Computing Atlas
Claims this atlas currently marks as unsettled or as tested and found false. A debated fact is one scholars hold competing positions on; a debunked one has been checked against the record and found not to hold. Both are kept in view rather than quietly smoothed over, with the reasoning that put each one where it stands.
59 statements.
Programming Language Theory, Origin Year1936
Programming Language Theory, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1936
The lambda calculus, developed by Alonzo Church and Stephen Cole Kleene in the 1930s, is considered by some to be the world's first programming language and the field's mathematical root; Noam Chomsky's 1956 work on formal grammars is a second, later origin point some scholars use instead.
Source Wikipedia: Programming Language Theory
Prolog, SignificanceOne of the first logic programming languages and long the dominant one, closely associated with artificial intelligence research and computational linguistics.
Prolog, Programming Languages
Standing
Concerns Significance
Currently States One of the first logic programming languages and long the dominant one, closely associated with artificial intelligence research and computational linguistics.
The first Prolog system is credited to Alain Colmerauer and Philippe Roussel in 1972, while Robert Kowalski's theoretical work on Horn clause logic is separately credited with enabling the implementation approach; sources differ on how much weight to give each contribution.
Source Wikipedia: Prolog
Public Key Cryptography, Origin Year1976
Public Key Cryptography, Concepts
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1976
1976 is the public origin, the Diffie and Hellman publication; GCHQ's classified work reached the same ideas earlier, with James H. Ellis conceiving non-secret encryption in 1970 and Clifford Cocks implementing what became RSA in 1973. Which date counts as the origin depends on whether secret work counts.
Source Wikipedia: Public Key Cryptography
Quantum Computing, Origin Year1980
Quantum Computing, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1980
Paul Benioff proposed a quantum-mechanical model of a Turing machine in 1980; Richard Feynman's widely-cited 1982 keynote on simulating physics with computers is also commonly credited as the field's founding provocation, so the field's origin is dated to the early 1980s rather than a single year.
Source Wikipedia: Quantum computing
Queue, Origin Year1950
Queue, Concepts
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1950
No single origin date is agreed for the queue as a programming data structure. Agner Krarup Erlang's 1909 telephone-traffic work founded the separate mathematical discipline of queueing theory; the queue as an abstract data type in early programming and algorithms literature is usually placed in the 1950s, but sources do not converge on one year, so this date is an approximate placeholder, not an attested one.
Reconfigurable Computing, Origin Year1991
Reconfigurable Computing, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1991
Marks the first commercial reconfigurable computer; academic proposals for combined fixed-and-variable-structure computers predate this by decades.
Source Reconfigurable Computing (Wikipedia)
Recursion, Origin Year1960
Recursion, Concepts
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1960
The mathematical theory of recursive functions was formalized in the 1930s by Church, Godel and Kleene; John McCarthy brought recursion into practical programming with Lisp around 1958 to 1960, so the concept's origin year depends on whether the mathematics or the programming language is being dated.
Source Wikipedia: Recursion (Computer Science)
Rob Pike, Birth Year1956
Rob Pike, Pioneers
Standing
Concerns Birth Year
Currently States 1956
Source Wikipedia: Rob Pike
Robert Griesemer, Birth Year1964
Robert Griesemer, Pioneers
Standing
Concerns Birth Year
Currently States 1964
Source Wikipedia: Robert Griesemer
Rust, First Released2010
Rust, Programming Languages
Standing
Concerns First Released
Currently States 2010
Rust's own history has several distinct milestones cited as its year: Graydon Hoare began it as a personal project in 2006, Mozilla began sponsoring it in 2009, the language was first publicly unveiled in 2010, the first numbered 0.1 release followed in January 2012, and the first stable 1.0 release shipped in May 2015. 2010 is used here as the commonly cited public-unveiling year; see the description for the fuller timeline.
Source Wikipedia: Rust (programming language)
Semantic Web, Origin Year1994
Semantic Web, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1994
The idea of adding semantics to the Web predates the term itself, per the same source; Berners-Lee's 1998 design document first used the field's current name.
Source Wikipedia: The Semantic Web
Semiconductor, Origin Year1947
Semiconductor, Concepts
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1947
Semiconducting materials were studied through the 19th century, but the concept's practical significance to computing is usually dated to the invention of the point-contact transistor at Bell Labs in 1947, the first semiconductor device to replace the vacuum tube.
Source Wikipedia: Semiconductor
SQL, PronunciationOfficially ess-cue-el, spelled out letter by letter, per the original ANSI/ISO standard; many database professionals, including Donald Chamberlin himself, instead say it as one word, sequel, reflecting the languages original 1970s name, SEQUEL.
SQL, Programming Languages
Standing
Concerns Pronunciation
Currently States Officially ess-cue-el, spelled out letter by letter, per the original ANSI/ISO standard; many database professionals, including Donald Chamberlin himself, instead say it as one word, sequel, reflecting the languages original 1970s name, SEQUEL.
The 1986 ANSI/ISO standard declared the initialism ess-cue-el official, but acronym-like sequel remains widespread in practice; both readings are attested rather than one being simply wrong.
Source Wikipedia: SQL
Stack, Origin Year1955
Stack, Concepts
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1955
Klaus Samelson and Friedrich L. Bauer of the Technical University of Munich proposed the concept, calling it Operationskeller, in 1955 and filed a patent in 1957, but Charles Leonard Hamblin independently described a similar idea in 1954, and Wilhelm Kammerer developed related ideas in 1958; there is no single settled inventor or date.
Source Wikipedia: Stack (Abstract Data Type)
Virtual Reality, Origin Year1984
Virtual Reality, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1984
The term "virtual reality" itself was popularized in the late 1980s by Lanier; earlier related concepts (the Sensorama, 1962; the term appearing in a 1982 novel) predate VPL Research.
Source Wikipedia: Virtual reality
Von Neumann Architecture, Core PrincipleA single memory holding both instructions and data, rather than separate stores for each, is the defining trait; the naming of the principle after von Neumann alone, rather than the EDVAC team that actually worked it out, is itself a standing historiographic dispute.
Von Neumann Architecture, Concepts
Standing
Concerns Core Principle
Currently States A single memory holding both instructions and data, rather than separate stores for each, is the defining trait; the naming of the principle after von Neumann alone, rather than the EDVAC team that actually worked it out, is itself a standing historiographic dispute.
Historian Jack Copeland has called it historically inappropriate to refer to electronic stored-program digital computers as von Neumann machines.
Source Wikipedia: Von Neumann architecture
Wearable Computing, Origin Year1961
Wearable Computing, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1961
Widely credited as the earliest wearable computer; where the field's own boundary is drawn (smartwatches, fitness trackers) differs by source.
Source Wearable Computing (Wikipedia)
Xerox Alto, SignificanceEstablished foundational concepts for personal computing that directly influenced the Apple Lisa and Macintosh and the broader workstation industry, despite never being sold commercially in large numbers.
Xerox Alto, Systems
Standing
Concerns Significance
Currently States Established foundational concepts for personal computing that directly influenced the Apple Lisa and Macintosh and the broader workstation industry, despite never being sold commercially in large numbers.
The article describes the Alto as arguably 'the first personal computer,' but notes the title is disputed, since it was never sold as a commercial product and other machines have competing claims.
Source Wikipedia: Xerox Alto
Zuse Z3, SignificanceShown to be theoretically Turing-complete, within its memory limits, by Raul Rojas in 1998, fifty-five years after the physical machine itself was destroyed; the Z3's obscurity in its own time, not any technical shortfall, is the main reason it rarely features in the ENIAC/Colossus/Atanasoff Berry Computer priority debates.
Zuse Z3, Systems
Standing
Concerns Significance
Currently States Shown to be theoretically Turing-complete, within its memory limits, by Raul Rojas in 1998, fifty-five years after the physical machine itself was destroyed; the Z3's obscurity in its own time, not any technical shortfall, is the main reason it rarely features in the ENIAC/Colossus/Atanasoff Berry Computer priority debates.
Turing-completeness was never demonstrated on the physical Z3, only argued retrospectively in 1998 against its documented design; the machine also lacked conditional branching, which Rojas's argument works around rather than contradicts.
Source Wikipedia: Z3 (computer)