Re: So Who is Credited with Inventing “Count Sort” as we know it Today - Anybody?

[Austin Obyrne <austin.obyrne@hotmail.com>]

On Sunday, June 24, 2012 3:39:47 PM UTC+1, Georg Bauhaus wrote:
> On 24.06.12 15:26, Austin Obyrne wrote:
> 
> > But who did invent “Count Sort” on the other hand is something I would like to know – an individual ?.
> 
> A standard reference for answering this question would be
> Knuth, Donald E. (1998): The Art of Computer Programming,
> Vol. 3, Sorting and Searching, 2nd Ed.
> 
> Chances are that classifications and names of all sorts of
> sorting procedures are covered in Chapter 5, on "Sorting"
> (which has 391 pages).
> 
> A  table of contents is here,
> 
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/toc/0201896850/ref=dp_toc?ie=UTF8&n=266239
> 
> In particular, section 5.2, titled "Internal Sorting",
> has a subsection  "Sorting by Counting". If this is it,
> Knuth (as in every subsection) collects historical records
> of first mentions of the methods at the end of the subsection.
> In this case,
> 
> "Sorting by comparison counting (...) was first mentioned in
> print by E.H. Friend [JACM 3 (1956), 152], although he didn't
> claim it as his own invention. Distribution sorting (...) was
> first developed by H. Seward in 1954 for use with radix sorting
> techniques".

Hi Georg,

Many thanks for this information - Iwas able to locate a used copy in "BetterWorldBooks" for only £6-50.

His first edition was in 1973 and Ada was first published as Ada-83 in 1983 so it is probable that the algorithm may have been used in some computer language some over the last 30 years.

It is not desperately important but I would like to be able to say that my implementation is the first in Ada and is completely independent of the algorithm in 1954 by H. Seaward (hope I've got the name right).

The book might say if there is an implementation in 'C' that I can view just to compare with my own.

Very grateful,

Austin O'Byrne.