Computer Science
- February 16 – The first computer bulletin board system is created (CBBS in Chicago, Illinois).
- The RSA algorithm for public-key cryptography, based on the factoring problem, is first publicly described by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman.
Read more about this topic: 1978 In Science
Famous quotes containing the words computer and/or science:
“What, then, is the basic difference between today’s computer and an intelligent being? It is that the computer can be made to see but not to perceive. What matters here is not that the computer is without consciousness but that thus far it is incapable of the spontaneous grasp of pattern—a capacity essential to perception and intelligence.”
—Rudolf Arnheim (b. 1904)
“You are all fundamentalists with a top dressing of science. That is why you are the stupidest of conservatives and reactionists in politics and the most bigoted of obstructionists in science itself. When it comes to getting a move on you are all of the same opinion: stop it, flog it, hang it, dynamite it, stamp it out.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)