Computer Programming

Ada Lovelace Writes World's First Computer Program

Oct 9, 1842

Ada Love lace creates world's first computer program in 1842

Herman Hollerith Contribution

Oct 9, 1896

In 1896 he founded the Tabulating Machine Company (which later became the core of IBM).

The Complex Number Calculator (CNC) is completed

Oct 9, 1940

In 1939, Bell Telephone Laboratories completes this calculator, designed by scientist 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 terminal connected via to New York over special telephone lines. This is likely the first example of remote access computing.

Colossus Computers

Oct 9, 1945

Used in WWII, the Colussus comupters were the first programmable electric digital computers.

EDSAC

Oct 9, 1949

The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator was the first practical stored program electronic computer.

FORTRAN was invented

Oct 9, 1954

In 1954, FORTRAN was invented; it was the first widely-used high level programming language to have a functional implementation, as opposed to just a design on paper.

Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) is Demonstrated

Oct 9, 1961

The increasing number of users needing access to computers in the early 1960s leads to experiments in timesharing computer systems. Timesharing systems can support many users – sometimes hundreds – by sharing the computer with each user. CTSS was developed by the MIT Computation Center under the direction of Fernando Corbató and was based on a modified IBM 7094 mainframe computer.

Star Trek debuts with multiple computation devices

Oct 9, 1967

One of the most popular television series of all-time, Star Trek tells of the journeys of the starship Enterprise and its 5-year mission of exploration. Star Trek speculated on technologies such as voice-recognition, handheld computing and communications, human computer interaction, and machine-supported medical diagnosis. The technologies displayed influenced generations of filmmakers, writers, and especially technologists--some of whom are still working today to create technologies featured on

Apollo Guidance Computer read-only rope memory

Oct 9, 1969

Apollo Guidance Computer read-only rope memory is launched into space aboard the Apollo 11 mission, which carried American astronauts to the Moon and back. This rope memory was made by hand, and was equivalent to 72 KB of storage. Manufacturing rope memory was laborious and slow, and it could take months to weave a program into the rope memory. If a wire went through one of the circular cores it represented a binary one, and those that went around a core represented a binary zero.

Early Atari 400/800 advertisementAtari introduces its Model 400 and 800 computers

Oct 9, 1979

Shortly after delivery of the Atari VCS game console, Atari designs two microcomputers with game capabilities: the Model 400 and Model 800. The 400 served primarily as a game console, while the 800 was more of a home computer. Both faced strong competition from the Apple II, Commodore PET, and TRS-80 computers. Atari's 8-bit computers were influential in the arts, especially in the emerging DemoScene culture of the 1980s and '90s.

Apple introduces the Lisa computer

Oct 9, 1983

Lisa is the first commercial personal computer with a graphical user interface (GUI). It was thus an important milestone in computing as soon Microsoft Windows and the Apple Macintosh would soon adopt the GUI as their user interface, making it the new paradigm for personal computing. The Lisa ran on a Motorola 68000 microprocessor and came equipped with 1 MB of RAM, a 12-inch black-and-white monitor, dual 5.25-inch floppy disk drives and a 5 MB “Profile” hard drive. Lisa itself, and especially i

Web users reach 36 million, now biggest user community

Oct 9, 1996

At the end of 1996, the 36 million Web users surpass the 30 million or so on France’s Minitel, until now the most popular online system. By decade’s end, the Web will hit 360 million. By 2010, two billion.

The iMac, a range of all-in-one Macintosh desktop computers, is launched

Oct 9, 1998

iMacApple makes a splash with its Bondi Blue iMac, which sells for about $1,300. Customers got a machine with a 233-MHz G3 processor, 4GB hard drive, 32MB of RAM, a CD-ROM drive, and a 15" monitor. The machine was noted for its ease-of-use and included a 'manual' that contained only a few pictures and less than 20 words. As Apple’s first new product under the leadership of a returning Steve Jobs, many consider this the most significant step in Apple's return from near-bankruptcy in the middle 1990s.

Mac OS X is released

Oct 9, 2001

Mac OS X is released. It was a significant departure from the classic Mac OS as it was based on the Unix-like operating systems FreeBSD, NetBSD and NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP. OS X introduced a more stable and reliable platform and multiple applications could more efficiently be run at the same time. Mac OS X 10.7 (“Lion”) was the first version to support 64-bit Intel processors. It came pre-installed on all Macs beginning in 2011.

Siri is Announced

Oct 9, 2011

Siri is introduced as a built-in feature with the Apple iPhone 4S smartphone in October. A voice-activated personal assistant, Siri could “understand” natural language requests and also adjust the information it retrieved from the web by learning user tendencies and preferences. Siri could perform a wide number of functions – from recommending local restaurants (using the web and the iPhone’s built-in GPS navigation system), providing walking or driving directions, giving weather forecasts, show