Artifacts

The creativity of computing’s women, men, and organizations are made manifest in the artifacts of computing. Some of these objects are physical, such as devices, processors, and whole computers. Many others are just shadows of human thought: algorithms, languages, and software, to name a few. While most of these artifacts have an identifiable person or organization responsible for their inception, reality is that virtually all of these objects required the labor of hundreds if not thousands of individuals working in the background to make them real. The story of the artifacts of computing is thus also the story of the people who created them. Here are some of the most important artifacts that tell that history of computing.