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Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal invents the the "Pascaline", a mechanical adding machine -
Babbage on his 'Difference Engine'
The 1820s saw Babbage work on his 'Difference Engine', a machine which could perform mathematical calculations. A six-wheeled model was initially constructed and demonstrated to a number of audiences. He then developed plans for a bigger, better, machine - Difference Engine 2. He also worked on another invention, the more complex Analytical Engine, a revolutionary device on which his fame as a computer pioneer now largely rests. It was intended to be able to perform any arithmetical calculation -
Charles Babbage:
Charles Babbage designs his first mechanical computer -
Ada Lovelace
Ada met Babbage at a party in 1833 when she was seventeen and was entranced when Babbage demonstrated the small working section of the Engine to her. She intermitted her mathematical studies for marriage and motherhood but resumed when domestic duties allowed. In 1843 she published a translation from the French of an article on the Analytical Engine by an Italian engineer, Luigi Menabrea, to which Ada added extensive notes of her own. The Notes included the first published description of a stepw -
Dorr E
The Comptometer is an invention of Dorr E. Felt which is operated by pressing keys. -
Per Georg Scheutz
Per Georg Scheutz and his son Edvard invent the Tabulating Machine -
William Stanley Jevons
William Stanley Jevons designs a practical logic machine -
Thomas J.Thomas
IBM is formed on June 15, 1911. It was a company which produced computers. -
Enigma
The story of the famous Enigma cipher machine combines ingenious technology, military history and the mysterious world of espionage, codebreakers and intelligence into a real thriller. Never before has the fate of so many lives been so influenced by one cryptographic machine, as in the Second World War. Enigma is the most famous and appealing example of the battle between codemakers and codebreakers. Enigma showed the importance of cryptography to military and civil intelligence. -
Alan Turing
Alan Turing develops the concept of a theoretical computing machine. -
Konrad Zuse
Konrad Zuse creates the Z1 Computer a binary digital computer using punch tape. -
John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry
John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry develop the ABC (Atanasoft-Berry Computer) prototype. -
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard is Founded. David Packard and Bill Hewlett found Hewlett-Packard in a Palo Alto, California garage. Their first product was the HP 200A Audio Oscillator, which rapidly becomes a popular piece of test equipment for engineers. Walt Disney Pictures ordered eight of the 200B model to use as sound effects generators for the 1940 movie “Fantasia.” -
Complex Number Calculator
The Complex Number Calculator (CNC) is completed. In 1939, Bell Telephone Laboratories completed this calculator, designed by researcher George Stibitz. In 1940, Stibitz demonstrated the CNC at an American Mathematical Society conference held at Dartmouth College. Stibitz stunned the group by performing calculations remotely on the CNC (located in New York City) using a Teletype connected via special telephone lines. This is considered to be the first demonstration of remote access computing. -
Bombe
The first Bombe is completed. Based partly on the design of the Polish “Bomba,” a mechanical means of decrypting Nazi military communications during WWII, the British Bombe design was greatly influenced by the work of computer pioneer Alan Turing and others. Many bombes were built. Together they dramatically improved the intelligence gathering and processing capabilities of Allied forces. [Computers] -
Z3
Konrad Zuse finishes the Z3 computer. The Z3 was an early computer built by German engineer Konrad Zuse working in complete isolation from developments elsewhere. Using 2,300 relays, the Z3 used floating point binary arithmetic and had a 22-bit word length. The original Z3 was destroyed in a bombing raid of Berlin in late 1943. However, Zuse later supervised a reconstruction of the Z3 in the 1960s which is currently on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich. -
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) is completed. After successfully demonstrating a proof-of-concept prototype in 1939, Atanasoff received funds to build the full-scale machine. Built at Iowa State College (now University), the ABC was designed and built by Professor John Vincent Atanasoff and graduate student Cliff Berry between 1939 and 1942. The ABC was at the center of a patent dispute relating to the invention of the computer, which was resolved in 1973 when it was shown that ENIAC co-desi -
Alan Turing
Alan Turing develops the the code-breaking machine Colossus -
Colossus
The first Colossus is operational at Bletchley Park. Designed by British engineer Tommy Flowers, the Colossus was designed to break the complex Lorenz ciphers used by the Nazis during WWII. A total of ten Colossi were delivered to Bletchley, each using 1,500 vacuum tubes and a series of pulleys transported continuous rolls of punched paper tape containing possible solutions to a particular code. Colossus reduced the time to break Lorenz messages from weeks to hours. The machine’s existence was n -
Enigma
Adolf Hitler uses the Enigma encryption machine -
The first Colossus is operational
The first Colossus is operational at Bletchley Park. Designed by British engineer Tommy Flowers, the Colossus was designed to break the complex Lorenz ciphers used by the Nazis during WWII. A total of ten Colossi were delivered to Bletchley, each using 1,500 vacuum tubes and a series of pulleys transported continuous rolls of punched paper tape containing possible solutions to a particular code. Colossus reduced the time to break Lorenz messages from weeks to hours. The machine’s -
Howard Aiken & Grace Hopper
Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper designed the MARK series of computers at Harvard University -
Harvard Mark-1
Harvard Mark-1 is completed. Conceived by Harvard professor Howard Aiken, and designed and built by IBM, the Harvard Mark-1 was a room-sized, relay-based calculator. The machine had a fifty-foot long camshaft that synchronized the machine’s thousands of component parts. The Mark-1 was used to produce mathematical tables but was soon superseded by stored program computers. -
John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly
John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly develop the ENIAC ( Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). -
EDSAC
Maurice Wilkes assembled the EDSAC, the first practical stored-program computer, at Cambridge University. His ideas grew out of the Moore School lectures he had attended three years earlier. For programming the EDSAC, Wilkes established a library of short programs called subroutines stored on punched paper tapes.
Technology: vacuum tubes
Memory: 1K words, 17 bits, mercury delay line
Speed: 714 operations per second -
The Manchester Mark I computer functioned as a complete system using the Williams tube for memory
The Manchester Mark I computer functioned as a complete system using the Williams tube for memory. This University machine became the prototype for Ferranti Corp.´s first computer.
Start of project: 1947
Completed: 1949
Add time: 1.8 microseconds
Input/output: paper tape, teleprinter, switches
Memory size: 128 + 1024 40-digit words
Memory type: cathode ray tube, magnetic drum
Technology: 1,300 vacuum tubes
Floor space: medium room
Project leaders: Frederick Williams and Tom Kilburn -
Claude Shannon
Claude Shannon builds the first machine that plays chess in 1949 -
ERA wit drum memory
Engineering Research Associates of Minneapolis built the ERA 1101, the first commercially produced computer; the company´s first customer was the U.S. Navy. It held 1 million bits on its magnetic drum, the earliest magnetic storage devices. Drums registered information as magnetic pulses in tracks around a metal cylinder. Read/write heads both recorded and recovered the data. Drums eventually stored as many as 4,000 words and retrieved any one of them in as little as five-thousandths of a second -
Internet
The Internet was the result of some visionary thinking by people in the early 1960s who saw great potential value in allowing computers to share information on research and development in scientific and military fields. J.C.R. Licklider of MIT, first proposed a global network of computers in 1962, and moved over to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in late 1962 to head the work to develop it. Leonard Kleinrock of MIT and later UCLA developed the theory of packet switching, wh -
The first mouse invented
The computer mouse as we know it today was invented and developed by Douglas Englebart during the 60's and was patented on November 17, 1970. While creating the mouse, Douglas was working at the Stanford Research Institute, a think tank sponsored by Stanford University, and originally referred to the mouse as a "X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System." This mouse was first used with the Xerox Alto computer system in 1973. However, because of its lack of success the first widely used mouse i -
The floppy disk drive (FDD)
The floppy disk drive (FDD) was invented at IBM by Alan Shugart in 1967. The first floppy was an 8-inch flexible plastic disk coated with magnetic iron oxide; computer data was written to and read from the disk's surface.
The nickname "floppy" came from the disk's flexibility. The floppy disk was considered a revolutionary device in the "History of Computers" for its portability which provided a new and easy physical means of transporting data from computer to computer. Inventor Alan Shugart -
Pong
Pong was the invention of Nolan Bushnell, a young engineer who introduced video table tennis to arcades in 1972. Simple and addictive, Pong launched the craze for home video games. The home version was Introduced by Atari, Bushnell's company, in 1974--long before anyone had seen a personal computer. -
First GPS invented
Before GPS
Ancient mariners relied on a compass and the stars to guide them. A sextant was used to measure the angles of the sun, moon and stars to help navigate. In the 20th century, radio waves were also used as a navigation system. Military
The military first came up with the idea for the GPS system in 1973. The first satellite, called NAVSTAR 1 (an acronym for Navigation Satellite Timing and Ranging), was launched in 1978.
Completion
In 1993, the U.S. Air Force launched the final satellite -
5 1/4-inch Floppy Disk
5 1/4-inch Floppy Disk In 1976, the 5 1/4" flexible disk drive and diskette was developed by Alan Shugart for Wang Laboratories. Wang wanted a smaller floppy disk and drive to use with their desktop computers. By 1978, more than 10 manufacturers were producing 5 1/4" floppy drives that stored up to 1.2MB (megabytes) of data.
One interesting story about the 5 1/4-inch floppy disk is how the size was decided. Engineers, Jim Adkisson and Don Massaro were discussing the size with An Wang of Wang La -
Commodore 64
The story of the Commodore 64 begins with MOS Technology, producers of the 6502 CPU, and taken over by Commodore in 1976. After the release of the VIC-20 in early 1981, MOS had no idea what to do next. The decision was made to create chips for "the world's next great video game", and these became the VIC-II (graphics) and SID (sound) chips. However Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore Business Machines and a survivor of the Nazi WWII concentration camps, decided not to go with the video game idea -
Apple 1
Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I, a single-board computer. With specifications in hand and an order for 100 machines at $500 each from the Byte Shop, he and Steve Jobs got their start in business. In this photograph of the Apple I board, the upper two rows are a video terminal and the lower two rows are the computer. The 6502 microprocessor in the white package sits on the lower right. About 200 of the machines sold before the company announced the Apple II as a complete computer. -
ZX80/ZX81
For just $199.95, you can get a complete, powerful, full-function computer, matching or surpassing other personal computers costing several times more. The Sinclair ZX80 is an extraordinary personal computer, compact and briefcase sized, it weighs just 12oz, yet in performance it matches and surpasses systems many times its size and price. The ZX80 is an advanced example of microelectronics design. Inside, it has one-tenth the number of parts of existing comparable machines. -
Osborne
Adam Osborne completed the first portable computer, the Osborne I, which weighed 24 pounds and cost $1,795. The price made the machine especially attractive, as it included software worth about $1,500. The machine featured a 5-inch display, 64 kilobytes of memory, a modem, and two 5 1/4-inch floppy disk drives. -
Microsoft
Microsoft was formed by a Harvard College Dropout called Bill Gates. Bill Gates was born William Henry Gates III on October 28, 1955. He was born to a family that was successful in business, living a comfortable upper middle class life in Seattle, Washington.
In the fall of 1973, Gates left for Harvard University. He enrolled as a prelaw student, but spent most of his time in the campus computer center, programming away. He stayed in touch with Paul Allen and they continued to talk about future -
Apple Macintosh
Apple Computer launched the Macintosh, the first successful mouse-driven computer with a graphic user interface, with a single $1.5 million commercial during the 1984 Super Bowl. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, the Macintosh included many of the Lisa´s features at a much more affordable price: $2,500. Apple´s commercial played on the theme of George Orwell´s "1984" and featured the destruction of Big Brother with the power of personal computing found in a Macintosh. Applications tha -
Amiga 1000 with Seiko Music Keyboard
The Amiga 1000 is released. Commodore’s Amiga 1000 sold for $1,295 dollars (without monitor) and had audio and video capabilities beyond those found in most other personal computers. It developed a very loyal following and add-on components allowed it to be upgraded easily. The inside of the case is engraved with the signatures of the Amiga designers, including Jay Miner as well as the paw print of his dog Mitchy. -
68030 microprocessor
Motorola unveiled the 68030 microprocessor. A step up from the 68020, it built on a 32-bit enhanced microprocessor with a central processing unit core, a data cache, an instruction cache, an enhanced bus controller, and a memory management unit in a single VLSI device — all operating at speeds of at least 20 MHz. -
IBM PS/2
IBM introduced its PS/2 machines, which made the 3 1/2-inch floppy disk drive and video graphics array standard for IBM computers. The first IBMs to include Intel´s 80386 chip, the company had shipped more than 1 million units by the end of the year. IBM released a new operating system, OS/2, at the same time, allowing the use of a mouse with IBMs for the first time. -
IBM 5150
The IBM Personal Computer ("PC") was not as powerful as many of the other personal computers it was competing against at the time of its release. The simplest configuration has only 16K on-board RAM and uses an audio cassette to load and save data - the floppy drive was optional, and a hard drive was not suported. A basic system for home use attaches to an audio tape cassette player and a television set (that means no floppy drives or video monitor) sold for approximately $1,565. PC-DOS, the o -
NeXT
Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, who left Apple to form his own company, unveiled the NeXT. The computer he created failed but was recognized as an important innovation. At a base price of $6,500, the NeXT ran too slowly to be popular. The significance of the NeXT rested in its place as the first personal computer to incorporate a drive for an optical storage disk, a built-in digital signal processor that allowed voice recognition, and object-oriented languages to simplify programming. The NeXT offe -
SimCity
Maxis released SimCity, a video game that helped launch of series of simulators. Maxis cofounder Will Wright built on his childhood interest in plastic models of ships and airplanes, eventually starting up a company with Jeff Braun and designing a computer program that allowed the user to create his own city. A number of other Sims followed in the series, including SimEarth, SimAnt, and SimLife. In SimCity, a player starts with an untouched earth. As the mayor of a city or city planner, he crea -
VideoToaster Installed at Local Television Station
Video Toaster is introduced by NewTek. The Video Toaster was a video editing and production system for the Amiga line of computers and included custom hardware and special software. Much more affordable than any other computer-based video editing system, the Video Toaster was not only for home use. It was popular with public access stations and was even good enough to be used for broadcast television shows like Home Improvement. -
The World Wide Web
The World Wide Web was born when Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN, the high-energy physics laboratory in Geneva, developed HyperText Markup Language. HTML, as it is commonly known, allowed the Internet to expand into the World Wide Web, using specifications he developed such as URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol). A browser, such as Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer, follows links and sends a query to a server, allowing a user to view a site. Berners -
First DVD invented
What we know as DVD was invented and produced in 1995 by Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, and Philips. DVD's offered a higher storage capacity than Compact Disc (CD's) while having the same dimensions. Prerecorded DVD's are mass produced using molding machines that physically stamp data onto the DVD. Such disc are known as DVD-ROM. On these data can only be read and not written or erased. Finally blank recording CD's and DVD's were produced (CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R & DVD-RW). There are a few types, writabl -
Playstation 1
The history of the Playstation begins in 1988 when Sony and Nintendo were working together to develop the Super Disc. The Super Disc was going to be a CD-ROM attachment that was intended to be part of Nintendo's soon to be released Super Nintendo game. However, Sony and Nintendo parted ways business-wise and the Super Disc was never introduced or used by Nintendo. In 1991, Sony used a modified version of the Super Disk as part of their new game console - the Sony Playstation. Research and devel -
Playstation 2
The development of the PS2 was first announced to the public in April 1999. The PS2 had some unique features, not present in any other console. At its heart was an Emotion Engine, which was created by both Sony and Toshiba allowing the whole system to be backwards compatible with older Playstation games as well as be able to play games in the newer DVD format. The PS2 had a hardware mode called Texture Interpolation to anti-alias the edges of graphics. The PS2 was finally released in Japan -
xbox
The Xbox was Microsoft's first video game console after collaborating with Sega to port Windows CE to the Dreamcast console. Microsoft repeatedly delayed the console, which was first mentioned publicly in late 1999 during interviews with Microsoft's then-CEO Bill Gates. Gates stated that a gaming/multimedia device was essential for multimedia convergence in the new times.[8] When Bill Gates unveiled the Xbox at the Game Developers Conference in 2000, audiences were impressed by the console's tec -
Playstation 3
The Play Station 3 was introduced to the public for the first time on May 16, 2005. It was not a functional version of the game console but rather demonstrations of a few games were shown on comparable PC hardware and devkits. The predicted specs of the PS3 Consoles as PlayStation 3 has become known were also shown. That initial prototype featured two HDMI ports, six USB ports, and three Ethernet ports. Approximately a year later another prototype had four USB ports and one of the Ethernet port -
Ipad 1
The iPad was introduced to the U.S. market in April 2010. In just over four months, the iPad reached 51 billion in sales- the fastest ever for a consumer device -
Ipad 2
Apple has just announced official information about new IPad 2. Now we can get acquainted with main characteristics of the last model that most people are longing to get soon. Latest tablet from Apple goes to market in 25 other nations. This action started on Friday, March 25th. New IPad 2 can be ordered from official Apple`s website or be bought from authorized resellers and retail stores. The specs that are announced already are:- 1GHz dual-core A5 chip
- 2 cameras - front and
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Ipod 4g
Out of the box, the new iPod touch reflects the changes made recently to the iPhone 4, with a slimmer profile and the hint of a square design. The back is still stainless steel, with a slightly squarer profile than previously. The new touch is narrower overall and one of the changes has been to remove the way the casing wrapped around the edge in previous versions. And we're not sure we like this change. Yes, to look at, the new iPod touch screen is now framed by only a thin silver border. This -
Ipad 3
The iPad3 has better screen resolution giving the user greater experience. The iPad 2 had a resolution of 132dpi and a display of 1024×768 while the iPad 3 has a resolution of 264dpi and a display of 2048×1536. This is double the size of its predecessor. This means that the resulting display is almost two times better.