History
Hamming worked at Bell Labs in the 1940s on the Bell Model V computer, an electromechanical relay-based machine with cycle times in seconds. Input was fed in on punched cards, which would invariably have read errors. During weekdays, special code would find errors and flash lights so the operators could correct the problem. During after-hours periods and on weekends, when there were no operators, the machine simply moved on to the next job.
Hamming worked on weekends, and grew increasingly frustrated with having to restart his programs from scratch due to the unreliability of the card reader. Over the next few years he worked on the problem of error-correction, developing an increasingly powerful array of algorithms. In 1950 he published what is now known as Hamming Code, which remains in use today in applications such as ECC memory.
Read more about this topic: Hamming Code
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Systematic philosophical and practical anti-intellectualism such as we are witnessing appears to be something truly novel in the history of human culture.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)