The Ada Programming Language manual is released and Jack Kilby is awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. All on today’s On This Day from TEST Huddle.
1980 – Ada Programming Language
On This day in 1980 the Military Standard reference manual for the Ada programming language is released on the anniversary of Ada Lovelace’s birthday. Named after the woman who is credited as being one of the key initiators of scientific computing. The Ada manual is given the number MIL-STD-1815 in honour of Ada Lovelace’s birth year. On it’s release Ada is touted as the language in which all U.S. Defence Department programs will be written in the future, though it will never quite achieve that level of prevalence.
2000 – Jack Kilby awarded Nobel Prize
In Stockholm, Jack S. Kilby is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the microchip. While working for Texas Instruments, Jack Kilby invented the microchip by intergration; building the components of transistors, resistors and capiacitors within a thin chip of crystal. He had more than sixty patents while working for Texas Instruments including the hand-held calculator and the thermal printer. Zhores Alferov of Russia and Herbert Kroemer of the University of Calfornia, Santa Barbara also share the prize for their work on heterostructure semiconductors.
Images: Wikipedia
