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 marked Debated.
Algorithm, Origin Year1936
Algorithm, Concepts
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1936
Informal algorithms are ancient practice, Euclid's algorithm dates to around 300 BCE; the formal mathematical definition of an algorithm as a precisely specified, mechanically followable procedure dates to 1936, when Turing and Church independently formalized computability.
Algorithms and Complexity Theory, Origin Year1936
Algorithms and Complexity Theory, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1936
Informal algorithms are ancient, Euclid's algorithm dates to around 300 BCE, but the field as a distinct mathematical discipline is usually dated to 1936, when Alan Turing and, independently, Alonzo Church gave the first formal definitions of what it means for a procedure to be computable at all.
Analog Computing, Origin Year1872
Analog Computing, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1872
Marks an early purpose-built analog calculating device; the Antikythera mechanism is far older but was not part of a continuous engineering tradition.
Source Wikipedia: Analog computers
Assembly Language, First Released1947
Assembly Language, Programming Languages
Standing
Concerns First Released
Currently States 1947
Assembly language has no single agreed year or inventor. Kathleen and Andrew Donald Booth's 1947 Coding for A.R.C. is the earliest documented work using a language to represent machine code instructions symbolically, but the term assembler itself is usually credited to Wilkes, Wheeler and Gill's 1951 book, and similar mnemonic coding schemes emerged independently on other early machines in the same years. 1947 is used here as the earliest documented instance, not as a settled single origin.
Source Wikipedia: Assembly language
Atanasoff Berry Computer, SignificanceThe first automatic electronic digital computer, with priority backed by the 1973 Honeywell v. Sperry Rand finding; historians debate the title because the machine was neither programmable nor Turing complete.
Atanasoff Berry Computer, Systems
Standing
Concerns Significance
Currently States The first automatic electronic digital computer, with priority backed by the 1973 Honeywell v. Sperry Rand finding; historians debate the title because the machine was neither programmable nor Turing complete.
The 1973 court finding is a matter of public record; the historians' debate over whether a non programmable machine can hold the title is equally on the record. Both are stated rather than smoothed over.
Source Wikipedia: Atanasoff Berry Computer
BINAC, SignificanceSometimes claimed as the world's first commercial digital computer, a claim this atlas states honestly alongside the article's own record that BINAC was limited in scope and never fully functional after delivery, the same debated-attribution voice this atlas already applies to ENIAC and Colossus.
BINAC, Systems
Standing
Concerns Significance
Currently States Sometimes claimed as the world's first commercial digital computer, a claim this atlas states honestly alongside the article's own record that BINAC was limited in scope and never fully functional after delivery, the same debated-attribution voice this atlas already applies to ENIAC and Colossus.
The claim of being the first commercial digital computer is the article's own qualified framing (sometimes claimed), set against its own statement that the machine never worked fully after delivery.
Source Wikipedia: BINAC
Binary Search Tree, Origin Year1960
Binary Search Tree, Concepts
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1960
Several researchers (Windley, Booth, Colin, Hibbard) described the structure independently around 1960; formal attribution to Berners-Lee and Wheeler names one specific 1960 application (magnetic tape storage) rather than settling a single inventor for the underlying idea.
Source Wikipedia: Binary search tree
Client-Server Model, Origin Year1964
Client-Server Model, Concepts
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1964
The underlying request-and-response division of labor is visible by 1964 (OS/360 remote job entry) and the server-host/user-host terminology by the early ARPANET RFCs, but the word client was not formally defined until a 1978 Xerox PARC paper and server only entered general use by 1992; no single year cleanly founds the model.
Source Wikipedia: Client-server model
Cloud Computing, Origin Year1996
Cloud Computing, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1996
The cloud metaphor for virtualized services dates to 1994 (General Magic's Telescript environment); the expression cloud computing itself became widely known in 1996 via a Compaq Computer Corporation business plan.
Source Wikipedia: Cloud computing
Computer Algebra, Origin Year1960
Computer Algebra, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1960
No single founding moment is agreed for the field; McCarthy's 1960 symbolic-computation work in Lisp is the most commonly cited starting point.
Source Computer Algebra (Wikipedia)
Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Origin Year1986
Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1986
Marks when the CSCW conference series began, evidence the field had organized; the term itself is usually credited to Irene Greif and Paul Cashman's 1984 workshop, not stated in this source.
Source Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (Wikipedia)
Cryptography, Origin Year1976
Cryptography, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1976
Cryptography as a practice is ancient, but its treatment as a computational academic field is usually dated to the 1970s: the Data Encryption Standard effort of the early 1970s and the 1976 Diffie-Hellman publication that opened public key cryptography, so the origin year depends on whether the ancient practice or the modern computational field is being dated.
Source Wikipedia: Cryptography
Cyber-Physical Systems, Origin Year2006
Cyber-Physical Systems, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 2006
Marks NSF-sponsored workshops that gave the field institutional standing; the term is usually credited to NSF program manager Helen Gill around the same time, not named in this source.
Source Wikipedia: Cyber-physical system
Data and Information Visualization, Origin Year1987
Data and Information Visualization, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1987
Marks the point often cited for the field's modern computing-graphics emphasis; older data-graphics traditions (such as Minard's 1869 Napoleon diagram) predate the named computing field.
Source Data and Information Visualization (Wikipedia)
Data Mining, Origin Year1990
Data Mining, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1990
The term itself appeared around 1990 in the database community; the statistical and analytical methods it draws on trace back much further (Bayes' theorem, 18th century; regression analysis, 19th century).
Source Wikipedia: Data mining
Data Science, Origin Year1974
Data Science, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1974
Peter Naur proposed the term in 1974 as an alternative name for computer science; C. F. Jeff Wu used it independently in a 1985 lecture as an alternative name for statistics. The sources do not reconcile a single coining.
Source Wikipedia: Data science
Digital Libraries, Origin Year1964
Digital Libraries, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1964
ERIC is named as an early example predating the field's own 1990s institutional recognition (the 1994 NSF/DARPA/NASA Digital Libraries Initiative named in the same source).
Source Digital Libraries (Wikipedia)
Distributed Computing, Core ConcernWhich computational problems can be solved across networks of independent computers, and how efficiently, given that components communicate only by passing messages and may fail independently.
Distributed Computing, Fields
Standing
Concerns Core Concern
Currently States Which computational problems can be solved across networks of independent computers, and how efficiently, given that components communicate only by passing messages and may fail independently.
The article itself states there is no single agreed definition of a distributed system, and no clear line separates distributed computing from concurrent and parallel computing.
Source Wikipedia: Distributed Computing
Dynamic Programming, Core PrincipleProblems exhibiting optimal substructure and overlapping sub-problems can be solved efficiently by recursive decomposition combined with caching of intermediate results, developed by Richard Bellman in the 1950s.
Dynamic Programming, Concepts
Standing
Concerns Core Principle
Currently States Problems exhibiting optimal substructure and overlapping sub-problems can be solved efficiently by recursive decomposition combined with caching of intermediate results, developed by Richard Bellman in the 1950s.
Bellman's own account of why he chose the name dynamic programming is contested: Russell and Norvig note his story cannot be strictly true, since his first paper using the term (1952) predates the political circumstances he described, and Harold Kushner has suggested other motives, such as wanting to distinguish the work from Dantzig's linear programming.
Source Wikipedia: Dynamic Programming
Embedded Systems, Origin Year1961
Embedded Systems, Fields
Standing
Concerns Origin Year
Currently States 1961
The Autonetics D-17 (1961, Minuteman missile guidance, mass-produced) predates the more commonly cited Apollo Guidance Computer (circa 1965), which sources describe as the first RECOGNIZABLY MODERN embedded system rather than the first one outright; the field has no single undisputed founding year.
Source Wikipedia: Embedded system