Technical Marvels, Part 7: Musical Clocks and Organs
Many clocks, automaton figures, furniture, and jewelry have built-in musical mechanisms.
Computer History
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Technical Marvels, Part 6: Musical Automatons
Music automatons range from singing birds and music boxes to barrel organs and self-playing pianos.
Introducing the distinction between a programmer and a coder made the idea of automatic coding more appealing.
Technical Marvels, Part 5: Chess Automatons
Chess has been a touchstone for artificial intelligence.
A recounting of the past half-century of database technology.
Technical Marvels, Part 4: Leonardo da Vinci’s Robots
Polymath Leonardo da Vinci designed a wide range of machines and instruments over 500 years ago.
Free and Open Source Software–and Other Market Failures
Computing has scientific roots, and if it is not open source, it is not science.
Technical Marvels, Part 3: The Yupana
Yupanas were not only calculating devices, they were possibly also used as architectural models for urban planning.
Technical Marvels, Part 2: Lebombo and Ishango Bones
A look at some of the earliest mathematical instruments.
Charles Babbage’s code sketches were the first attempt to specify how to mechanize complex algorithms with a computer.
This series presents selected technical marvels from the fields of computing technology, mathematics, astronomy, surveying, time measurement, looms and automatons (automaton figures, chess-playing machines, musical automatons, automaton writers, drawing automatons, automaton clocks, picture clocks, globes, historical robots). The examples are largely from the 15th to 20th centuries and do not claim to be exhaustive. In […]
The overriding philosophy of computing pioneer Niklaus Wirth, who died on January 1, 2024, was that systems should be simple, efficient, and “elegant.”
What Do Computing and Economics Have to Say to Each Other?
Computing is huge! Pay attention to optimistic economists.
Niklaus Wirth and Beyond: Safeguarding the Intellectual Heritage of Computing
On preserving the memory, and work documentation, of the founders of computer science.
Shape the Future of Computing
ACM encourages its members to take a direct hand in shaping the future of the association. There are more ways than ever to get involved.
Get InvolvedCommunications of the ACM (CACM) is now a fully Open Access publication.
By opening CACM to the world, we hope to increase engagement among the broader computer science community and encourage non-members to discover the rich resources ACM has to offer.
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