Douglas Engelbart.-Father of Computer Mouse

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This time, in this page you are going to read about the most respected inventor of the device at your hand now. Yeah, the inventor of computer mouse. His name is Douglas Engelbart. He changed the way computers worked, from specialized machinery that only a trained scientist could use, to a user-friendly tool that almost anyone can use. Engelbart received a patent for the wooden shell with two metal wheels (computer mouse U.S. Patent # 3,541,541) in 1970, describing it in the patent application as an "X-Y position indicator for a display system”. Read the brief description below…

Douglas Engelbart.

“Father of Computer Mouse”.

This mild-mannered computer scientist has received widespread recognition for his contribution to the technology that has revolutionized the way the world communicates. He developed mouse, the Device used by millions.

The mouse was first developed by Doug Engelbartz , at the Stanford Research Institute, in Menlo Park, California.In the 1960s, at Stanford Research Institute, he and his team developed a set of tools to harness the growing power of computers. The tools include heavy tracking ball, joystick etc. In the end, the mouse won all the tests for speed and accuracy. At the time it was called an x-y position indicator. One of the members of the team nicknamed the device a mouse and it caught on.

As well as the ever-present mouse, his team developed hypertext linking, the integration of text and graphics, networking, a web-style browser and even video conferencing.

Douglas Engelbart was awarded the 1997 Lemelson-MIT Prize of $500,000, the world's largest single prize for invention and innovation.

Currently, Douglas Engelbart is the director of his company, Bootstrap Institute in Fremont, California, which promotes the concept of Collective IQ.

“As fast as we get better, we are going to get better at getting better “

Douglas Engelbart

You can get more amazing information about Douglas Engelbart from answers.com and http://www.superkids.com/. We like to hear from you. Please send your comments about this blog using the add comments link provided below.

Phil Katz

Phillip W Katz.
Creator of PKZIP.

”Phil Katz changed your life and got very little for it. He felt lonely despite his success”.reported by Al Fasold , The Syracuse Newspapers .The much used ZIP format was created by this man(Phil Katz) who known as one of the "brains," and liked playing chess. He created and distributed his compression software as a shareware during that time. Big companies such as General Motors Corp. sent checks for the code, which became the computing standard.The ZIP format is used for compressing files for efficient storage and easy upload and download.You are responsible to read the pathetic end of this great man if you used the zip files atleast once in your life.So start reading …

Phillip Katz is the Creator of "PKZIP" and the ZIP archive format. His compression software PKZIP (PKWare, Inc) made communication between computers faster and less expensive.

Phillip W. Katz, better known as Phil Katz was born on November 3, 1962. He received a bachelor's degree in computer science from the Madison At home, Mr. Katz often worked late into the night at his IBM personal computer. He spends his spare time tackling a sticky problem: how to compress information so that downloading could be faster and more data stored on computer disks. The most popular of compressing programs at that time was ARC from System Enhancement Associates. ARC was slow at its task and prone to corrupt files. It also had a tendency to crash when compressing or decompressing.

He ultimately produced a breakthrough program that combined several techniques then in use and automatically determined the best in any situation. Mr. Katz posted his code, which he first called PKArc, on Mr. Mahoney's bulletin board, using the "shareware" approach, in which users are invited to try a program and send money to the inventor if they like it. This garnered the attention of SEA. They believed Katz had “borrowed” heavily from ARC’s source code, and took him to court. In a negotiated settlement with SEA, Phil paid their legal bills and agreed to stop selling PKArc. But Phil came back to stage with more powerful, vastly improved program that made both ARC and PKArc look like products of the stone age. It was named PKZip – “Phil Katz’s ZIP program”. PKZIP made Katz one of the most successful shareware authors of all time. Phil made the ZIP file format an open one and made a huge mistake by delaying a Windows version of PKZip, allowing Nicosoft (makers of WinZip) to gain the larger user share that it holds to this day.

Katz battled alcoholism for years. Katz was found dead in a hotel room with an empty bottle of peppermint schnapps in his hand on April 14, 2000 at the age of 37. And five more empties were scattered about the room. A coroner's report stated his death was a result of pancreatic bleeding caused by acute alcoholism. It was a miserable, lonely end for a man who had created a product now in use by millions of people; a product that revolutionized computer data storage and made file transfers less complicated and more efficient.

Send your comments about this topic using the link provided below for it.Your enquiries are also welcome. Send it to tojeevan@gmail.com

Father of the Video Game Industry

Nolan Bushnell
Amazing Fact:Father of the Video Game Industry.
Country:United States of America.

I am sure that you are interested in computer games. Am i right? All the persons using computers also know about the various games and atleast played one in their life time. Did u ever think about the first computer game.?

The man who came with the idea of computer entertainment ?.

Todays the computer games are categorized to strategy games, simulator games, war games, race games, puzzling ones and fun games. And the games list start from the old grandfather pong (The first game) to nintendo wi and its continuing.

This time I would like to tell about the Father of Computer Entertainment. Nolan Bushnell.In his interview with Tenaya Scheinman he told that the spark was ignited in Mrs. Cook's 3rd grade class when he was assigned to do the unit on electricity and got to play with the science box. He worked in an amusement park as a teenager.

He was a very curious man who told that the other mentors throughout his education or life that helped him are :

“A fellow who was a ham radio operator down the street who taught me a lot about radios and electronics. I had my boss at the amusement park who taught me a tremendous amount about business. I had Dr. Evans at the University of Utah, who taught me a lot about computer graphics at a very early age. “

He founded the famous game entertainment company Atari in 1972 - still entertaining people all over the world with different games. He sold Atari in 1976 for $28 million.and the following year opened the first Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant, which combines fast food and electronic games and amusements. He sold that, too, and since has been involved in several projects and start-ups.

Next post gives you a nice, brief description of Nolan Bushnell and more pictures of the first pong. .wait for it.

The first programmer

Augusta Ada King
First computer programmer.
England.

We are all enjoying the websites,computer games.. and using the various applications for our needs in a computer. All these are written in a computer language...And there are lot of programmers (persons who write the programs using the computer languge) behind this enthusiastic webpages, and stunning computer games.Last blog i told you about the first computer programmer. Ada Lovelace.I think u got a good picture of her.

I have very good experiences over the web while searching for more details of lady ada.One interesting page in the internet showed me various images with good captions. A picture can tell more than words, and its true.So iwould like to show that images here...

PictureAbove:(1)Ada in infancy (2)Ada, aged about 19

Image below:(3)Ada, aged about 27

Image above:(4)Ada on her deathbed, sketched by her mother

You can check it :http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/PictDisplay/Lovelace.html

Augusta Ada

Augusta Ada King.

Amazing Fact:First computer programmer.

Country:England.

Ada Lovelace was best known as the first computer programmer. She was also known as Analyst, Metaphysician, and Founder of Scientific Computing.

August Ada Byron was born in London, England on December 10, 1815, the daughter of the illustrious poet, Lord Byron. Five weeks after Ada was born Lady Byron asked for a separation from Lord Byron. Ada never met her father (who died in Greece in 1823) and was raised by her mother, Lady Byron. One night, in November 1834, at a dinner party, Ada heard Babbage's ideas for a new calculating engine, the "Analytical Engine." In 1842, an Italian mathematician, Louis Menebrea, published a memoir in French on the subject of the Analytical Engine. Babbage enlisted Ada as translator for the memoir, and during a nine-month period in 1842-43, she worked feverishly on the article and a set of Notes she appended to it. These are the source of her enduring fame.

Published in 1843, Lady Lovelace's prescient comments included her predictions that such a machine might be used to compose complex music, to produce graphics, and would be used for both practical and scientific use. Her Notes anticipate future developments. Ada suggested to Babbage writing a plan for how the engine might calculate Bernoulli numbers. This plan is now regarded as the first "computer program."

A software language developed by the U.S. Department of Defense was named "Ada" in her honor in 1979.She died very young at the age of 37 of cancer in 1852 and was buried beside the father she never knew.

courtesy for pictures:http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/PictDisplay/Lovelace.htm

The Father of computers

Name:Charles Babbage

Amazing Fact:Inventor of The Difference Engine.

Country:England

Babbage is known for his ideas about building an "analytical engine", the predecessor of the digital computer. Although he never built his computer, his ideas influenced those who later carried out his ideas.

He is widely known as “The Father of computers”.

Charles Babbage was born in Teignmouth, Devonshire, England on December 26, 1792.the son of Benjamin Babbage, a London banker and Elizabeth teape. He attended Cambridge University. In the 1820's Babbage began developing his Difference Engine, a mechanical device that can perform simple mathematical calculations. Babbage was unable to complete it because of a lack of funding. During his working career he was a professor of mathematics at Cambridge university.In the 1830's Babbage began developing his Analytical Engine, which was designed to carry out more complicated calculations, but this device was never built.

Through out his life Babbage worked in many intellectual fields typical of his day and made contributions that would have assured his fame irrespective of the difference Engine and Analytical Engines.He died at his home in Dorset Street, London .on October 18, 1871.

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Father of computer

First of all...
I like to tell about the father of computer.
Charles Babbage...
wait for amazing details of Charles Babbage.

So many inventions...And somany inventors...

We are utilizing and enjoying its features,but not bothered about the actual background or cause of the new ideas.It is intersting to know the background of each and every inventions in IT field.
This page provides you that intersting information keep watching......
We welcome all interested ones to this page to know that exciting innovations.