FREE COMPUTING HISTORY · 520 BCE–1316
Rules before machines
Notation, algorithms, cryptanalysis, and programmable sequences appear before electronic machines.
520 BCE–1316
Notation, algorithms, cryptanalysis, and programmable sequences appear before electronic machines.
- Pāṇini — Created the first known formal generative grammar.
- Euclid — Recorded the oldest non-trivial algorithm still used today.
- Archimedes — Developed large-number systems and principles of mechanical calculation.
- Heron of Alexandria — Designed programmable automata controlled by mechanical sequences.
- Brahmagupta — Formalized zero as a number and rules for negative arithmetic.
- al-Khwārizmī — Systematized algebraic procedures; his name became “algorithm.”
- Al-Kindi — Introduced frequency analysis, the first known cryptanalytic method.
- al-Jazarī — Built programmable automata and reconfigurable mechanical sequencers.
- Leonardo Fibonacci — Popularized Hindu-Arabic numerals in Europe through Liber Abaci.
- Ramon Llull — Imagined a combinatorial machine for mechanical reasoning.