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A 1965 prediction set the pace of the digital age.
Gordon Moore observed that the number of components on a chip was doubling about every year, later revised to every two years. The industry treated it as a target for decades.
Why it matters: It is why today's phone outperforms the supercomputers of the 1980s.
Cramming more components onto integrated circuits — Gordon Moore (1965)
Electronics, 19 April 1965
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A 1936 mathematics paper described computers before one existed.
Alan Turing imagined a simple machine reading and writing symbols on a tape by fixed rules, and showed it could carry out any calculation that can be done step by step.
Why it matters: Every phone and laptop is, in principle, this kind of machine.
On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem — Alan Turing (1936)
Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society
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The first published computer program was written for a machine that was never built.
In 1843 Ada Lovelace published notes on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, including step-by-step instructions to calculate Bernoulli numbers. She foresaw machines handling music and symbols, not just numbers.
Why it matters: She saw computing's real power: any information that can be represented can be processed.
Notes on the Analytical Engine (Note G) — Ada Lovelace (1843)
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