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Difference Engine
Charles Babbage designed the first computer, and it was a simple automatic mechanical calculator that was able to do simple sums. Charles Babbage designed it, because humans with pencils needed replacing, because they can make mistakes. The difference engine could also do bigger sums and it is more efficient. Sadly, it was designed and only partially made, as they didn’t have the materials at that time. It was completely made, fully operational in 2002. -
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Computer History Timeline
Computer History from the 1830s to now. See the changes of technology, and the progress electronic communications have made. -
Analytic Engine
Charles Babbage designed and invented the early analytic Machine which could do really complicated mathematical sums, but they could not make it, as the supplies were not available at that time. Ada Lovelace, inspired by the designs, wrote a program for it. She was an accomplished mathematician, which was very rare and a big accomplishment for her at that time because she was a female. She was also the programmer (even if the computer she was programming wasn’t made yet!). -
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Grace Hopper's Life
Grace Hopper was born in New York City, and was an American computer scientist and a Navy rear Admiral. She programmed the Mark 1 computer, an IBM Sequence Controlled calculator used at the end of WW2.
She also developed the first computer language, named COBOL.
During programming Mark 2 (finished in 1947), Grace Hopper found a ‘bug’ in the program stuck under the switches. The term 'bug' has been used before by engineers, but was brought to popularity by her.
She also made the first compiler. -
IBM
IBM (International Business Machines Corporation) is a computer hardware company. The precursor was founded by Charles Ranlitt Flint in New York City by merging Herman Hollerith's Tabulation Machine Co., Computing Scale, ITR and Bundy Manufacturing Co, calling it the C-T-R (Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company).
Thomas Watson Sr. was the CEO of IBM from 1914-1956, and he turned the humble company turn into an international force. He emphasized on education, research and engineering. -
Universal/Turing Machine
The universal machine, later called the Turing machine, was made by Alan Turing in the year of 1936 and manipulates and reads a strip of tape according to program rules. It was originally designed to crack the Nazi’s Enigma Code, but it can be adapted to any computer code. The whole computer is very large, almost taking up a whole small room! Alan Turing’s idea was that it was able to do many things on the same machine, using software. -
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Steve Job's Life
Born in Francisco and adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs, Steve Jobs was surrounded by elctronics in his childhood, making a big impact on him. He started a job at video-game maker Atari after dropping out of college
After noticing that Steve Wozniac, a friend, was regularly attending the Homebrew Computer Club, Jobs realized that they could make a business out of Wozniac's computer board. Hence, Apple started. Anybody could have a personal electronic device now because of the price and the quality. -
Computer Chip
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce invented the silicon/computer chip, or the integrated circuit in 1961, and it is made out of silicon (hence the name SILICON chip!). Their invention revolutionized the sizes of electronics, and it enabled massive miniaturization. It led the way to the modern computers we have now. Kilby was awarded the Physics Nobel Prize for his work. -
Computer Mouse
Douglas Engelbart was an early computer and Internet pioneer. He invented the first computer mouse in the period of 1964, and was publicly unveiled in 1968. The first one was wooden, and had 2 metal wheels perpendicular to each other to translate the motion along the axes (x and y) using the wheel’s movement. It only had 3 buttons, but Douglas Engelbart envisioned 10. -
Modern E-mail
Ray Tomlinson is the inventor of the modern network electonic mail, which enables us to send mail between users on different hosts. He also picked the '@' symbol to connect the username to the host/destination address. -
Floppy disk
Alan Shugart and his team of IBM engineers invent the floppy disk which let data to be shared among computers. It used as an alternative to hard drives, which was more expensive. The floppy disk could also store more data in a smaller amount of space. -
Microsoft
Bill Gates was an American business magnate, philanthropist, computer, programmer, and inventor, and he co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen, which turned out to be one of the world’s largest PC software company. They envisioned personal computing (at least one in every home) being a path to the future. They made a new operating system, MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System), to bridge the gap between computer hardware and computer programs, in response to the IBM project code named “Chess”. -
Apple Computer Corporation
In Cupertino, California, the USA, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple, an American technology company which designs and sells electronics, computer software, and online services.
They rolled out the Apple 1 on the first day, the first computer with a single-circuit board.
In October 23 2001, the first iPod was released, and it revolutionized personal music players.
The first iPhone was released on 27 June, 2007, and it set a whole new standard for phones. -
Internet
Vint Cerf was an American Internet Pioneer, who was “one of the fathers of the Internet”. He founded and developed the Internet along with Robert E. Kahn. Vint Cerf helped lay the foundations for the Internet more than 30 years ago, to close to what it is now. He won many awards, including the Turing Award, Presidential Medal of Freedom, and many more. -
World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee is an English computer scienctist, and is known for the invention of the World Wide Web, the first ever web browser. He also invented the TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), which is the basic communication language between computers and/or the Internet. He was working for CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research), and Tim Berners-Lee made the first website ever built on August 6, 1991. -
Google
Google was created by Eric Shmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin on 4th September, 1998. The project started in January 1996, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin were PhD students in Stanford University, California. Google was registered as a domain on September 15th, 1997. 'Google' comes from a play of the word 'googol', a number with the numeral 1, with 100 zeroes after. This reflects Larry's and Sergey's mission of creating a search engine of infinite amount of information on the web. -
The First iPhone
On June 29 2007, Apple released its first iPhone, setting a high standard for later phones with the multi-touch accelerometer (motion sensor), multi-touch screen, and the pricing (only $199 compared to the other $400 or more phones). The App store helped users to browse and buy apps more conveniently and in a simpler, user-friendly way.
