Who started the information age?
You’ve probably never heard of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, but his should be a household name
hen did the information age
begin? One might point to the winter of 1943, when British engineers started
using a room-sized machine dubbed “Colossus,” the world’s first electronic
digital programmable computer, to break Nazi codes during World War II. Or
perhaps it was February 1946, when the U.S. Army unveiled the faster, more flexible
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (aka ENIAC) at the University of
Pennsylvania. History buffs may push it back further, perhaps bringing up key
19th-century figures like Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, who pioneered
programmable calculating machines in Victorian England.
But we should look back even
earlier, to the work of a towering but often overlooked intellect — to
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the German philosopher and polymath who died 300
years ago this month (on Nov. 14, 1716). Though you may not have heard of him,
Mr. Leibniz was a man who envisioned the systems and machines that would define
the digital revolution.
Regards
Pralhad Jadhav
Senior Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
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