Father of PC has passed away.

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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on April 2, 2010 at 16:56

Oh, that PC! For one mad moment, Peter, I thought Political Correctness had died with him.

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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on April 2, 2010 at 19:57

When I read elsewhere that the father of "computing" had (just) died, this did not compute. Because the father of computing is generally regarded as Dr Alan Turing who laid the groundwork for an electronic computer to crack codes at Bletchley Park during the war.

All the fathers of computing have stood on the shoulders of giants and Dr. Roberts was another.

Many of Apple's ideas came from Xerox PARC. Where would modern computing be without the micro processor or big hard drives? The micro processor would not have had its start without orders from the military (for missile guidance) – and that goes for the Internet as well: which began as ARPANET, designed better to co-ordinate a response after a Soviet first strike.

Even that mother' of computing, Bill Gates – who has contributed little on the technical side, having copied or stolen almost all his ideas from elsewhere – has made an enormous contribution to computing by developing a huge market and lowering the costs for the benefit of all.

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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on April 2, 2010 at 20:38

Wot, no mention of poor Charlie Babbage?

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Permalink Reply by W Seymour on April 2, 2010 at 20:48

What about poor George Boole ? He never gets credit. Think the title referred specifically to the Personal Computer though.

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