CS timeline voting: the results are in!
Thursday, April 28th, 2011The top ten:
1. Euclid’s Elements: 116 votes
2. Turing’s “On Computable Numbers”: 110 votes
3. Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem: 107 votes
4. Gödel’s P vs. NP Letter to von Neumann: 106 votes
5. George Boole’s Logic: 88 votes
6. Shor’s Algorithm: 88 votes
7. Wikipedia: 85 votes
8. Claude Shannon’s Digital Logic: 82 votes
9. PRIMES in P: 82 votes
10. Cook-Levin Theorem: 80 votes
The rest:
Al-Khwarizmi’s “On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals”: 79 votes
Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley Invent Transistor: 79 votes
Babbage’s Analytical Engine: 77 votes
Tim Berners-Lee Invents WWW: 75 votes
Fast Fourier Transform: 73 votes
Brin and Page Create Google: 73 votes
von Neumann Architecture: 71 votes
RSA: 70 votes
Hilbert Calls for Mechanization of Mathematical Reasoning: 69 votes
Simplex Algorithm: 69 votes
Claude Shannon Formalizes Cryptography: 68 votes
Dijkstra’s Algorithm: 68 votes
Gaussian Elimination Described in Ancient China: 67 votes
Quicksort: 65 votes
UNIX and C: 65 votes
Newton’s Method: 64 votes
Leibniz Describes Binary Notation, Calculus Ratiocinator: 64 votes
First Program written by Ada Lovelace: 64 votes
Gauss’s Disquisitiones Arithmeticae: 62 votes
Monte Carlo Method: 62 votes
“Bit” Coined: 62 votes
TeX Typesetting: 62 votes
Ginsparg Creates arXiv: 61 votes
Kleene Invents Regular Expressions: 61 votes
McCarthy Invents LISP: 59 votes
“The Art of Computer Programming”: 59 votes
TCP/IP Protocol: 58 votes
Strassen’s Algorithm: 58 votes
PCP Theorem: 56 votes
Turing Test: 55 votes
Randomized Primality Testing: 55 votes
IP=PSPACE: 55 votes
Scott and Rabin’s Paper on Nondeterminism: 54 votes
Jacquard Loom: 54 votes
Colossus Begins Operation at Bletchley Park: 53 votes
Integrated Circuit: 53 votes
Chomsky Hierarchy: 52 votes
Pascal Builds Arithmetic Machine: 51 votes
First Genome Sequenced: 51 votes
Reed-Solomon Codes: 50 votes
Time Hierarchy Theorem: 50 votes
ARPAnet: 49 votes
Four Color Map Theorem Proved: 49 votes
Linux: 49 votes
Diophantine Equations Proved Undecidable: 46 votes
Feynman Suggests Quantum Computing: 46 votes
Deep Blue Defeats Kasparov: 46 votes
Solomonoff-Kolmogorov-Chaitin Complexity: 44 votes
Lempel-Ziv Data Compression: 43 votes
GPS: 42 votes
Marian Rejewski’s “Bombe” + Alan Turing’s Improvements: 41 votes
Diffie-Hellman Public Key Exchange Protocol: 41 votes
Zuse’s Z1: 40 votes
Viterbi Algorithm: 40 votes
First Email Message: 38 votes
Pseudorandom Generators: 37 votes
Oughtred Invents Slide Rule: 36 votes
FORTRAN: 36 votes
ENIAC: 35 votes
Semaphores: 35 votes
Gottlob Frege’s “Begriffsschrift”: 34 votes
Grace Murray Hopper Creates A-O Compiler: 34 votes
Conway’s Game of Life: 34 votes
Xerox Parc’s Alto With First GUI: 33 votes
Kuttaka Algorithm from Ancient India: 32 votes
Scientific Computing During Manhattan Project: 30 votes
Wilkes, Wheeler, and Gill Define Closed Subroutines: 29 votes
Stroustrup creates C++: 28 votes
Zimmermann creates PGP: 28 votes
Dartmouth Conference Popularizes Term “AI”: 27 votes
Moore’s Law: 27 votes
Boosting in Machine Learning: 27 votes
Codd Proposes Relational Databases: 26 votes
Ethernet Invented: 26 votes
Valiant Proposes PAC-Learning: 26 votes
Stallman Writes GNU Manifesto: 25 votes
Wiesner Proposes Quantum Money and Multiplexing: 24 votes
Antikythera Mechanism: 23 votes
BitTorrent: 23 votes
Low-Density Parity Check Codes: 23 votes
McCulloch and Pitts’ “A Logical Calculus Immanent in Nervous Activity”: 22 votes
Engelbart and English Invent Mouse: 22 votes
Dijkstra’s “Go To Statement Considered Harmful”: 22 votes
Back-Propagation: 22 votes
MIT SAGE Creates First Large-Scale Computer Network: 21 votes
Vannevar Bush Creates First Large-Scale Analog Calculator: 20 votes
IBM Introduces Hard Drive: 20 votes
Checkers Solved: 20 votes
First Packet-Switching Network: 20 votes
Atanasoff and Berry’s Vaccum-tube Computer: 19 votes
Vannevar Bush’s “As We May Think”: 19 votes
Hollerith’s Electromechanical Counting Machine: 18 votes
MIT Builds First Time-Sharing System: 18 votes
First Computer Virus: 18 votes
IEEE Floating-Point Standard: 18 votes
IBM PC: 18 votes
“Spacewar!”, First Computer Game: 17 votes
RISC Architecture: 17 votes
Intel’s 8086: 17 votes
al-Jazari’s Water Clocks and Musical Automata: 17 votes
Edward Lorenz (Re)discovers Chaos Theory: 16 votes
Apollo Guidance Computer: 16 votes
CAPTCHAs: 16 votes
VC Dimension: 16 votes
Macsyma Computer Algebra System: 15 votes
Amazon.com: 15 votes
UNIVAC I: 13 votes
DaVinci Surgical Robot: 13 votes
Mark II Incident Popularizes Word “Bug”: 12 votes
Weizenbaum Creates ELIZA: 12 votes
ASCII: 11 votes
TI Handheld Calculator: 11 votes
Simula 67: 11 votes
MIT Whirlwind I Displays Graphics: 10 votes
Sketchpad, First CAD Software: 10 votes
NCSA Mosaic: 10 votes
Robert Morris’ Computer Worm: 9 votes
Pixar Releases “Toy Story”: 9 votes
Stuxnet Worm: 9 votes
IBM System/360: 8 votes
Mac Hack Chess Program: 7 votes
Microsoft Windows: 7 votes
Sojourner on Mars: 7 votes
BASIC: 6 votes
Apple Macintosh: 6 votes
SETI@home: 6 votes
IBM’s Watson Wins At Jeopardy!: 5 votes
Atari’s Pong: 4 votes
Atlas Computer in Manchester: 4 votes
Norbert Wiener Founds Cybernetics: 3 votes
First ATM in Tokyo: 3 votes
Youtube Launched: 3 votes
VisiCalc: 2 votes
Jevon’s Logic Piano: 1 vote
Apple II: 1 vote
Adobe PostScript: 1 vote
SABRE Travel Reservation System: 0 votes
Fischer-Lynch-Paterson Theorem: 0 votes
Facebook, Twitter Use in Egypt Revolution: 0 votes
First Machine Translation Demonstration: -1 vote
Usenet: -1 vote
Akamai: -2 votes
TX-0: -3 votes
CDC 6600: -3 votes
Compact Disc Invented: -3 votes
Aiken’s Mark I: -4 votes
CM-1 Connection Machine: -4 votes
Whirlwind I Displays Graphics: -5 votes
Floppy Disk Invented: -6 votes
MITS Altair Microcomputer and Microsoft BASIC: -6 votes
Axelrod’s “The Evolution of Cooperation”: -7 votes
Microsoft Office: -7 votes
Pentium FDIV Bug: -7 votes
EDSAC: -8 votes
UNIMATE, First Industrial Robot: -9 votes
CLU Programming Language: -9 votes
1ESS Switching System: -11 votes
UNIVAC Predicts Presidential Election: -12 votes
Stanford Arm: -13 votes
“2001 A Space Odyssey” Introduces HAL: -15 votes
“Spam” Coined: -16 votes
First Denial-of-Service Attack: -17 votes
Y2K Bug: -18 votes
Facebook Launched: -18 votes
Nintendo’s Donkey Kong: -19 votes
“Robot” Coined: -21 votes
CSIRAC -21
Apple’s iPhone: -21 votes
Slashdot: -27 votes
Godwin’s Law: -29 votes
Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics: -32 votes
Match.com: -34 votes
de Vaucanson’s Mechanical Duck: -39 votes
von Kempelen’s Mechanical Turk: -52 votes
A few comments:
- It’s (just-barely) conceivable that the results could have been slightly skewed by the quantum- and complexity-loving readership of this blog.
- Voters really didn’t like fiction/pop-culture references, mechanical contrivances, or anything that sounded like a publicity stunt. They were much keener on conceptual advances (even to the extent of putting Gödel well ahead of the transistor).
I need to catch a plane to give the Buhl Lecture at Carnegie Mellon tomorrow, so I’ll leave you to draw any further conclusions.