Claude Shannon (Master of Science, 1940, Doctor of Philosophy, 1940), a graduate student, put forward that the principle of truth and falsehood of logic can be equivalent to the on-off of switches in circuits. This concept later laid the foundation in the field of digital circuits and gave birth to the whole digital computing industry.
Vannevar Bush, a former professor at MIT, put forward a data system called Memex, which allows users to "store all their books, records and communications" and retrieve them at will. This concept gave birth to the early hypertext system and eventually led to the birth of the World Wide Web decades later.
The world's first digital computer that can run in real time was developed by "Cyclone Project" led by Jay forest (Master of Science, 1945). The purpose of this project is to develop a general flight simulator for the US Navy. The success of this computer directly led to the birth of 195 1 MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
Professor john mccarthy invented the world's first functional programming language LISP at MIT. Prior to this, due to the limitation of programming language, programmers could only write out the instruction codes that needed to be executed in each step, so it was difficult for computer programs to take care of multiple processes at the same time. Functional programming languages make it easier for them to describe the behaviors they need, so that they can solve much bigger problems than before.
Sam Asano Nagaakira (Master of Science, 196 1), a student at MIT, was once frustrated by one thing: he called a colleague with a strong accent, but he couldn't understand what the other person was saying. So, he wondered if it was possible to draw it directly and send it to each other in real time. So, he invented a technology that can transmit scanned materials through telephone lines. Later, he authorized this invention to a Japanese telecom company, which became popular all over the world.
When the electrical engineering department of MIT owned a PDP- 1 computer, a group of cunning people included Steven "Slug" Russell (English: 1960 undergraduate, 1966 electrical engineer) from the artificial intelligence team in Marvin Minsky. This space battle video game is very popular with early programmers and is considered to be the first multiplayer game in the world.
Now everyone has 13 passwords on average. In this regard, you can thank MIT for its compatible time-sharing system. It is generally believed that it is this system that introduced computer passwords for the first time in the world. "We want to build multiple terminals for multiple people to use, but everyone has their own set of private files." Fernando "Corby" Corbató (Ph.D., 1956), a professor at MIT, told Wired magazine: "Setting a password for each user like a lock seems to be a very obvious solution."
Nearly 50 years before the iPad came out, a doctoral student at MIT had put forward the idea of interacting directly with the computer screen. The sketchpad developed by ivan sutherland (doctor of philosophy, 1963) allows users to draw geometric shapes with a stylus, which is a precedent for computer-aided drawing. Facts have proved that this function is very important for architects, planners and even young children.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology first proposed time-sharing system. This system gave birth to UNIX and laid the foundation for many aspects of modern computer science, from hierarchical file system to buffer overflow security. Multics, led by Professor Kobato, pioneered the concept of turning computers into "practical facilities", which can be used at any time like electricity.
Margaret hamilton led a team from MIT to write the navigation and control system of Apollo 1 1. This system helped astronauts neil armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (1963 M.D.) successfully land on the moon. This powerful software overturned an instruction to switch the priority system of the flight computer to the radar system, and no mistakes were found in all previous manned Apollo missions.
The first email transmitted through the computer network was sent between two adjacent computers. This email came from ray Tomlinson (1965 graduate), who was working at the start-up company BBN Technologies. If you like or hate the symbol @, then this is the person you want to thank or blame. )
Butler lampson, a professor at MIT, was awarded the title of "Father of Modern Personal Computers" when he was working in the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) of Xerox. He developed the first desktop computer with graphical user interface (GUI), the first bitmap display and the first WYSIWYG editor using Xerox Alto.
RSA algorithm proposed by MIT professors Adi adi shamir, Ron Rivest and Leonard Aderman makes e-commerce possible. This algorithm uses the great difficulty of maximum integer decomposition to encrypt data. Who knows that math is the key to your last-minute shopping during the holiday shopping season?
One day in 1979, Dan Bricklin of Bob Frankston (1973 graduate) worked late into the night on the mainframe of MIT, created the first spreadsheet VisiCalc, and sold it in the first year. Three years later, Microsoft joined the battle through the "Multiplan" that later became Excel.
Long before Wi-Fi appeared, a network technology called Ethernet allowed devices to access the Internet by simply plugging in a network cable. Ethernet was invented by bob metcalfe (1968 graduate), a team member of the MAC project of MIT, and later he founded 3Com. It is Ethernet that helps the Internet develop into this fast and convenient platform.
Steve Kirsch (1980 graduate) is the first person to apply for the patent of optical computer mouse. He once wanted to make a "pointing device" with the most inaccurate moving parts. Then, he set up a mouse system company. He also applied for another patent, which can track the effect of online advertising by counting the number of clicks. )
Richard Stallman, an early programmer in AI Lab, became the main pioneer of hacker culture and free software movement through his GNU project, which aims to develop free software that can replace Unix OS and lay the foundation for Linux and other important computer innovations.
Radia Perlman (1973 graduate student, 1976 master of science, 1988 doctor of philosophy) hates being called "the mother of the internet", but the spanning tree protocol she developed is very important for computer networks whose data can span the whole world. She also created an educational programming language logo for children. )
After the invention of the Internet, Tim Berners Lee joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He formed an alliance to set global standards for building websites, browsers and devices. The functions of W3C standard include but are not limited to ensuring the accessibility, security and easy "crawling" of websites.
Barbara Liskov, a professor at MIT, put forward a paper on practical Byzantine fault tolerance, which helped to give birth to blockchain (a widely used encryption system). The protocol proposed by her team can handle a large number of transactions and uses some concepts that are crucial to many blockchain platforms today.
At present, we don't have any robots to run errands for us, but we do have robots that can vacuum. We would like to thank rodney brooks, Helen greiner (1989 undergraduate, 1990 master of science) and Colin Angel (1989 undergraduate, 199 1 science) for their concern in this matter. Today, iRobot has sold more than 20 million home robots, which also led to the birth of the robot cleaning industry.
Before Siri and Alexa appeared, Boris Katz, a professor at MIT, developed the application StartMobile. This application allows users to use natural language to arrange appointments, get information and perform other tasks.
Under the leadership of Anant Agvald, former director of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), MIT cooperated with Harvard University to develop an open source, non-profit online learning platform, which provides free learning courses and attracts more than 20 million learners around the world.
Boston Dynamics was founded by Marc Report (Ph.D., 1977) when he was a professor at MIT, and launched the humanoid robot Atlas, which was used to participate in the DARPA Robot Challenge aimed at developing disaster relief robots. The company's big dogs and spotted mini robots can crawl, run, jump and backflip.
Daniela La Luz is the director of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). She is a swallowable origami robot that can be unfolded from a capsule after swallowing. One day it will be able to use an external magnetic field to climb over your stomach wall, take out the swallowed battery, or put a band-aid on the wound.