Word: allowing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Presper Eckert, held the unchallenged title of inventors of the modern computer--until an obscure physicist named John Atanasoff came forth to dispute their claims. In the late 1930s, while teaching at Iowa State College, he and a graduate student named Clifford Bell began building a device that would allow them to solve large linear algebraic equations. Their machine, later called ABC (for Atanasoff Berry Computer), incorporated a number of novel features, including the separation of data processing from memory, and relied on binary numbers instead of ENIAC's clumsier decimal arithmetic. But Atanasoff was called away...
...became obsessed with computing. Von Neumann's vision for the machines went beyond the rote arithmetic tasks for which they were originally designed. In his idealized computer, the same memory units that held data items, such as numbers or text, also held the step-by-step instructions that would allow the machine to be programmed to perform any task. Von Neumann persuaded the I.A.S.'s somewhat skeptical board of trustees to allocate $100,000--quite a sum in 1945--to build the MANIAC, the first in a series of early Von Neumann machines that included the JOHNNIAC (at Argonne National...
...that if he hoped to launch a missile very far, he could never do it with the poor black powder that had long been the stuff of rocketry. Instead, he would need something with real propulsive oomph--a liquid like kerosene or liquid hydrogen, mixed with liquid oxygen to allow combustion to take place in the airless environment of space. Fill a missile with that kind of fuel, and you could retire black powder for good...
...democracies still slept, Nazi Germany would have won a long lead toward building an atom bomb. In compensation, Fermi made the most important discovery of his life, that slowing neutrons by passing them through a light-element "moderator" such as paraffin increased their effectiveness, a finding that would allow releasing nuclear energy in a reactor...
...family moved to a ranch in Rigby, Idaho, which was four miles from the nearest high school, thus necessitating his daily horseback rides. Because he was intrigued with the electron and electricity, he persuaded his chemistry teacher, Justin Tolman, to give him special instruction and to allow him to audit a senior course. You could read about great scientists from now until the 22nd century and not find another instance where one of them celebrates a high school teacher. But Farnsworth did, crediting Tolman with providing inspiration and essential knowledge...