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Joseph Marie
In the city France, Joseph Marie Jacquard inveted the loom that uses punched wooden cards to automatically weave fabric designs. Early computers would use similar punch cards.Early method of data storage used with early computers. Punch cards also known as Hollerith cards and IBM cards are paper cards containing several punched or perforated holes that were punched by hand or machine to represent data -
Charles Babbage
English mathematician Charles Babbage conceives of a steam-driven calculating machine that would be able to compute tables of numbers. The project, funded by the English government, is a failure. More than a century later, however, the world's first computer was actually built. -
Herman Hollerith
Herman Hollerith designs a punch card system to calculate the 1880 census, accomplishing the task in just three years and saving the government $5 million. He establishes a company that would ultimately become IBM. Herman Hollerith was born to German immigrants in Buffalo, NY in 1860. His early education was rocky, but he was eventually able to enroll at the City College of New York in 1875 -
Alan Turing
Alan Turing presents the notion of a universal machine, later called the Turing machine, capable of computing anything that is computable. The central concept of the modern computer was based on his ideas. As anyone who can operate a personal computer knows, the way to make the machine perform some desired task is to open the appropriate program stored in the computer's memory -
Atansoff
Atanasoff, a professor of physics and mathematics at Iowa State University, attempts to build the first computer without gears, cams, belts or shafts. Before we had computer engineers or computer scientists to design and build computers, researchers from many disciplines, including physics, mathematics, and electrical engineering, worked to develop the first computing machines. -
David Packard
Hewlett-Packard is founded by David Packard and Bill Hewlett in a Palo Alto, California, garage, according to the Computer History Museum. English mathematician Charles Babbage conceives of a steam-driven calculating machine that would be able to compute tables of numbers -
Atanosoff
Atanasoff and his graduate student, Clifford Berry, design a computer that can solve 29 equations simultaneously. This marks the first time a computer is able to store information on its main memory. -
John Mauchly
Two University of Pennsylvania professors, John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, build the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC). Considered the grandfather of digital computers, it fills a 20-foot by 40-foot room and has 18,000 vacuum tubes. Mauchly was born on August 30, 1907 in Cincinnati, Ohio -
Mauchly and Presper
Mauchly and Presper leave the University of Pennsylvania and receive funding from the Census Bureau to build the UNIVAC, the first commercial computer for business and government applications.Exactly 65 years ago, on Mar. 31, 1951, the U.S. Census Bureau signed a contract for the first commercial computer in the U.S. and thus entered a new era. -
William Shockley
William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain of Bell Laboratories invent the transistor. They discovered how to make an electric switch with solid materials and no need for a vacuum. Encouraged by Executive Vice President Mervin Kelly, William Shockley returned from wartime assignments in early 1945 to begin organizing a solid-state physics group at Bell Labs. -
Grace Hooper
Grace Hopper develops the first computer language, which eventually becomes known as COBOL. Thomas Johnson Watson Jr., son of IBM CEO Thomas Johnson Watson Sr., conceives the IBM 701 EDPM to help the United Nations keep tabs on Korea during the war. -
John Backus
The FORTRAN programming language, an acronym for formula translation, is developed by a team of programmers at IBM led by John Backus, according to the University of Michigan.One of two key programming languages (Lisp is the other), FORTRAN defined many of the key ideas used in programming languages. -
Jack Kilby
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce unveil the integrated circuit, known as the computer chip. Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for his work. Along with Robert Noyce (who independently made a similar circuit a few months later), Kilby is generally credited as co inventor of the integrated circuit. -
Douglas Engelbart
Douglas Engelbart shows a prototype of the modern computer, with a mouse and a graphical user interface (GUI). This marks the evolution of the computer from a specialized machine for scientists and mathematicians to technology that is more accessible to the general public. -
Company, Bell Labs
A group of developers at Bell Labs produce UNIX, an operating system that addressed compatibility issues. Written in the C programming language, UNIX was portable across multiple platforms and became the operating system of choice among mainframes at large companies and government entities. Due to the slow nature of the system, it never quite gained traction among home PC users. -
Intel 1103
The newly formed Intel unveils the Intel 1103, the first Dynamic Access Memory (DRAM) chip. -
Alan Shugart
Alan Shugart leads a team of IBM engineers who invent the "floppy disk," allowing data to be shared among computers. -
Robert Melcafe
Robert Metcalfe, a member of the research staff for Xerox, develops Ethernet for connecting multiple computers and other hardware. Metcalfe was asked to build a networking system for PARC's computers -
Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak start Apple Computers on April Fool's Day and roll out the Apple I, the first computer with a single-circuit board, according to Stanford University. The kits were hand-built by Wozniak and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. They went on sale in July 1976. -
Microsoft
Microsoft announces Windows, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. This was the company's response to Apple's GUI. Commodore unveils the Amiga 1000, which features advanced audio and video capabilities.
