Abstract

Leibniz may be considered as the first computer scientist. He made major contributions to engineering and information science. He invented the binary system, fundamental for virtually all modern computer architectures. He built a decimal based machine that executed all four arithmetical operations and outlined a binary computer. The concepts of lingua characteristica (formal language, programming language) and calculus ratiocinator (formal inference engine or computer program) are the base of the modern logic and information science. Leibniz was groping towards hardware and software concepts worked out much later by Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace. He anticipated the universal Turing machine