The ongoing transformation of the Halle Freyssinet, in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, will be a huge incubator for start-up (one-thousand); this will also lead to the creation of new ways, which will, therefore, need a name. The mayor of the 13th, the socialist Jérôme Coumet, presented names for the four new ways of the future.
Grace Hopper in front of the computer UNIVAC, circa 1960
Smithsonian Institution/Wikimedia Commons/CC-by
first, Eugène Freyssinet (1879-1962), a tribute to the engineer who designed the building. The other three, in reference to the activity of the young shoots of the Hall, are all those personalities of computer science: Alan Turing, Steve Jobs and Grace Hopper.
The hope has been voted in the borough council, but with the voice of the right: the communist officials and environmentalists of the Left Front there are, in fact, opposed to it, and have it explained on their site: they disagree with the choice of Steve Jobs. On the one hand in the name of parity (their counter-proposal was to give the name of Ada Lovelace), and on the other hand “given the reality of the legacy he leaves”.
“Not a perfect man”
They mention the inadequate salaries and working conditions in the factories of sub-suppliers to Apple in China. In addition, “the legacy of Steve Jobs is also in the practice of tax optimization illegal massive, as revealed there are barely three months in the very liberal european commission. What are approximately 13 billion that Apple must pay today to offset the tax rate, outrageous 0.005% in Ireland.”
The mayor of the 13th has defended his choice by tweeting that Steve Jobs has changed our daily life in popularizing the computer, the mouse and the smartphone”.
But most importantly, Jérôme Coumet has also announced via Twitter that there will also be a street Ada Lovelace.
Alan Turing, a hero martyred and upgraded
beyond the controversy surrounding the choice of Steve Jobs, the other three names are a very beautiful new one, because they reflect a better recognition of remarkable personalities – and also to the fact that the computer (even free…) is not reserved for men !
Alan Turing (1912-1954) first, decidedly better known after decades of oblivion; in 2012, The World pointed out: “His brief career, however, has been enough to make it a pioneer and visionary in several fields of science: computer science, artificial intelligence and biology. The computer, the robots and the concept if thriving application (such as for cell phones), it should so much.”
The output in January 2015 the film “Imitation Game”, where Alan Turing is played by the excellent Benedict Cumberbatch (the Sherlock Holmes Twenty-first century of the TV series “Sherlock”, the recent “Doctor Strange” in the cinema, etc), has helped raise public awareness of this incredible character, to which the Allies must the decoding of the machines nazi Enigma. The victim of an act of unfair – the same that sent Oscar Wilde to jail and that led to the conviction of about 49,000 men, he was convicted for homosexuality and, after having suffered castration, chemical, ends up committing suicide. He has been “forgiven” (a shame…), posthumously, in 2013.
The roots of the computer
Grace Hopper (1906-1992) is at the origin of the first compiler in 1951, and the language of Cobol in 1959. She has served in the navy during the Second world War, and then worked at the computer laboratory of Harvard university, the computer Univac and IBM.
We owe him the success of a term that is still used (unfortunately, probably still for a long time), the bug: in the 40′s years at Harvard, a failure of the computer the Harvard Mark II was caused by a moth or a moth stuck in a relay. This “first discovery of a true bug” (“bug”, in English) was mentioned in the book the lab, which helped popularize the expression of a computer bug, which already existed.
Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) is a figure even more mythical beginnings of the computer, since it was designed before computers, the first computer program. This formalization was intended as the analytical engine of Babbage, forefather of the computer, which, completed, would market steam, with wheels and gears mechanical (which has not escaped many science-fiction writers, in the register of uchrony steampunk: if these devices had functioned since the Nineteenth century…).
The programming language Ada is named in tribute to this pioneer. Several events (recurring as Ada Lovelace Day in England, or one such as seminars, poses for a medal etc) and places, in Britain and in the United States especially, to commemorate Ada Lovelace.
read also
Where are the women? Always so little in the digital – to-march 8, 2016
Alan Turing, war hero and computer genius, soon to be “forgiven” for the posthumously – July 20, 2013
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