🎧 The First Computer Program
🎧 Patented: History of Inventions • 28m
This is the story of the first modern computer program and the extraordinary woman who wrote it, Klara von Neumann.
The program Klara wrote was a list of numbers eight hundred odd lines long. Gibberish to look at now but to the room-sized computer she was working with, it translated into a sophisticated set of instructions telling it how to map out the path neutrons would take inside nuclear bombs.
To mark International Women’s Day we’re going in search of Klara von Neumann and giving her the recognition she so richly deserves.
Dallas’s guest to make this happen is Ananyo Bhattacharya. Ananyo wrote a wonderful book about John von Neumann called The Man from the Future and has championed Klara and her work.
Edited by Stuart Beckwith, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.
Up Next in 🎧 Patented: History of Inventions
-
🎧 Keyboards
The keyboard on the first ever commercially successful typewriter and the keyboard on your smartphone are separated by a gulf of time and technology. Yet their layout is essentially the same (plus or minus a few new buttons along the way).
Who invented the QWERTY keyboard layout and why hasn’t i...
-
🎧 Filing Cabinets
It’s perhaps the most overlooked invention of all time. Consigned to a forgotten corner in the basement of history. The Filing Cabinet.
Yet the humble Filing Cabinet was at the centre of an information revolution and became critical to the infrastructure of 20th century nation states and busines...
-
🎧 Instant Noodles
In the year 2000 Japan was asked what its greatest invention of the twentieth century was. They had a LOT to choose from. The Walkman. The bullet train. Digital Cameras. Pokemon. But the winner wasInstant Noodles.
Today Dallas learns about Momofuku Ando, the inventor-cum-tax-evader who invented ...
