The development of electricity as a source of power preceded
this conjunction with steam power late in the 19th century. The
pioneering work had been done by an international collection of
scientists including Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania,
Alessandro Volta of the University of Pavia, Italy, and Michael
Faraday of Britain. It was the latter who had demonstrated the
nature of the elusive relationship between electricity and
magnetism in 1831, and his experiments provided the point of
departure for both the mechanical generation of electric
current, previously available only from chemical reactions
within voltaic piles or batteries, and the utilization of such
current in electric motors.
Nikola Tesla was an engineer and scientist known for designing
the alternating-current (AC) electric system, which is the
predominant electrical system used across the world today. He
also created the "Tesla coil," which is still used in radio
technology. Born in modern-day Croatia, Tesla came to the United
States in 1884 and briefly worked with Thomas Edison before the
two parted ways. He sold several patent rights, including those
to his AC machinery, to George Westinghouse.
If you want to know more about Nikola Tesla
click here!
Nikola Tesla's AC motor
Alan Turing & The Birth of Computer Technology
Today he is famous for being an eccentric yet passionate British
mathematician, who conceived modern computing and played a
crucial part in the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in WW2.
In 1936, Turing published a paper that is now recognised as the
foundation of computer science. Turing analysed what it meant
for a human to follow a definite method or procedure to perform
a task. For this purpose, he invented the idea of a ‘Universal
Machine’ that could decode and perform any set of instructions.
Ten years later he would turn this revolutionary idea into a
practical plan for an electronic computer, capable of running
any program.
After two years at Princeton, developing ideas about secret
ciphers, Turing returned to Britain and joined the government’s
code-breaking department. In July 1939, the Polish Cipher Bureau
passed on crucial information about the Enigma machine, which
was used by the Germans to encipher all its military and naval
signals. After September 1939, joined by other mathematicians at
Bletchley Park, Turing rapidly developed a new machine (the
‘Bombe’) capable of breaking Enigma messages on an industrial
scale.
Turing worked on other technical innovations during the war – in
particular, a system to encrypt and decrypt spoken telephone
conversations. Codenamed Delilah, it was successfully
demonstrated using a recording of one of Winston Churchill's
speeches, but was never used in action. However, it gave Turing
hands-on experience of working with electronics, and led to a
position at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), where he
worked on what he sometimes described as an ‘electronic brain’.
In March 1946 Turing produced a detailed design for what was
called the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE.) This was a digital
computer in the modern sense, storing programs in its memory.
His report emphasised the unlimited range of applications opened
up by this technological revolution, and software developments
ahead of parallel American developments. Yet his relationship
with NPL soured and he left in 1948, before a pilot version of
the ACE was made in 1950.
If you want to know more about Alan Turing
click here!
