Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Gil Press writes about technology, entrepreneurs and innovation. 1905 Albert Einstein explains the photoelectric effect—shining ...

On May 7, 1981, influential physicist Richard Feynman gave a keynote speech at Caltech. Feynman opened his talk by politely rejecting the very notion of a keynote speech, instead saying that he had ...

Inspired by A New History of Modern Computing by Thomas Haigh and Paul E. Ceruzzi. But the selection of key events in the journey from ENIAC to Tesla, from Data Processing to Big Data, is mine. This ...

Although quantum computing is a nascent field, there are plenty of key moments that defined it over the last few decades as scientists strive to create machines that can solve impossible problems.

In 1979, two M.I.T. computer-science alumni and a Harvard Business School graduate launched a new piece of computer software for the Apple II machine, an early home computer. Called VisiCalc, short ...

The first electronic computer was built during the 1940s by John Vincent Atanasoff, a professor of physics and mathematics at Iowa State University, and one of his students, Clifford E. Berry. But the ...

Scientists are harnessing the alternative physics of the quantum realm to create computers of unprecedented power, potentially revolutionizing fields from drug discovery to climate modeling. Quantum ...

In 2014, Stanford historian Thomas Mullaney placed a call he had been waiting to make for a decade. The woman who picked up, Lois Lew, was a Chinese-American who had spent most of her life running a ...

In 1960, Albin Vareha was a physics major at the Carnegie Institute of Technology when he heard about a class on a new subject called “computer programming.” He gave it a try. Katherine Barbera and ...

Now in its third year, the College of Computing is on an upward trajectory. Student enrollment is up appreciably and other key indicators confirm that the upward trend will continue. In this ...