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Physicists and the first computing revolution

Nature Reviews Physics volume 5, pages 434–436 (2023)Cite this article

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The noteworthy role physicists played in the computing revolutions triggered by the invention of the transistor, or the World Wide Web, is well known. But less so is their influential part in the early days of computing. This is the account of how physics and computing started a long-lasting affair — a story with unexpected parallels with the current revolution in AI.

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Fig. 1: IBM punch-card accounting machines used at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks N. Lewis for a very useful discussion and F. da Cruz for putting together the wealth of historical information in the Columbia University Computing History project, which prompted this piece.

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  1. Nature Reviews Physics https://www.nature.com/natrevphys/

    Iulia Georgescu

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  1. Iulia Georgescu
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Correspondence to Iulia Georgescu.

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Frank da Cruz, Columbia University Computing History: A Chronology of Computing at Columbia University: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/

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Georgescu, I. Physicists and the first computing revolution. Nat Rev Phys 5, 434–436 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-023-00614-y

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