The 10 Most Important Computer Documents You've Never Seen

The 10 Most Important Computer

Documents You’ve Never Seen

1945: John von Neumann,“First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC"

The first published description of the logical design of a computer using the stored-program concept.

# 1

While Hopper did not actually find the first known computer bug–machine operators removed the moth and attached it to the log–she was the first to document its discovery.

1947: Grace Hopper,Harvard Mark II Log Book Entry

# 2

One of the earliest extant letters in which Turing discusses artificial intelligence (what he called machine intelligence) and the number of brain neurons.

1948: Alan Turing,Correspondence Written to Jack Good

# 3

“Sandy” Douglas’s Ph.D. thesis, written while he was a student at the University of Cambridge, was the origin of the first computer game, a version of tic-tac-toe called OXO.

1954: Alexander Shafto Douglas,“Some Computations in Theoretical Physics”

# 4

Price’s article in the June 1959 issue of Scientific American described the Antikythera Mechanism, created around 80 BC and now believed to be the world’s oldest analog computer.

1959: Derek J. de Solla Price,"An Ancient Greek Computer"

# 5

The first email message will forever remain undocumented because creator Ray Tomlinson, not realizing its importance at the time, neglected to save a copy.

1971: Ray Tomlinson,“Something Like ‘QWERTYUIOP’"

# 6

Microsoft’s initial product, software that was written expressly to run on MITS’s Altair (and the later subject of a lengthy court battle over who owned the rights to the program).

1975: Bill Gates and Paul Allen,Title Page of the Code for Altair BASIC

# 7

The conception of the Internet, a proposal that Berners-Lee’s advisor at CERN called “vague but exciting.”

1989: Tim Berners-Lee,“Information Management: A Proposal"

# 8

The first page to be edited on Wikipedia, the website that has forever altered the way we gather, edit and research information–and is the bane of many a professor.

2001: Jimmy Wales,Wikipedia: UuU

# 9

This decision focused on warrantless cell phone searches by police but almost certainly will apply to other computer devices and have a monumental impact on data privacy.

2013: United States Supreme Court,“RILEY v. CALIFORNIA"

# 10

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2015: Bonus Document,The Windward Template

# 11

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