How Military Tech Changed IT: A Memorial Day Retrospective
In honor of Memorial Day, we laud the IT technology the military helped develop.
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Happy Memorial Day from a grateful InformationWeek staff. IT has always been a major part of the military. In fact, you could make the case that the military invented Information Technology. The military certainly pioneered some of the most important breakthroughs in IT.
Originally, I envisioned this as a tribute to individual service men and women who helped pioneer IT. But I came across two problems with that. First, the use of civilian contractors in some cases made it difficult to tell which person within or outside the military deserved credit. Second, individual credit isn't high on the list of military priorities. They like to tell the story of teams. To honor that, it seemed better to think of the achievements of the military as a whole, rather than specific people (though there is one I chose to single out). As in all areas of the military, there are simply more heroes than possible to name.
Whether you are talking about code-breaking and intelligence efforts, or the realization that large-scale operations required the gathering, storage, and retrieval of massive amount of intelligence data, the military has been looking for ways to harness information since before the computer.
When veterans returned from World War II and took jobs in the private sector, they brought what they had learned about management, the need for intelligence data, and basic information organization to their new jobs. Meanwhile, the military kept funding computers that would eventually find their first private-sector customers among these veterans who knew the value of data.
In honor of Memorial Day and the service of our veterans, let's see how the military pioneered IT for us all. Once you've checked out our list, share your comments. And if you are, or have been, in the military, we humbly thank you for your service.
The world's first general-purpose electronic computer, ENIAC was first used by the military to better aim artillery. It would later be used to determine if the hydrogen bomb was feasible. ENIAC spawned a family tree that includes nearly every mainframe computer ever. Without ENIAC, there would have been no such thing as IT.
Where would IT be without IBM? And IBM might still be making typewriters if it weren't for its first commercial computer, the IBM 701, also known as the IBM Defense Calculator. It featured the world's first magnetic tape unit.
One of the great pioneers of computing, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, was known as "Amazing Grace." She left her job as an instructor at Vassar to join the Navy Reserve and was assigned as a programmer on the Harvard Mark I, a computer instrumental in the Manhattan Project. As part of this research, she created the world's first compiler for computer languages. To my knowledge, she is the only person in the world with a Naval Ship and a supercomputer named after her. She has so many contributions she rates a second page …
As much as she did for hardware, Hopper did more for software. Hopper invented COBOL and was instrumental in the idea that computer languages should be designed to be more like written language and less like machine code. She invented the term "bug" regarding computer programs when an actual moth flew into the machine. Hopper eventually retired as a Rear Admiral.
Whirlwind was the first digital electronic computer and was the first computer to use random access memory. It was used for air defense when attached to radar systems, and is largely considered the father of minicomputers of the 1960s.
The first Cray was installed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (where the Manhattan Project was) in 1976. Cray not only changed computing (and supercomputing), but in a way made big data possible. Used to simulate high-energy physics environments (read nuclear fission), the Cray has been used by the Department of Energy and for military-oriented jobs.
The world's first Internet, ARPAnet is the military network that eventually led to the World Wide Web. Based on packet switching and other protocols now familiar to the Internet such as TCP/IP, ARPAnet would give us everything from email to file transfers, to early versions of VoIP, and would eventually open the door to a world taken over by cat videos.
Sure, some of these tech breakthroughs were funded, rather than invented, by the military. Some were invented entirely by "civilians." Yet, from the first basic computers to modern storage techniques, to the Internet, the foundation of IT is backed, and at least partially created, by the military. A tip of the cap to the folks in uniform, past and present. We owe our jobs, and our liberty, to them.
Sure, some of these tech breakthroughs were funded, rather than invented, by the military. Some were invented entirely by "civilians." Yet, from the first basic computers to modern storage techniques, to the Internet, the foundation of IT is backed, and at least partially created, by the military. A tip of the cap to the folks in uniform, past and present. We owe our jobs, and our liberty, to them.
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