Founders and Inventors: Computers


This post lists the brilliant computer scientists/developers and founders, their innovations and discoveries in the field of the computer hardware and software development.

Inventors of Computer Hardware 

  • Inventor of CD-ROM – James Russell (1965).
  • Inventor of Floppy Disk – Alan Shugart & IBM (1970).
  • Inventor/ Designer of First Apple Computer – Steve Wozniak (1976).
  • Inventor of First General-purpose Computer (IBM 701) – Cuthbert Hurd.
  • Inventor of First Electrical Binary Programmable Computer (Z series)  – Konrad Zuse (1936).
  • Inventor of First Fully Electronic Digital Computer (Atanasoff-Berry Computer, ABC)  –  John Vincent Atanasoff & Clifford Berry (1942).
  • Inventor of First Electronic General-purpose Digital Computer (ENIAC) – J. Presper Eckert & John Mauchly (1946).
  • Inventor of Hard Disk – IBM (The IBM Model 350 Disk File, 1956).
  • Inventor of Integrated Circuits – Jack Kilby & Robert Noyce (1958).
  • Inventor of Keyboard – Herman Hollerith,  first keypunch device in 1930s.
  • Inventor of (First) Laptop Computer (Osborne 1) – Adam Osborne (1981).
  • Inventor of Laptop Computer in Modern Form – Bill Moggridge (Grid Compass 1100  called the GRiD, 1979).
  • Inventor of Laser Printer – Gary Starkweather at XEROX (1969).
  • Inventor of Microprocessor – Faggin, Hoff & Mazor (Intel 4004).
  • Inventor of Microphone – Emile Berliner  (1876).
  • Inventor of Modem (First PC Modem, 80-103A) – Dennis Hayes & Dale Heatherington (1977).
  • Inventor of Monitor (CRT - Cathode Ray Tube) – Karl Ferdinand Braun (1897).
  • Inventor of Mouse – Douglas Engelbart (1964).  (PSC Questions: Data Entry-2016)
  • Inventor of RAM – An Wang and Jay Forrester (1951).
  • Inventor of Hard disk – Reynold B. Johnson.
  • Inventor of Scanner (Image) – Ray Kurzweil.
  • Inventor of Speakers – Abinawan Puracchidas (1991).
  • Inventor of Trackball – Tom Cranston & Fred Longstaff (1952).
  • Inventor of Transistor  – John Bardeen, Walter Brattain & Wiliam Shockley (1947-1948).
  • Inventor of Touch Screen technology  – E. A. Johnson (1965).
  • Inventor of UNIVAC – J. Presper Eckert & John Mauchly.
  • Inventor of USB – Ajay V. Bhatt.
  • Inventor of  UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply)  – John J. Hanley (1934).

Computer Companies

  • Founder of Facebook – Mark Zuckerberg.
  • Founder of Google – Larry Page & Sergey Brin.
  • Founder/Developer of Gmail – Paul Buchheit.
  • Founder of Linkedin – Konstantin Guericke, Reid Hoffman, Jean-Luc Vaillant, Allen Blue & Eric Ly.
  • Founder of IBM – Charles Ranlett Flint & Thomas J. Watson.
  • Founder of Microsoft Corporation – Bill Gates & Paul Allen.
  • Founder of Oracle Corporation – Ed Oates, Larry Ellison & Bob Miner.
  • Founder of Sun Microsystems – Bill Joy, Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy & Andy Bechtolsheim (1982).
  • Founder of Twitter – Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams & Biz Stone.
  • Founder of Whatsapp – Jan Koum & Brian Acton.
  • Founder of Yahoo! – Jerry Yang & David Filo.

📝 Read More: Popular Social Media Sites and their Founders


Inventors/Developers of Computer Software Development & Programming

  • Inventor of BIOS – Gary Kildall.
  • Inventor of Bluetooth – Dr. Jaap Haartsen, Ericsson.
  • Inventor of First Camera Phone solution sharing pictures instantly on public networks – Philippe Kahn (1997).
  • Inventor of Ethernet – David Boggs, Chuck Thacker & Butler Lampson (Xerox PARC).
  • Inventor of Analytical Engine – Charles Babbage (1822).
  • Inventor of ARPANET – Leonard Kleinrock (1969).
  • Inventor of Internet – Vint Cerf & Robert E. Kahn.
  • Inventor of Packet Switching Techniques in Computer Networking – P aul Baran.
  • Inventor of the World Wide Web (WWW) – Tim Berners-Lee.
  • Inventor of Computer Bug – Grace Hopper.
  • Inventor of Artificial Intelligence – John McCarthy.

Operating Systems

  • Founder of UNIX – Dennis Ritchie & Ken Thompson.
  • Founder of Linux – Linus Torvalds. 
  • Founder of Windows – Bill Gates. 

Programming Languages

  • Inventor of BASIC – John G. Kemeny & Thomas E. Kurtz.
  • Inventor of C – Dennis Ritchie.
  • Inventor of C++ – Bjarne Stroustrup.
  • Inventor of COBOL – Grace Murray Hopper.
  • Inventor of DOS – Tim Paterson.
  • Inventor of Java – James Gosling. 
  • Inventor of JavaScript – Brendan Eich.
  • Inventor of PASCAL – Niklaus Wirth.
  • Inventor of PERL  – Larry Wall (1987).
  • Inventor of Python – Guido van Rossum.
  • Inventor of First Database (RDBMS) – Dr. Edgar Frank Codd (IBM, 1970).
  • Founder/Designer of PHP – Rasmus Lerdorf.

📝 SideNotes:

  • The word “microphone”  was coined by –Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1827.
  • Dr Rudolf Hell invented modern Fax machine (1956) & Color Scanner (1963).
  • Inventor of UPS (United Parcel Supply, USA)  – James E. Casey & Claude Ryan.
  • The Father of Artificial Intelligence  – John McCarthy.
  • The Mother of Computers – Ada Lovelace.