E-ITSPEA 1: Noppeid IT ajaloost

Unrealized IT projects

    Nowadays IT technology is one of the basic column of the modern infrastructure. However, for reaching that point a lot of brilliant minds had spent their lives on the researching this area. Unfortunately, a lot of them had not even managed to end their projects. Today´s post is about these stories.

Babbage´s Difference engine  

    The world had found out Babbage´s Difference engine in 1862 in the paper with the title "Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables".[1]  The author of that paper was Charles Babbage. The British government was interested in the project. The machine could save for them a lot of money and time. So they give him 1700£ to start. Despite the good beginning, the fate of the project was unsuccessful. There were two reasons for that. First of all, the machine appeared to be too expensive. Babbage spent over 17 000£ by the time government abandoned the project in 1984. This is ten times more than the given at the beginning budget. Another reason was next. During the work on this project Babbage attention was moved to analytical engine. The research gave him new difference engine concept and the previous project became obsolete.  His Difference engine was completely finished and built only in 2002 and had not practical usage. Though, his first difference engine made difference in IT developing. For instance, Swedish inventor Georg Scheutzian was inspirited by Babbage machine, so he created his own model. Scheutzian´s work was finished in 1843 by his son.

    The moral can be next: Before the project starts, you should also think about the implementation and search for materials. Not only about the idea

"Babbage Difference engine"

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine

The first program code

    Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron, first programmer, The Unburnt. In 1843 was published her note. It describes the algorithm of the Analythic Engine of Babbage. This note is considered to be the first program. It was a great scientific work and it had success at the time. However Analythic Engine has been never built and her code had been never launched. So her work was not realized.

    From the point of view of capitalism and profit projects we can learn from the story that you should estimate if the risk costs your efforts. 

"The first published computer algorithm"

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

Copeland

    In the race of the best operation system in the 90`s was winning Microsoft Windows 95. Apple attempted to create it`s own system to compete in this race. The system name was Copeland. It was up-and-coming project with a lot of functions and features. For example, it supposed to have 3D user interaction, improved search engine optimization and much more. However, an infinite number of hard technologies(there were also ideas like to make Copeland capable of running Windows applications) made this project too unstable and too time-consuming.

    The lesson that can give that story is: make your aims certain and follow it only.

"Copeland "

sources: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copland

https://www.pcworld.com/article/152103/it_project_failures.html?page=2