, developing the BASIC programming language for the first MITS Altair minicomputer. In his third year, Bill Gates left Harvard to devote himself full-time to Microsoft, the company he founded in 1975 with Allen. Under a contract with IBM, Gates creates the MS-DOS operating system, which in 1993 was used by 90% of the world's computers and which made him fabulously rich. So Bill Gates went down in history not only as Microsoft's chief software architect, but also as the youngest self-made billionaire. Today, Bill Gates is one of the most popular figures in the computer world. There are jokes about him, praises are sung to him. Peoper magazine, for example, argues that "Gates is as important to programming as Edison is to the light bulb: part innovator, part entrepreneur, part salesman, but unfailingly a genius."

Ershov Andrey Petrovich

An outstanding programmer and mathematician, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, author of the world's first monograph on programming automation. Under the leadership of Ershov, some of the first domestic programming programs ("integrated developments" of the programming language and system) were developed. Formulated a series general principles programming as a new and original type of scientific activity, touched upon the aspect that would later be called user-friendliness, one of the first in the country set the task of creating a programming technology. Became one of the founders of the so-called "school informatics" and the recognized leader of the domestic school informatics, became one of the world's leading experts in this field.

Charles Babbage

(December 26 - October 18)

British mathematician and inventor, author of works on the theory of functions, mechanization of counting in economics; foreign corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1832). In 1833 he developed a project for a universal digital computer - a prototype of a computer. Babbage provided for the possibility of entering instructions into the machine using punched cards. However, this machine was not finished either, since the low level of technology of that time became the main obstacle to its creation. Charles Babbage is often called the "father of the computer" for his invention of the Analytical Engine, although its prototype was created many years after his death.

Kaspersky Evgeny Valentinovich

Before 1991worked in a multidisciplinary research institute of the USSR Ministry of Defense. Began to study the phenomenoncomputer viruses in October 1989when it was found on his computerCascade virus (English). From 1991 to 1997 he worked at the STC "KAMI", where, together with a group of like-minded people, he developed the anti-virus project "AVP" (now - " Kaspersky Anti-Virus"). In 1997, Evgeny Kaspersky became one of the founders ofKaspersky Labs«.

Today, Evgeny Kaspersky is one of the world's leading experts in the field of virus protection. He is the author of a large number of articles and reviews on the problem of computer virology, regularly speaks at specialized seminars and conferences in Russia and abroad. Evgeny Valentinovich Kaspersky is a member of the Computer Virus Research Organization (CARO), which brings together experts in this field.

Among the most significant and interesting achievements of Evgeniy Valentinovich and the "Laboratory" headed by him in 2001 is the opening of the annual conferenceVirus Bulletin- the central event in the antivirus industry, as well as the successful opposition to all global virus epidemics that occurred in 2001.

Lovelace Augusta Ada

A. Lovelace developed the first programs for Babbage's analytical engine, thereby laying the theoretical foundations of programming. She first introduced the concept of a cycle of operation. In one of the notes, she expressed the main idea that the analytical engine can solve such problems, which, due to the difficulty of calculations, are almost impossible to solve manually. So for the first time the machine was considered not only as a mechanism that replaces a person, but also as a device capable of performing work that exceeds the capabilities of a person. Although Babbage's Analytical Engine was not built and Lovelace's programs were never debugged and did not work, however, a number of general provisions expressed by her retained their fundamental importance for modern programming. Today, A. Lovelace is rightfully called the first programmer in the world.

Bill Gates

(28 of October)

American entrepreneur and developer in the field of electronic computing technology, founder of the world's leading software company Microsoft.

In 1980, Microsoft developed the MS-DOS operating system, which by the mid-1980s became the main operating system in the American microcomputer market. Gates then moved on to developing application programs such as Excel spreadsheets and Word, and by the late 1980s, Microsoft had become a leader in this area as well.

In 1986, by issuing shares of the company for free sale, Gates at the age of 31 became a billionaire. In 1990, the company introduced the Windows 3.0 shell, which replaced verbal commands with mouse-selectable icons, making the computer much easier to use. By the end of the 1990s, about 90% of all personal computers in the world were equipped with Microsoft software. In 1997, Gates topped the list of the richest people in the world.

Douglas Karl Engelbart

American inventor Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute introduced the world's first computer mouse in 1968 on December 9th.

Douglas Engelbart's invention was a wooden cube on wheels with a single button. The computer mouse owes its name to the wire - it reminded the inventor of the tail of a real mouse.

Later, Xerox became interested in Engelbart's idea. Its researchers changed the design of the mouse, and it became similar to the modern one. In the early 1970s, Xerox first introduced the mouse as part of a personal computer. It had three buttons, a ball and rollers instead of discs, and cost $400!

Today there are two types of computer mice: mechanical and optical. The latter are devoid of mechanical elements, and optical sensors are used to track the movement of the manipulator relative to the surface. Wireless mice are the latest in technology.

Niklaus Wirth

Swiss engineer and researcher in the programming world. Author and one of the developers of the Pascal programming language. N. Wirth was one of the first who put into practice the principle of step-by-step refinement as a key to the systematic creation of programs. In addition to Pascal, he created other algorithmic languages ​​(including Modula-2 and Oberon). They are not well known to "production" programmers, but are widely used for theoretical research in the field of programming. Wirth is one of the world's most respected computer scientists, his book Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs is considered one of the classic textbooks on structured programming.

Linus Torvalds

(December 28th)

Creator of the world famous operating system. In early 1991, he began to write his own platform aimed at the average consumer, which could be distributed for free via the Internet. The new system was named Linux, derived from a combination of the name of its creator with the name UNIX. For ten years, Linux has become a real competitor to products manufactured by Microsoft, capable of pushing the company's monopoly in the system and server software market.

Thousands of "interested programmers", hackers, computer network specialists happily picked up Linus's idea and began to finish, finish, debug what Torvalds offered them. In almost ten years, Linux has gone from a toy of several hundred fans and enthusiasts, executing a couple of dozen commands in a primitive console, to a professional multi-user and multi-tasking 32-bit operating system with a windowed graphical interface, many times superior to Microsoft Windows in terms of its range of capabilities, stability and power. 95, 98 and NT and capable of running on virtually any modern IBM-compatible computer.