[Wolves] Quiz Answers

[Ron Wellsted]

Here are the answers to the quiz I se the other week.
What was the major contribution to computing made by:

1/ Grace Hopper
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper is attributed with having written the first ever 
compiler, FLOW-MATIC (which latter evolved into COBOL) and discovered the 1st 
computer bug (a moth inside the UNIVAC)

http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/hopper.html
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Hopper.html

2/ Dennis Ritchie
aka dmr, wrote the first C compiler, assisted in the porting of Unix to C

http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/

3/ Gordon Eubanks
Wrote BASIC-E for CP/M, a public domain BASIC compiler, which became CBASIC 
and you had to pay for it (it had most of the BASIC-E bugs fixed).  CBASIC 
made some attempt at being a structured procedural language in an attempt to 
throw off the "spagetti code" approach that is typical of basic.  Now 
president of Symantec.

http://www.surferess.com/CEO/html/gordon_eubanks.html
http://www.vannattabros.com/history3.html

4/ Gary Kildall
Wrote CP/M, the first mass market OS for micro-computers.

http://www.cadigital.com/kildall.htm

5/ Phillipe Kahn
Founder of Borland, vendors of Turbo Pascal, the first low cost compiler for 
the PC which also had one of the first ever IDEs.

6/ Alan Turing
Often described as the father of computing (alongside Baise Pascal and Charles 
Babbage) he theorised most of the requirements for a computer (in general 
terms) in the 1930s-1940s.  Worked on code breaking at Bletchley Park during 
WWII.  Formulated the "Turing Test" for AI.

http://www.turing.org.uk

7/ Ken Thompson
Wrote Unix (in PDP7 assembler)

http://www.bell-labs.com/history/unix/thompsonbio.html

8/ Tommy Flowers MBE
The telephone engineer who worked with Alan Turing and built Colossus, the 
first true electronic computer.  As with most of the people who worked at 
Bletchley Park was not given any major recogintion of the importance his 
role.

http://www.redherring.com/mag/issue63/news-flowers.html

9/ Nicklaus Wirth
Designed the Pascal, Modula, Modula-2 and Oberon languages.  Developed the 
Lillth, one of the first computers to use a mouse together with windows, 
scroll bars, title bars, etc.

http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/~wirth/

10/ Gordon Moore
Founder of Intel and originator of Moores Law (is he intent on making sure it 
applies?)


Bonus Question:
 Who were the authors of awk?
Aho, Wienberger & Kernighan (as with most of the unix world the name is a pun,  
this could be the subject for a future quiz)

Well, those are the answers I am using.

By this measure Dan is the winner by a narrow margin. Collect your pint on 
Wednesday.


-- 
Ron Wellsted
http://www.wellsted.org.uk
ron@wellsted.org.uk