They started and maintained a relationship even after Xia left for Shanghai for graduate studies at the Telecommunications Institute of Jiaotong University and Yang left to study under Nobel laureate Max Born at the University of Edinburgh. The same year she met Nanjing war refugee and fellow National Central alumnus Yang Liming, now a professor of physics at the university. Xia graduated with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1945.
The number glitch that can lead to catastrophe.The female scientist who changed human fertility forever.Through both her technological innovations and the many students she taught, Xia‘s influence resonates throughout China’s computing world today. In the aftermath of war and political upheaval, Xia shaped a new field of science and a new industry in China. Over her career, she would usher hundreds of students into the country’s burgeoning field of computer science. She taught the first computer theory class in the country. She helped shape some of China’s first computing and computer science institutions and developed their training materials. To build a new computer industry – and a new field of computer science to support that industry – China needed trained personnel.
#Pioner computers Pc#
In 2011, China surpassed the US to become the world’s leading market for PCs, and the desktop PC segment of their computer industry alone is projected to bring in a revenue of over $6.4bn (£4.9bn) this year.īut there was more work to be done than making computers. Today, China is a global leader in computer production. Within a year of the Soviet Union withdrawing aid, Xia delivered the 107 – China’s first step on the road to independence in computing. Chinese scientists relied heavily on hardware and expertise from the Soviet Union to build up their computing power.īut when that relationship dissolved in 1959, China was once again isolated and it had to look inward for a way forward in an increasingly computerised world. Later, caught in the politics of the Cold War, the newly established People’s Republic of China was cut off from aid and exports from capitalist nations in the West. Xia Peisu, the machine’s engineer and designer, had just made history.Īfter decades of war with Japan and the Chinese Civil War in the first half of the 20th Century, the country’s technological innovation had fallen behind much of the developed world. In April 1960, China’s first home-grown electronic digital general purpose computer – the Model 107 – went live.