Re: Oracle #1? Then why are these still missing...

[Quoted] On Thu, 29 Jul 1999 08:10:25 -0400, Kenneth C Stahl <BluesSax_at_Unforgettable.com> wrote:

[snip]
>As to my UK comments - if the UK can do it better then I wish they would. The US
>has been pioneers in programming langauges and integrated database environments.
>The UK has benefited from what the US has produced but they are largely behind
>the curve when it comes to rolling out new products. Can you explain that
>disparity?

You seem very anti-Anglo in your posting to a point a racism, and I find this completely irritating and ignorant. Regarding your comments on US superiority, "pioneers in programming languages and integrated database environments" and "The UK has benefited from what the US has produced " I must correct you. For your information computing, databases, compilers and computer languages exist thanks to the British. The US weren't pioneers moreover the British ideas and inventors were.

[Quoted] In no particular chronological order:

Sir Samuel Morland (1625-1695), of England, produces a non-decimal adding machine

The British physicist J.J. Thomson discovered the electron.

Charles, the third Earl Stanhope, of England, a founded the multiplying calculator.

E. Wynn-Williams, at Cambridge, England, uses thyratron tubes to construct the first binary digital counter.

George Boole the founder of boolean logic (the root of all computer computations) was English, De Morgan (English, reformer of logic laws used as the basis of computing process control) corresponded with Charles Babbage (English inventor of the first computing engine) and gave private tuition to Lady Ada Lovelace (English) who wrote the first computer program.

Alan Turing (English) was the founder of computer science and computing algorithms, data storage concepts and theoretical designer of Colossus - the World's first computer, built by Thomas Harold Flowers (English) to crack Nazi "Enigma" encryption.

Manchester University - Mark I, completed, the first computer to use stored programs (by a team of Brits).

EDSAC Wilkes and a team at Cambridge University England build a stored program computer. It used paper tape I/O.

Bertrand Russell (Welsh) made ground-breaking contributions to the foundations of mathematics and to the development of contemporary formal logic, as well as to analytic philosophy and set theory - the pre-requisite to Relational Databases.

Sir Clive Sinclair (English) produced the first small low cost home computer "ZX80".

Tim Berners-Lee (English) invented the World Wide Web while working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory. He wrote the first web client (browser-editor) and server in 1990.

The British are commonly acknowledged to be among the best in the world when it comes to inventions. Over the past 50 years, according to Japanese research, more than 40 per cent of discoveries taken up on a worldwide basis originated in the United Kingdom. Many of which helped Computing and Databases. And at an important exposition of inventions in the United States recently, the UK won four of the top prizes.

As for your comments that "[The UK is] largely behind the curve when it comes to rolling out new products", I think you'll find a large contingent of Brits behind a lot of what the US has rolled out. Information Technology is actually a British invention and we are very good at it, we just don't always have the unlimited capital that America has.

I could continue, there are many many more, but I think I've made my point, so in future research your statements before mouthing off, I think you'll find that Brits have been heavily involved in ALL aspects of computing, databases, compilers and computer languages since their foundation.

Tom Kingsley Received on Thu Jul 29 1999 - 22:22:48 CEST