Charles Ranlett Flint

Founder of the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR), which later became IBM, Flint transformed the landscape of business computing. In 1868, Charles Flint graduated from the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn, and in 1871 entered the...

Thomas (Tommy) Harold Flowers

Designer of Colossus, the first programmable electronic computer, Flowers made one of the most significant contributions to wartime codebreaking. His first contact with the wartime codebreaking effort came when he was asked...

Charles Proteus Steinmetz

Fostering the development of alternating current that made possible the expansion of the electric power industry in the United States, Steinmetz was a mathematician and electrical engineer who formulated mathematical theories for...

Jan Aleksander Rajchman

Conceiver of the first read-only memory and developer of the selectively addressable storage tube, Rajchman was an American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. Although he was born in London, he received the...

Samuel Morland

Credited with early developments in relation to computing, hydraulics and steam power, Morland was a notable English academic, diplomat, spy, inventor and mathematician of the 17th century. He was educated at Winchester...

George Robert Stibitz

Recognized as one of the fathers of the modern digital computer for his work with Bell Labs in the 1930s and 1940s, Stibitz completed a relay-based calculator in November 1937 he dubbed...

Dorr Eugene Felt

Inventor of the Comptometer, the first commercially successful key-driven mechanical calculator, Felt built his first prototype during the US Thanksgiving holidays of 1884. Because of his limited amount of money, he used...

John Adam Presper Eckert, Jr.

Co-inventor of ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, Eckert was an American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. With John Mauchly, he presented the first course in computing topics (the Moore School...

Giovanni Caselli

Inventor of the pantelegraph (a.k.a. Universal Telegraph or "all-purpose telegraph"), the predecessor of the modern fax machine, Caselli put the world's first practical operating facsimile machine ("fax") system into use. Pantèlègraph is...

Joseph Henry

Inventor of the electromagnetic relay that formed the basis of the electrical telegraph, Henry was also the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and a founding member of the National Institute for...

Leonardo Torres y Quevedo

Pioneer in remote control technology, Torres y Quevedo developed the Telekino — a robot that executed commands transmitted by electromagnetic waves — presenting it at the Paris Academy of Science in 1903. A...

Philipp Matthäus Hahn

Designer of the first functional mechanical calculator, Hahn was born on 25th of November, 1739 in Scharnhausen, Esslingen, as the second of ten children in a family of a pastor. From 1749...

Paul Eisler

Inventor of the printed circuit board, Eisler forfeited rights to his invention when he neglected to read the contract before signing it. In 1941 Paul was able to engage Henderson and Spalding,...

Jerome Namias

Instrumental in ensuring that computer-generated forecasts resembled the real atmosphere for the numerical forecasting project using the supercomputer ENIAC at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, Namias was a U.S. meteorologist...

Fredrik Rosing Bull

Known for his works on improved punched card machines, Bull was an information technology pioneer. In 1907 he finished his studies in civil engineering at the Technical School of Kristiania (Kristiania Tekniske...

Francis (Frank) E. Hamilton

Responsible for the primary organization, design, and construction of the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Mark I) and the IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC), Hamilton was a pivotal figure in early computing....

Hedwig (Hedy) Eva Maria Lamarr (née Kiesler)

Co-inventor of an early technique for spread spectrum and frequency hopping, Lamarr paved the way for today's wireless communications. An Austrian actress and inventor, Lamarr was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. She was a...

Alexander Graham Bell

Inventor of the first practical telephone, Bell was also an eminent scientist, engineer, and innovator whose later work made groundbreaking contributions to optical telecommunications, hydrofoils, and aeronautics. Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had...

Henryk Zygalski

Designer of the "perforated sheets," also known as "Zygalski sheets," a manual device for finding Enigma settings, Zygalski was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who worked at breaking German Enigma ciphers before...

Wallace John Eckert

A part of the creation of the research division of IBM, Eckert directed the Thomas J. Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau at Columbia University, which evolved into that division.