Originally called "Mathematisch Centrum" or just "MC", the CWI was founded in 1946 to contribute to post-war reconstruction.
About 200 researchers.
CWI developed
the first computers in the Netherlands, the ARRA (1952) and its successors.
CWI used an ARRA
to do calculations for the successful Fokker F-27 Friendship airplane and
continued to produce computers via Elektrologica (1956), the first spin-off
company of CWI, later bought by Philips.
In the 1950s, CWI performed calculations for the Delta Works, which were designed to protect the Dutch coastline after the great flood of 1953
CWI co-developed the computer languages ALGOL 60 and ALGOL 68
Most programming languages in use today are descended from Algol 60 (even Python)
The word "Dereference" comes from Algol 68
Guido van Rossum designed and developed the programming language Python in the 1990s at CWI. It is now one of the world’s most popular programming languages.
CWI
registered the NL top level domain '.nl' on 25 April 1986. It was one of the
first country domains in the world.
CWI had the first Internet domain in the Netherlands, cwi.nl, from 1 May 1986.
CWI established the first public connection between Europe and the Internet on 17 November 1988.
Then only 64Kbps, it is peaks at 5.3Tbps! Very nearly doubling every year.
Now the largest internet exchange in the world.
CWI was involved with the Web right from the beginning.
We were one of the first 500 websites, and present at the first Web Conference in 1994.
We have helped to develop many Web standards, including HTML, CSS, and the multimedia standard SMIL (and many others).
CWI is renowned for factoring large numbers.
This line of research attracted worldwide attention with the 'crack' of the RSA-512 internet security code in 1999, and recently with the crack of SHA-1, along with researchers from Google.
CWI has
done research on the mathematics of road traffic.
Surprisingly a motorway, mathematically, is like a hose of water.
Maximum speeds: allowing cars to go faster can surprisingly slow down journey times, and create more traffic jams
Advisory speeds displayed on Dutch motorways use algorithms devised at CWI to calculate the optimal speed to avoid traffic jams forming.
CWI calculated the NL railway timetables.
Interesting fact: the timetables are mirrored. For instance, if a train arrives at 17 minutes to the hour from somewhere, the train back will leave at 17 minutes after the hour (plus or minus 2 minutes).
Computer
pioneer Adriaan van Wijngaarden was the "Father of Dutch Computing"
Edsger
Dijkstra is one of the most famous computer scientists in the world.
He did much to develop a science of computer programming.
Piet
Beertema, the "Godfather of .nl", who set up the internet in the
Netherlands.
Guido van Rossum, the inventor of Python
Floor Sietsma, the youngest-ever PhD in the Netherlands, who got her PhD at
the CWI at age 20 (after 3 year's work, but she was in a hurry because she
wanted to start another Bachelors degree in the September).
She first went to University at age 12.
CWI is an international and dynamic research centre, where loads of great things happen!
Today, presentations of three of them: