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Through "the present in history", the future can be seen from the past, and the future can be changed from the present.
Today, February 23, 2022, on this day of 2006, the Turin Winter Olympics Freestyle Skiing Men's Aerial Skills Final was held at the Sauze Dürces Ski Resort in Turin, Italy. China's Han Xiaopeng won the gold medal by beating many of his best players; this is the first gold medal in snow sports in the history of the Winter Olympics. Not long ago, on February 20, the closing ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics officially closed the curtain at the "Bird's Nest" at the National Stadium, ending this quadrennial cultural and sports feast. Looking back at February 23 in computer history, what other key events occurred around the world today that affected the course of the times?
February 23, 1905: Prime number theorist Derrick Lehmer is born
Source: Wikipedia
Derrick Henry Lehmer, born on February 23, 1905, is one of the world's most famous prime number theorists. Prime numbers are a major mathematical marvel of interest, and Lemmer made many important contributions to prime number theory during his lifetime; before World War II, Lemmer also invented many electromechanical sieves for finding prime numbers, and three of Lemmer's electromechanical sieves in the permanent collection of the Computer History Museum. Lemer died on May 22, 1991, at the age of 86.
Born in Berkeley, California, Lemmer studied physics at the University of California, Berkeley; while studying at Berkeley, Lemmer met Emma Markovna Trotskaia, his father's Russian student. Lemer then began his engineering degree, earning his bachelor's degree in 1928 and then continuing his graduate studies at the University of Chicago. Later that year, Lemer married Emma; his wife Emma also earned a master's degree in 1930, teaching mathematics to supplement the family's income, and also helping Lamer complete his doctoral thesis.
After graduating, Lemer traveled extensively as a number theorist; during the Great Depression, he and his wife worked in many types of jobs in the United States and abroad to support themselves, fortunately bringing him to the research centers of early electronic computing. After the outbreak of World War II, Lemer worked on the Computing Committee at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, part of the Ballistics Research Laboratory, in preparation for the enIAC computer's use after completion. Upon his return to Berkeley, Lemer also planned to build the California Digital Computer (CALDIC); in September 1949, Lemer proposed the concept of a pseudo-random number generator, which is now known as the Lemer random number generator. For the remainder of His career, Lemer continued to be active in computer development, contributing significantly to the development of computational number theory.
Source: Wikipedia
February 23, 1918: Scherbius patented the Enigma cipher machine
In 1931, Alan Turing, the father of computers, entered King's College, Cambridge University, and after graduation, he went to Princeton University to pursue a doctorate; after the outbreak of World War II, Turing returned to Cambridge to help the Allies decipher the German cryptographic system "Enigma", thus turning the tide of World War II. Turing is famous for deciphering codes, has also made important contributions in the fields of artificial intelligence and computers, and is often considered the founder of modern computer science; he completely ended the myth of the German army's most difficult cryptographic system "Ingmar", which was considered one of the most reliable encryption systems in history at that time, and it was the blind optimism about this reliability that completely changed the history of mankind after the Great War.
Fast forward a long time, when the First World War erupted under the stimulus of the Industrial Revolution, planes rang out into the sky, tanks flew over the earth, submarines invaded the oceans, and even poison gas went to war, and the methods people used to encrypt files for thousands of years were still stuck at the level of using pencils and paper; in 1918, the German inventor Arthur Scherbius and his friend Richard Ritter) founded the Shelbius & Ritter company. Specializing in the translation of new technologies into applications, it patented the Enigma cipher on February 23, 1918, and began selling finished products under the "Ingmar" brand in 1923, initially only for the commercial market.
As soon as the cipher machine appeared on the market, it was immediately adopted by the military and government departments of many countries, the most famous of which was Nazi Germany before and during World War II. The encryption core of "Ingmar" is 3 wheels. On the edge of each wheel, 26 German letters are marked to represent the 26 positions of the wheel. Cleverly designed, each time the wheel rotates, accompanied by a pleasant mechanical friction sound, it will stay in one of these 26 positions, resulting in 26×26×26 = 17576 different variations.
At that time, the French army believed that because the Treaty of Versailles limited the development of the German army, even if it was impossible to decipher the German code, it would not suffer much loss if they met on the battlefield in the future, so after drawing the conclusion that the German code was "undecipherable", they did not study "Ingmar" carefully. Unlike France, the precarious situation of the newly independent Poland in World War I produced a large number of excellent Polish cryptographers. In 1921, Poland signed a military cooperation agreement with France. At the insistence of Poland, the French handed over the information they had received from Schmidt to the Poles. The Enigma indicator step was badly flawed, and it was the Poles who used this shortcoming as a breakthrough to decipher the commercial "Ingmar" cipher machine.
However, simply cracking the commercial "Ingmar" did not help; as international tensions grew, the Polish Cryptography's deciphering capacity reached its limit in December 1938, and the German army immediately strengthened the encryption capabilities of the "Ingmar". On September 1, 1939, Hitler launched a "Blitzkrieg" to invade Poland. On September 17, the Soviet Union invaded Poland. On September 28, the Germans occupied Warsaw and Poland ceased to exist. At the last minute, the Poles left a suitcase to The British and French cryptanalysis experts, and inside the suitcase was a Polish-made "Ingmar". In order to avoid the eyes and ears of the ubiquitous German spies, "Ingmar" crossed the ocean to Britain and began a countdown that was completely deciphered.
Image source: CSDN Downloaded from The Oriental IC
In columns of December 22 and February 5, we present the story behind the world's first programmable electronic computer, the Colossus, and its designers; in Bletchley Park at the time, there was a large group of people who, like the Colossus computer team, had made outstanding contributions to deciphering "Ingmar"; and the British were able to successfully and continuously crack the "Ingmar" code in the war, which was inseparable from the efforts of these great men. Among them are mathematicians, scientists of all kinds, linguists, chess champions, crossword puzzle masters... And the person who made the most outstanding contribution was Alan Turing.
In 1939, Turing was recruited by the Royal Navy and worked under the supervision of MI6 to decipher nazi Germany's classified military codes. Two years later, his team successfully deciphered the German cryptosystem Ingmar, giving MI6 a thorough understanding of German military command and planning. But MI6 concealed the existence and achievements of turing's group on the grounds of secrecy, confiscating the information they had for themselves because they wanted british colonies to use the machine as well; in 1974, the book "The Ultra Secret" by Wentbertam, an Englishman who had worked at Bletchley Gardens, was published, giving the world the first widespread understanding of the hard work of Allied cryptographers in World War II. Later scientists estimated that the excellent work of Turing's group led to the Allied victory over the Axis powers at least two years earlier.
On 21 April 2001, the Reyevsky, Rozorki and Zogarski Memorial Fund, named after three prominent Polish cryptographers Marian Reyevsky, Jelz Rozorki and Henrik Zogarski, was established in Warsaw for the significant contribution to the deciphering of Enigma, which placed the commemorative plaques of these Polish cryptographers in Warsaw and London. In July 2001, the Foundation placed a cornerstone in Bletchley Garden inscribed with Churchill's famous words:
"Never before in the history of human conflict has there been such a small number of people who have saved so many sentient beings in such a short period of time."
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. ”
Source: Wikipedia, Baidu Encyclopedia, Alan Turing Biography
February 23, 1965: Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Computers, is born
Born on February 23, 1965, American Jewish entrepreneur Michael Dell, founder and chairman of the board of directors of Dell, one of the world's largest computer manufacturers. In January 2013, he announced the privatization of Dell for $24.4 billion, the largest management buyout since the Great Depression in the United States. Dell was officially privatized in October 2013 and went public again in December 2018.
Dale was born in Houston in 1965 to a Jewish family. He attended Herod Elementary School in Houston and local high schools, and applied to take the high school equivalency exam at the age of eight to get into business early. As a teenager, he invested the income from his part-time job in stocks and precious metals. Dell bought his first computer at the age of seven and was exposed to an early telex terminal in junior high school. When dell was 15, after playing with a computer at Radio Shack once, he asked his parents for his first computer, the Apple II, and he quickly took it apart to see how it worked.
Dale's parents wanted him to be a doctor, and to please them, he went on a pre-med program at the University of Texas in 1983. After graduation, Dell continued to learn how to market specific people who subscribed to the newspaper, not just make strange phone sales; that summer, Dell made $18,000, then hired several employees with his first pot of gold, made nearly $200,000 in gross profit in his first year, and dropped out of the University of Texas at the age of 19. In January 1984, Dell decided that the potential cost of selling PCs directly from manufacturers would have a significant advantage over traditional indirect retail channels; in January 1984, Dell registered PC's Limited. The company, which started out in an apartment, sold computer upgrades, kits and add-ons worth $50,000 to $80,000. In May of the same year, Dell renamed the company "Dell Computer Company" and relocated it to a commercial center in North Austin.
In 1996, Dell began selling computers over the Internet, and in the same year, his company launched its first servers. By the first quarter of 2001, Dell's world market share had reached 12.8 percent, surpassing Compaq to become the world's largest manufacturer of personal computers. It was also the first time in seven years that the world rankings had changed. Dell's total global shipments of desktop computers, laptops and servers rose 34.3 percent and 30.7 percent in the U.S., while competitor sales contracted.
Today, Michael Dell is married with four children and owns about 15.7 percent of Dell. Ranked 25th on Forbes' 2019 list of billionaires with $34.3 billion in assets, he is Chairman and CEO of Dell Corporation. Dell donated $1 billion to its foundation in May 2017. In total, more than $1.5 billion was donated to charitable donations, with a focus on helping underprivileged children. He is ranked 18th on the Forbes U.S. 400 Richest People list released in September 2020, with assets of $35.6 billion.
Source: Wikipedia, Baidu Encyclopedia
February 23, 2016: Mellanox Technologies acquires EZchip Semiconductor
On February 23, 2016, network chip maker Mellanox Technologies acquired Another Israeli chip company, EZchip Semiconductor, for approximately $811 million in cash; both are suppliers of network processing chips. Mellanox and EZchip's corporate headquarters are located in the city of Yokneam, near Haifa, Israel. Thanks to tax breaks and investment incentives, the city has become a hub for Israeli high-tech companies.
At a 2016 news conference, Mellanox officials said the deal would strengthen the company's ability to provide smart connectivity and process chips for data centers and wide area networks. According to Mellanox, the transaction will increase Mellanox's total effective market size to $14 billion in 2017. Eyal Waldman, president and CEO of Mellanox, said at a separate news conference, "This acquisition will expand Mellanox's size and improve profitability." This also allows us to benefit from the large intelligent cyberspace, where we will have the intellectual property we need to develop embedded processing products. On March 11, 2019, three years after the acquisition, Nvidia acquired Mellanox Technologies for $6.9 billion in cash, bringing this unprecedented consolidation of the semiconductor industry to the end.
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