_README.template

# Computing History

A personal project on putting knowledge about history of computing into perspective.

> “To teach a subject without the history of how it happened is to reduce
> knowledge to a mere consumer product.”

‒ [Neil Postman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Postman)

# Timeline

 - Universe age: 13.7 billion years (The Big Bang)
 - Earth age: 4.45 billion years
 - First life on Earth: 4 billion years ago
 - First plants: 1.3 billion years ago
 - First birds: 150 million years ago
 - First Homo sapiens: 250,000 years ago
 - First cave paintings: 32,000 years
 - First cities: 8,800 years ago
 - Invention of the wheel, writing: 5,500 years ago
 - Printing press: 540 years ago
 - Scientific revolution: 450 years ago
 - Fossil fuel revolution (coal, trains): 180 years ago
 - Telephone: 130 years ago
 - [Alan Turing's](people/alan-turing.md) seminal paper: 85 years ago (1936)
 - Term "bit" coined by [Claude Shannon](people/claude-shannon.md): 71 years ago (1948)
 - Term "software" coined by John Tukey: 61 years ago (1958)
 - Term ["computer science"](http://archive.fo/JrSwK): 60 years ago (1959)
 - Term ["software engineering"](http://archive.is/UtWMo): 50 years ago (1968)
 - First 4 node ARPANET: 50 yeas ago (5 December 1969)
 - Early Internet (TCP/IP as [main protocol in ARPANET](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET#Software_and_protocols)): 40 years ago (1983)
 - Public commercial use of Internet: 30 years ago (1990)

[Source](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/timeline.html)

# People

 period    | name
---------- | --------------{{range .}}
 {{.Period}}     | [{{.Name}}]({{.File}}){{end}}

<details>

To update README and table above.
`$ go run gen-readme.go people/*.md > README.md`
</details>


# License

[CC BY-NC-SA 4.0](./LICENSE)