A Very Brief History of Computing, 1948-2015 - Professor Martyn Thomas CBE

The world's first modern computer, in Manchester in 1948, was followed remarkably swiftly by the first business software, but by 1968 software was in crisis and NATO called a conference. The problems were diagnosed; solutions were proposed - and largely ignored. A second Software Crisis was announced in the early 1980's and again the effective solutions were considered impractical and the practical solutions were largely ineffective. Meanwhile as Moore's Law predicted, hardware costs continued to fall exponentially, making software systems ubiquitous and leading to a third software crisis, this time of cybersecurity.
Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 1,800 lectures free to access or download from the website.

[clayz]

Martyn Thomas delivers another enjoyable, succinct and informative lecture. I wish I could have experienced the early sixties during my career.

[teachTechSweden]

Great description of computing history and software development! It gives you an insight not commonly described in media as well as a motive for teaching programming in school. Raising the standards!

[md]

Nicely done! Overall, a very good and balanced summary of how we have blundered through the first 60 years or so of computing.

[isthereanyname]

A great lecturer. Thank you very much Martyn.

[eXtremeDR]

Another development...
1948: 0 spam-mails.
2015: 322, 847, 987, 932, 897, 789, 323 spam-mails per day and 7 bills.

[Raul_Gajadhar]

This was one wonderfully informative lecture.
The coughing woman and guy in the hall, why are they even there? I have noticed a lot of lectures, where once it is being recorded these people just out of no where start coughing all the time the one female here is coughing every minute on the timer. They should be asked to leave. Because it is clearly a spite thing. Maybe a recognition thing to say in the future see 'I was there, I am the one coughing, ' every damn lecture these people are there an not just this lecture, everywhere and every topic, UFO's, Aliens, Technology, Biology, etc.. Everywhere! Are they a government plant to annoy the speaker?