Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education

From	Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.c
Subject	Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education
Date	2016-07-31 22:15 -0600
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<1b1t29rupi.fsf@pfeifferfamily.net> (permalink)
References	(1 earlier) <MPG.32078f2c5e0554698a408@news.eternal-september.org> <kfninvlmw9b.fsf@x-alumni2.alumni.caltech.edu> <nnlopb$n8j$1@jstuckle.eternal-september.org> <1b8twhsa4w.fsf@pfeifferfamily.net> <nnm8cl$3sv$1@jstuckle.eternal-september.org>

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Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> writes:

> On 7/31/2016 6:41 PM, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
>> Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> writes:
>> 
>>> On 7/31/2016 3:40 PM, Tim Rentsch wrote:
>>>> "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> In article <nl966b$c57$1@dont-email.me>, nospam@nspam.invalid says...
>>>>>
>>>>>>     I was told that DMR' thesis was in "recursive functions".  Now I've
>>>>>> always assumed maybe being wrong that back then this may have been a
>>>>>> mathematics recursive functions and he was a Mathematician.  Does anyone know
>>>>>> if his PhD was mathematics or computer science?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Bill
>>>>>
>>>>> There's an interview that addresses this a little bit at
>>>>> <https://www.princeton.edu/~hos/mike/transcripts/ritchie.htm>.
>>>>>
>>>>> Remember, though, this was Harvard, where the computer as we know it was
>>>>> _invented_.  They were _doing_ what we now call "computer science" long
>>>>> before there was a name for it.
>>>>
>>>> I thought the computer as we know it was invented at the University
>>>> of Pennsylvania and the group at the Institute for Advanced Studies.
>>>> There were several precursors, including the Harvard Mark I, but
>>>> they are not computers as we know them today.  In particular, IIUC,
>>>> the Harvard Mark I was not Turing complete.
>>>>
>>>> I don't mean to trivialize the contribution of the group at Harvard,
>>>> which was substantial, but I don't think they invented the computer
>>>> as we know it today.  John von Neumann, who played a role in both
>>>> the UPenn and IAS groups, attributed the key concept to Turing's 1936
>>>> paper.  Note that Turing spent almost two years at Princeton right
>>>> around that time, next to von Neumann at the IAS.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Actually, it was at Iowa State University -
>>> http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000984.htm.
>> 
>> The ABC was farther from the computer as we know it than the Harvard
>> machines.
>> 
>
> So?  It was close enough that Atanasoff was awarded the patent for
> computers.

No, he wasn't.  The Eckert-Mauchly patent for computers 
(https://www.google.com/patents/US3120606) was invalidated
on the basis of his work among other things, which is a very different
statement.

> And it was the precursor to existing computers.  It
> implemented many of the ideas implemented in today's computers.

Nobody is arguing it wasn't (well, "the" instead of "a" is worthy of
argument.  And nobody is arguing Babbage's work wasn't a precursor,
either).

While his work was certainly a valuable step (note that I'm
not arguing this point at all) it didn't have the crucial step of a
stored program that's needed to have a computer in anything like we mean
the term today.

Thread

Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2016-07-31 05:30 -0400
  Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Tim Rentsch <txr@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2016-07-31 12:40 -0700
    Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-07-31 16:58 -0400
      Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Tim Rentsch <txr@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2016-07-31 15:13 -0700
        Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-07-31 21:21 -0400
          Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Tim Rentsch <txr@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2016-08-01 08:12 -0700
      Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-07-31 16:41 -0600
        Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-07-31 21:24 -0400
          Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-07-31 22:15 -0600
            Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-08-01 09:38 -0400
              Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-08-01 10:18 -0600
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-08-01 16:22 -0400
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-08-01 15:05 -0600
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-08-04 14:01 -0400
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-08-04 12:22 -0600
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-08-04 16:47 -0400
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education "Osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> - 2016-08-04 14:22 -0500
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-08-04 16:52 -0400
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education "Osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> - 2016-08-04 16:10 -0500
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2016-08-04 20:30 -0400
    Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education luser droog <luser.droog@gmail.com> - 2016-07-31 18:20 -0700
    Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Gareth Owen <gwowen@gmail.com> - 2016-08-01 19:52 +0100
      Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education supercat@casperkitty.com - 2016-08-01 15:25 -0700
        Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-08-01 16:38 -0600
          Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education supercat@casperkitty.com - 2016-08-01 15:56 -0700
            Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-08-01 17:41 -0600
            Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Gareth Owen <gwowen@gmail.com> - 2016-08-02 06:22 +0100
      Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Tim Rentsch <txr@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2016-08-01 16:48 -0700
        Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Gareth Owen <gwowen@gmail.com> - 2016-08-02 06:27 +0100
          Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-08-02 08:42 -0600
            Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2016-08-02 16:28 +0100
              Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2016-08-02 11:15 -0600
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2016-08-02 19:37 +0100
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education supercat@casperkitty.com - 2016-08-02 12:08 -0700
                Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2016-08-02 22:40 +0100
          Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Tim Rentsch <txr@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2016-08-03 06:57 -0700
          Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2016-10-30 09:06 -0400
            Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education supercat@casperkitty.com - 2016-10-30 12:42 -0700
            Re: [OT] Denis Ritchie Education Gareth Owen <gwowen@gmail.com> - 2016-10-31 18:12 +0000

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