Major achievements

Major achievements

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The German military used the Enigma machine (shown here) during World War II for communication they thought to be secret. The large-scale decryption of Enigma traffic at Bletchley Park was an important factor that contributed to Allied victory in WWII.^[12]

Despite its short history as a formal academic discipline, computer science has made a number of fundamental contributions to science and society. These include:

• The start of the "digital revolution," which includes the current Information Age and the Internet.^[13]
• A formal definition of computation and computability, and proof that there are computationally unsolvable and intractable problems.^[14]
• The concept of a programming language, a tool for the precise expression of methodological information at various levels of abstraction.^[15]
• In cryptography, breaking the Enigma machine was an important factor contributing to the Allied victory in World War II.^[12]
• Scientific computing enabled practical evaluation of processes and situations of great complexity, as well as experimentation entirely by software. It also enabled advanced study of the mind, and mapping of the human genome became possible with the Human Genome Project.^[13] Distributed computing projects such as Folding@home explore protein folding.
• Algorithmic trading has increased the efficiency and liquidity of financial markets by using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other statistical and numerical techniques on a large scale.^[16]
• Image synthesis, including video by computing individual video frames.^{[citation needed]}
• Human language processing, including practical speech-to-text conversion and automated translation of languages^{[citation needed]}
• Simulation of various processes, including computational fluid dynamics, physical, electrical, and electronic systems and circuits, as well as societies and social situations (notably war games) along with their habitats, among many others. Modern computers enable optimization of such designs as complete aircraft. Notable in electrical and electronic circuit design are SPICE as well as software for physical realization of new (or modified) designs. The latter includes essential design software for integrated circuits