Foundational papers,
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  Cryptography & Bitcoin

  Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

  National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2001

  Specifies the AES block cipher: the state, its four round transformations with the S-box, and the key expansion.

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  Cryptography & Bitcoin

  Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System

  Satoshi Nakamoto, 2008

  Proposes a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that prevents double-spending with a proof-of-work chain of timestamped blocks.

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  Cryptography & Bitcoin

  The Genesis Block

  Satoshi Nakamoto, 2009

  The 285 bytes of the first Bitcoin block, in hexadecimal, with every field of its header and coinbase transaction labelled.

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  Cryptography & Bitcoin

  PPCoin: Peer-to-Peer Crypto-Currency with Proof-of-Stake

  Sunny King, Scott Nadal, 2012

  Proposes a crypto-currency derived from Bitcoin in which proof-of-stake, based on coin age, provides most of the network security.

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  Cryptography & Bitcoin

  BIP 39: Mnemonic code for generating deterministic keys

  Marek Palatinus and 3 others, 2013

  Encodes entropy as a sentence of words from a 2048-word list, shown in full, then derives a binary seed.

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  Cryptography & Bitcoin

  Ethereum: A Next-Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform

  Vitalik Buterin, 2014

  Proposes Ethereum, a blockchain with a built-in Turing-complete language for contracts that encode arbitrary state transition functions.

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  Cryptography & Bitcoin

  Secure Hash Standard (SHS): SHA-256

  National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2015

  Specifies SHA-256: its functions, constants, message padding and parsing, initial hash value and hash computation.

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  Cryptography & Bitcoin

  BIP 173: Base32 address format for native v0-16 witness outputs

  Pieter Wuille, Greg Maxwell, 2017

  Defines Bech32, a checksummed base32 format, and the segwit addresses built on it, starting with bc1.

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  Cryptography & Bitcoin

  BIP 340: Schnorr Signatures for secp256k1

  Pieter Wuille, Jonas Nick, Tim Ruffing, 2020

  Specifies 64-byte Schnorr signatures and 32-byte public keys over the secp256k1 curve, with batch verification.

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  Cryptography & Bitcoin

  NIP-01: Basic protocol flow description

  fiatjaf, 2022

  Defines the Nostr event, its signed JSON serialization, tags, kinds, and the messages between clients and relays.

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  Computing pioneers

  Leibniz: Explication de l’arithmétique binaire

  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1703

  Leibniz’s 1703 memoir presenting base-two arithmetic with 0 and 1, its tables, and the Fohy trigrams.

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  Computing pioneers

  Sketch of the Analytical Engine: Note G

  Ada Lovelace, 1843

  Lovelace’s last note on the Analytical Engine: its limits, and how it would compute the Bernoulli numbers.

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  Computing pioneers

  RFC 20: ASCII format for Network Interchange

  Vint Cerf, 1969

  Vint Cerf’s 1969 proposal to use 7-bit ASCII on the ARPA network, with the code table of the USA standard.

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  Internet & networking

  RFC 1: Host Software

  Steve Crocker, 1969

  The first Request for Comments: the planned host software of the ARPA Network and its first experiments.

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  Internet & networking

  RFC 791: Internet Protocol

  Jon Postel, 1981

  Section 3.1 of the Internet Protocol specification, which defines each field of the IPv4 header and its options.

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  Internet & networking

  RFC 793: Transmission Control Protocol

  Jon Postel, 1981

  Section 3.1 of the Transmission Control Protocol specification, which defines each field of the TCP header and its options.

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  Internet & networking

  RFC 968: ‘Twas the Night Before Start-up

  Vint Cerf, 1985

  Vint Cerf’s poem on debugging a new network the night before it is brought into operation.

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  Internet & networking

  RFC 1087: Ethics and the Internet

  Internet Activities Board, 1989

  A 1989 policy statement of the Internet Activities Board naming the uses of the Internet it considers unethical.

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  Internet & networking

  RFC 1149: A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers

  David Waitzman, 1990

  An April Fools’ RFC on sending IP datagrams printed on a paper scroll wrapped around the leg of a bird.

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  Internet & networking

  RFC 1925: The Twelve Networking Truths

  Ross Callon, 1996

  An April Fools’ RFC stating twelve fundamental truths of networking, several with corollaries.

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  Internet & networking

  RFC 2119: Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels

  Scott Bradner, 1997

  The Best Current Practice that defines MUST, SHOULD, MAY and related key words for requirement levels in specifications.

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  Internet & networking

  RFC 2324: Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0)

  Larry Masinter, 1998

  An April Fools’ RFC extending HTTP to control coffee pots; it defined the 418 I’m a teapot status code.

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  Internet & networking

  RFC 2549: IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service

  David Waitzman, 1999

  An April Fools’ RFC amending RFC 1149 with quality of service levels for IP datagrams carried by birds.

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  Internet & networking

  RFC 2795: The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite (IMPS)

  S. Christey, 2000

  An April Fools’ RFC specifying protocols for infinite monkeys at typewriters, their zoos, bards and critics.

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  Internet & networking

  RFC 6214: Adaptation of RFC 1149 for IPv6

  Brian Carpenter, Robert M. Hinden, 2011

  An April Fools’ RFC adapting the transmission of IP datagrams by avian carriers to IPv6.

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  Software practice

  RFC 761: The Robustness Principle

  Jon Postel, 1980

  The philosophy chapter of the 1980 TCP specification, which ends with the principle: be conservative in what you do.

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  Software practice

  The GNU Manifesto

  Richard Stallman, 1985

  Richard Stallman’s 1985 call for support to write GNU, a complete Unix-compatible system that everyone may share and change.

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  Software practice

  GNU General Public License, Version 2

  Free Software Foundation, 1991

  The Free Software Foundation license of 1991 letting anyone copy, change and share a program, provided derived works keep it.

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  Software practice

  What is Free Software? The Free Software Definition

  Free Software Foundation, 1996

  The GNU Project’s criteria for free software: the four freedoms to run, study and change, redistribute, and share changes.

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  Software practice

  Manifesto for Agile Software Development

  Kent Beck and 16 others, 2001

  Four values for developing software, stated in 2001 by seventeen people who met at Snowbird, Utah.

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  Software practice

  PEP 20: The Zen of Python

  Tim Peters, 2004

  Nineteen aphorisms by Tim Peters on the principles behind the design of the Python language.

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  Software practice

  The Open Source Definition

  Open Source Initiative, 2007

  The ten criteria that the distribution terms of a software license must meet to be called open source.

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  Software practice

  The Twelve-Factor App

  Adam Wiggins, 2011

  A methodology of twelve factors for building software-as-a-service apps, drawn from experience with hundreds of apps on Heroku.

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  Software practice

  Semantic Versioning 2.0.0

  Tom Preston-Werner, 2013

  Rules and requirements that dictate how MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH version numbers are assigned and incremented, with a grammar and a FAQ.

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  Software practice

  Conventional Commits 1.0.0

  Conventional Commits contributors, 2019

  A specification for structuring commit messages so that tools can derive changelogs and semantic version bumps from them.

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  Software practice

  Keep a Changelog 1.1.0

  Olivier Lacan, 2019

  Guiding principles for a changelog written for humans: one entry per version, grouped types of changes, latest first.

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  Manifestos & announcements

  WorldWideWeb: the announcement on alt.hypertext

  Tim Berners-Lee, 1991

  Tim Berners-Lee’s two Usenet posts of 6 August 1991 that described the WorldWideWeb project and offered its software.

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  Manifestos & announcements

  A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

  John Perry Barlow, 1996

  John Perry Barlow’s 1996 declaration, written at Davos, that governments have no sovereignty over cyberspace.

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  Physics & astronomy

  Sidereus Nuncius: the Moon

  Galileo Galilei, 1610

  Galileo’s telescopic observations of the Moon’s surface, mountains and earthshine, with his five etchings, from the 1610 edition.

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  Physics & astronomy

  Axiomata, sive Leges Motus

  Isaac Newton, 1687

  Newton states the three laws of motion, derives six corollaries from them and reports pendulum collision experiments.

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  Physics & astronomy

  Catalogue des Nébuleuses et des amas d’Étoiles

  Charles Messier, 1781

  Charles Messier’s catalogue of 103 nebulae, star clusters and other objects observed from Paris, with positions and descriptions.

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  Physics & astronomy

  On the Relative Motion of the Earth and the Luminiferous Ether

  Albert A. Michelson, Edward W. Morley, 1887

  An interferometer turning on a stone floating on mercury detects no appreciable motion of the earth relative to the ether.

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  Physics & astronomy

  Ueber eine neue Art von Strahlen

  Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, 1895

  Röntgen reports a new kind of rays that cross opaque bodies, blacken photographic plates and show the hand bones.

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  Physics & astronomy

  Sur une substance nouvelle radio-active, contenue dans la pechblende

  Pierre Curie, Marie Curie, 1898

  The Curies separate from pitchblende a substance far more active than uranium and name its presumed new metal polonium.

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  Physics & astronomy

  Zur Theorie des Gesetzes der Energieverteilung im Normalspectrum

  Max Planck, 1900

  Planck derives the spectral energy distribution by dividing resonator energy into finite elements hν and counting complexions.

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  Physics & astronomy

  Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhängig?

  Albert Einstein, 1905

  Shows that a body emitting energy L as radiation loses mass L/V², so its mass measures its energy content.

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  Physics & astronomy

  Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper

  Albert Einstein, 1905

  Derives special relativity from the relativity principle and the constant speed of light, and applies it to electrodynamics and optics.

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  Physics & astronomy

  Über die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendierten Teilchen

  Albert Einstein, 1905

  Einstein derives the random motion of particles suspended in a liquid and relates their mean displacement to diffusion.

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  Physics & astronomy

  Über einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden heuristischen Gesichtspunkt

  Albert Einstein, 1905

  Einstein proposes that light consists of energy quanta, and applies this to the Stokes rule, photoelectric effect and photoionization.

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  Physics & astronomy

  A Relation between Distance and Radial Velocity among Extra-Galactic Nebulae

  Edwin Hubble, 1929

  Finds a roughly linear relation between the distances of extra-galactic nebulae and their radial velocities.

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  Space exploration

  Исследование мировых пространств реактивными приборами

  Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 1926

  Tsiolkovsky derives the speed of a rocket in empty space from the mass of its propellant: the rocket equation.

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  Space exploration

  Apollo 11 Technical Air-to-Ground Voice Transcription: the landing

  NASA Manned Spacecraft Center, 1969

  NASA’s transcript of the radio exchanges between Houston and Eagle from powered descent to the landing on the Moon.

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  Space exploration

  The Voyager Golden Record: the cover

  NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 1977

  The engraved cover of the record carried by Voyager 1 and 2, with a notice on each of its diagrams.

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  Mathematics

  Euclid’s Elements, Book I: definitions, postulates and common notions

  Euclid, c. 300 BC

  The 23 definitions, five postulates and common notions that open Euclid’s Elements, in Heiberg’s Greek text.

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  Mathematics

  Traitté du Triangle Arithmetique

  Blaise Pascal, 1665

  Excerpt of Pascal’s treatise on the arithmetical triangle: its construction, the rule of its numbers and the first consequence.

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  Mathematics

  Observatio Domini Petri de Fermat

  Pierre de Fermat, 1670

  Fermat’s note that no cube or higher power splits into two like powers, with the question of Diophantus it annotates.

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  Mathematics

  Solutio problematis ad geometriam situs pertinentis

  Leonhard Euler, 1736

  Euler shows that no walk crosses each of the seven bridges of Königsberg exactly once, and gives the general rule.

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  Mathematics

  Lettre de Galois à M. Auguste Chevalier

  Évariste Galois, 1832

  Dated 29 May 1832, two days before his death, Galois’s letter summarizes his work on equations, groups and algebraic integrals.

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  Mathematics

  Ueber die Anzahl der Primzahlen unter einer gegebenen Grösse

  Bernhard Riemann, 1859

  Extends the zeta function to complex values, relates its zeros to the count of primes and states the Riemann hypothesis.

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  Mathematics

  Ueber eine elementare Frage der Mannigfaltigkeitslehre

  Georg Cantor, 1891

  Cantor’s diagonal argument: the sequences of two symbols cannot be listed, and no set has the greatest cardinality.

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  Mathematics

  Mathematische Probleme

  David Hilbert, 1900

  Excerpt of the printed text of Hilbert’s 1900 Paris lecture, which sets out 23 problems for the new century.

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  Mathematics

  Letter to G. H. Hardy, 16 January 1913

  Srinivasa Ramanujan, 1913

  Ramanujan, a clerk in Madras, introduces himself to Hardy and sends him his theorems.

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  Biology & medicine

  The Hippocratic Oath

  Hippocrates, c. 400 BC

  The physician’s oath of the Hippocratic Collection, in the ancient Greek text edited by Émile Littré in 1844.

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  Biology & medicine

  Caroli Linnæi Regnum Animale

  Carl Linnaeus, 1735

  The animal kingdom table of the first edition of Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae, 1735, with its six classes and its paradoxes.

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  Biology & medicine

  An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolæ Vaccinæ

  Edward Jenner, 1798

  Cases XVI and XVII of Jenner’s 1798 Inquiry: a boy inoculated with cow pox in 1796 resisted smallpox inoculation.

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  Biology & medicine

  On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection

  Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, 1858

  Darwin’s and Wallace’s papers on natural selection, read together at the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858.

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  Biology & medicine

  Versuche über Pflanzen-Hybriden

  Gregor Mendel, 1866

  Gregor Mendel’s 1866 paper on crosses of garden peas, which set out the laws of inheritance.

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  Biology & medicine

  On the Antibacterial Action of Cultures of a Penicillium, with Special Reference to their Use in the Isolation of B. influenzæ

  Alexander Fleming, 1929

  Alexander Fleming’s 1929 paper on penicillin, the antibacterial substance made by a mould in broth cultures.

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  Historical data visualization

  Edmond Halley: An Historical Account of the Trade Winds, and Monsoons

  Edmond Halley, 1686

  Halley’s 1686 account of the trade winds and monsoons, with his map of the winds between and near the tropics.

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  Historical data visualization

  William Playfair: The Commercial and Political Atlas

  William Playfair, 1786

  Two 1786 charts by William Playfair: trade with Denmark and Norway over time, and Scotland’s trade as bars.

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  Historical data visualization

  John Snow: the Broad Street cholera map

  John Snow, 1854

  John Snow’s map of the 1854 cholera deaths around Broad Street, which pointed to a single public water pump.

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  Historical data visualization

  Florence Nightingale: Diagram of the Causes of Mortality in the Army in the East

  Florence Nightingale, 1858

  Florence Nightingale’s 1858 diagram of the British army’s monthly deaths in the East, from disease, wounds and other causes.

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  Historical data visualization

  Charles Joseph Minard: Carte figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l’Armée Française dans la campagne de Russie 1812-1813

  Charles Joseph Minard, 1869

  Minard’s 1869 map of the French army in Russia in 1812-1813, its width drawn to scale of the men left.

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  Historical data visualization

  Опыт системы элементов, основанной на их атомном весе и химическом сходстве

  Dmitri Mendeleev, 1869

  Mendeleev’s system of the elements by atomic weight, sent to chemists in February 1869, with the conclusions of his paper.

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  Historical data visualization

  Ernst Haeckel: Stammbaum des Menschen

  Ernst Haeckel, 1874

  Ernst Haeckel’s 1874 tree of the descent of man, from the Moneren to the Menschen, plate XII of his Anthropogenie.

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  Patents

  Abraham Lincoln: Buoying Vessels over Shoals, US Patent 6,469

  Abraham Lincoln, 1849

  Lincoln’s patent for expansible buoyant air chambers that lessen a vessel’s draught to carry it over bars and shallows.

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  Patents

  Alexander Graham Bell: Improvement in Telegraphy, US Patent 174,465

  Alexander Graham Bell, 1876

  Bell’s patent for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically by undulatory electric currents.

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  Patents

  Thomas A. Edison: Electric-Lamp, US Patent 223,898

  Thomas A. Edison, 1880

  Edison’s patent for an incandescent lamp with a high-resistance carbon filament in a sealed, evacuated glass bulb.

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  Patents

  Nikola Tesla: Electro-Magnetic Motor, US Patent 381,968

  Nikola Tesla, 1888

  Tesla’s patent for a motor turned by poles shifted around its field by alternating currents in independent circuits.

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  Patents

  Herman Hollerith: Art of Compiling Statistics, US Patent 395,782

  Herman Hollerith, 1889

  Hollerith’s patent for recording census data as holes in paper and counting them by electric circuits.

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  Patents

  Orville and Wilbur Wright: Flying-Machine, US Patent 821,393

  Orville Wright, Wilbur Wright, 1906

  The Wrights’ patent for a biplane balanced by warping its wings, with front horizontal and rear vertical rudders.

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  Patents

  John Bardeen and Walter H. Brattain: Three-Electrode Circuit Element Utilizing Semiconductive Materials, US Patent 2,524,035

  John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, 1950

  Bardeen and Brattain’s patent for the point-contact transistor, a germanium block amplifying through emitter and collector contacts.

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  Patents

  Jack S. Kilby: Miniaturized Electronic Circuits, US Patent 3,138,743

  Jack S. Kilby, 1964

  Kilby’s patent for an integrated circuit, with all its components formed in a single wafer of semiconductor.

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  Patents

  Douglas C. Engelbart: X–Y Position Indicator for a Display System, US Patent 3,541,541

  Douglas C. Engelbart, 1970

  Engelbart’s patent for a hand-held position indicator whose two perpendicular wheels move a cursor on a computer display.

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  History & philosophy

  Magna Carta

  King John of England, 1215

  The charter of liberties granted by King John to the barons of England at Runnymede in June 1215.

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  History & philosophy

  Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum

  Martin Luther, 1517

  Luther’s ninety-five Latin theses against the preaching of indulgences, proposed for a disputation at Wittenberg in 1517.

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  History & philosophy

  Pensées: Grandeur de l’homme

  Blaise Pascal, 1670

  Pascal’s fragment on man as a thinking reed, whose whole dignity lies in thought.

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  History & philosophy

  The Declaration of Independence

  Thomas Jefferson, Second Continental Congress, 1776

  The Continental Congress declares the thirteen colonies independent of Great Britain and lists their grievances against the King.

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  History & philosophy

  Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?

  Immanuel Kant, 1784

  Kant’s essay defining enlightenment as man’s emergence from self-incurred immaturity and defending the free public use of reason.

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  History & philosophy

  Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen de 1789

  Assemblée nationale, 1789

  The preamble and seventeen articles of rights adopted by the French National Assembly in August 1789.

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  History & philosophy

  Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne

  Olympe de Gouges, 1791

  Olympe de Gouges’s seventeen articles on the rights of woman, modelled on the Declaration of 1789, with a postamble.

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  History & philosophy

  The Bill of Rights

  First Congress of the United States, 1791

  The first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States, ratified on December 15, 1791.

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  History & philosophy

  Décret relatif à l’abolition de l’esclavage dans les colonies et possessions françaises

  Gouvernement provisoire de la République française, 1848

  The French Provisional Government abolishes slavery in all French colonies and possessions and forbids French citizens to own slaves.

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  History & philosophy

  The Emancipation Proclamation

  Abraham Lincoln, 1863

  Lincoln’s proclamation declaring free the persons held as slaves within the States then in rebellion.

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  History & philosophy

  The Gettysburg Address

  Abraham Lincoln, 1863

  Lincoln’s address at the dedication of the Cemetery at Gettysburg, in the final text he wrote out in 1864.

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  History & philosophy

  Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort

  John F. Kennedy, 1962

  President Kennedy explains why the United States chooses to go to the Moon in this decade.

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  Reference sheets

  ASCII: USA Standard Code for Information Interchange

  Vint Cerf, 1969

  The 128 codes of 7-bit ASCII with their decimal and hexadecimal values and names, as RFC 20 gives them.

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  Reference sheets

  The SI Base Units

  Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, 2019

  The seven defining constants of the SI and the definitions of its seven base units, from the SI Brochure.

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  Reference sheets

  HTTP Status Codes

  Roy T. Fielding and 3 others, 2022

  Every status code of the IANA HTTP registry with its reason phrase, and the definitions of RFC 9110.

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  Reference sheets

  Phonetic Alphabet and Morse Code

  Federal Aviation Administration, 2026

  The ICAO phonetic alphabet with the Morse code of each letter and figure, from the FAA’s Aeronautical Information Manual.

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