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Slide Rule
English mathematician names William Oughtred used Napier's logarithms to construct the first slide rule.. Slide rules remained in use as an essential tool for students, engineers, and scientists through the 1960s. -
Mechanical Calculators
Mechanical calculators were developed as early as1623,when a German professor name Wilhelm Schickard created a mechanical calculator called Schickard's Calculator with a series of interlocking gears. -
Pascaline
In 1642, a Frenchman named Blaise Pascal developed the Pascaline, a mechanical device that could be used to perform additon, subtraction, multiplication and division. -
Liebniz Calculator
Another mechanical calculator, now called the Leibniz Calculator was created by a German baron name Littfried Wilhelm von Leibniz in 1673. -
deColmar's Arithmometer
It was not until 1820, that Thomas de Colmar's Arithmometer became the first mass-produced calculator. These devises operated under manual power by turning a crank or pulling a lever. -
Difference Engine
In 1822, an English mathematician named Charles Babbage proposed a devise called the Difference Engine that would operate using steam power. The Difference Engine was inteded toquickly and accurately calculate large tables of numbers used for astronomical and engineering applications. -
Analytical Engine
In 1834, Babbage began designing a new general-purpose calculating devise called the Analystical Engine. Although the analytical engine was never completed, computer historians believe that its design embodies many of the concepts that define the modern computer, including memory, a programmable processor, an output devise and user-definable input of programs and data. -
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U.S.Census
The US Cesus provided incentive for the next generation of calculating machines. Compuling data from the 1880 census dragged on until 1887 - just three years before the next census was to begin. -
Hollerith Tabulating Machine
Herman Hollerith won the competition with a design for an electronic punched card tabulating device. Each card contained areas to represent fields, such as "nationality". Once puched, the cards were fed in a card reader that used an array of metal rods to electroically read data fromt he cardes and tabluate the results. The Hollerith Tabluating Machine was effective. -
The Tabulating Machine Company
Herman Hollerith incorporated The Tabluating Machine Company. -
Tabulating Machine Company Name Change
The name of the company was changed to International Business Machines, better known today as IBM. -
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Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)
Between 1937 and 1942 an Iowa State University professor, John V. Atanasoff, and a graduate student, Clifford E. Berry, worked on a prototype for an electronic computer. The ABC was the first to use vacuum tubes instead of mechanical switches for processing circuitry. -
Harvard Mark I
IBM sponsored an engineer named Howard Aiken, who embarded on an audacious plan to integrate 73 IBM Automatic Accounting Machines into a single unified computing unit. What emerged was a mechanical computer officially named the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC) but now usuallyreferred to as thge Harvard Mark I. -
COLOSSIUS
In 1943, a team of British developers created COLOSSUS,an electronic device designed to decode messages encrypted by the German Engima machine. It contained 1,800 vacuum tubes, used binary arthmetic, and was capable of reading input at the rate of 5,000 characters per second. COLOSSUS Successfully broke the Engima codes and gave the Allies a major advantage during World War II. -
ENIAC
In 1943 a team headed by John W.Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert started work on ENIAC, a gigantic, general-purpose electronic computer. ENIAC, Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, was designed to calculate trajectory tables for the US Army but was not finished until November 1945. -
ENIAC Dedication
ENIAC was formally dedicated at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania on February 15, 1946. This is the beginnning of the first generation of computers. Images Citation: http://members.iinet.net.au/~dgreen/ -
Aiken Prediction
Howard AIken predicted that only six electronic digital computers would be required to satisfy the computing needs of the entire United States. -
Second Generation Computer
Second generation computer used transistors instead of vacuum tubes. First demonstrated in 1947 by AT&T's Bell Laboratories, transistors regulate current or voltage flow and act as a switch for electronic signals. Image Citation: http://dumplingswithmilk.wordpress.com/category/writings/ -
UNIVAC
UNIVAC was considered the first commercially successful digital computer. The first UNIVAC computer was constructed under the auspices of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1951. -
Third Generation
Third generation computers became possible in 1958 when Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor independently developed integrated circuits. Integrated circuit technology made it possible to pack the equivalent of thousands of vaccum tubes or transistors onto a single minature chip. Image Citation: http://dumplingswithmilk.wordpress.com/category/writings/ -
Digital Equipment Corporation
In 1965, Digital Equiment Corp. (DEC) introduced the DEC PDP-8, the first commercially successful minicomputer. Minicomputers were designed to be samller and less powerful than mainframe computers while maintaining the capability to simultaneously run multiple programs for mutiple users. -
Fourth Generation Computers
The technology for fourth generation computers appeared in 1971, when Ted Hoff developed the first general purpose microprocessor. Called the Intel 4004, this microprocessor dramatically change the computer industry, resulting in fourth generation microprocessor-based computer systems that were faster, smaller, and even less expensive than the third generation computer. Image Citation: http://www.tpub.com/neets/book22/91b.htm -
Patent Dispute
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer gained national attention when it was pulled from obscurity in a 1972 patent dispute. The Sperry Rand Company claimed to have a patent on digital computer architecture, but the court declared the patent claims invalid because it was based on the work of Atanasoff and Berry. -
Apple 1
In 1976 Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer Corporation and released the Apple 1,a kit containing a system board with 4 KB or RAM that sold for $666.66. -
Apple II
In 1978, Apple introduced a preassembled comp[ter called the Apple II,which featured color graphics, expansion slots, a disk drive, a 1.07 MHz 6502 processor, and 16 KB of RAM for $1,195. -
Apple Lisa
In 1983 Apple introuced a product called Apple Lisa. A key feature of the Lisa was its graphical user interface, an idea borrowed from the Xerox Alto computer. -
Apple MacIntosh
In 1984, Apple released the first Apple Macintosh.The Macintosh featured a graphical user interface that made programs easier to use than those on the command-line-based IBM PC.
