Description: This is a summary of the biography of Charles Babbage, 1791-1871, much of whose life was devoted to inventing and constructing machines to free actuaries and other sufferers from the drudgery of repetitive arithmetic.

Description: Insurance professionals are seeing the industry change before their very eyes, and many are being forced to change with it. But it seems those pushed and pushing the most are those touched directly by the Internet’s World Wide Web. In this article, seven executives and professionals are interviewed about their work on this new fast track. They sometimes had widely varying opinions, but they agreed on two points: the Web is rapidly forcing a restructuring of the way insurance business is done, and this will create new and perhaps more opportunities for actuaries.

Description: Article from The Actuary, January 1971 – volume 5 - Issue 1 is a list of some of the sources of information that may be useful to an actuary who wishes to increase his or her knowledge of data processing.

Description: This article gives an historical description of calculating and tabulating equipment used by, and is some cases developed by, actuaries in their work.

Description: This is a summary of a more extensive paper on the question of a programming language. This article discusses the trend to develop computer languages for the subject-matter specialist instead of for the professional programmer or computing machinery.

Description: Briefly reviews the history of Information Technology, IT, in the life insurance business. It then talks about the emerging trends in IT management and the impact they likely will have on the work of the life insurance actuary.

Description: This article summarizes the Retirement Systems Practice Area Advanced Technology Working Group Report. Formed to project developments in technology and their applications, the Advanced Technology Working Group’s goal was to improve all aspects of Society of Actuaries services for its members in the retirement systems practice area. Although the emphasis was on pension actuaries, many ideas are equally applicable to other areas.

Description: This article gives an overview of the new SOA website and statistics on its usage plus looks at other actuarial sites, and describes the prevalent search engines.

Description: In the second half of 1997, magazine and newspaper reports started appearing in droves about the presumed doomsday of Jan. 1, 2000, for any and all activities associated with computers. This article discusses the 'Y2K problem' and the costs of addressing it.

Description: This article provides responses to a March 1981 query in The Actuary about the use of home computers.