History of the Computer

By cecem0902

  • Charles Babbage creates first computer

    English mathematician Charles Babbage conceives of a steam-driven calculating machine that would be able to compute tables of numbers.

  • Ada Lovelace writes first computer program

    Ada Lovelace, an English mathematician and the daughter of poet Lord Byron, writes the world's first computer program.

  • Swedish inventor Georg Scheutz creates printing calculator

    The machine is significant for being the first to "compute tabular differences and print the results.

  • Alan Turing presents principle universal machine

    Alan Turing, a British scientist and mathematician, presents the principle of a universal machine

  • John Vincent Atanasoff submits creation proposal

    John Vincent Atanasoff, a professor of physics and mathematics at Iowa State University, submits a grant proposal to build the first electric-only computer, without using gears, cams, belts or shafts.

  • Atanasoff and Clifford Berry are the first to store information on memory

    Atanasoff and his graduate student, Clifford Berry, design the first digital electronic computer in the U.S., called the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC).

  • ENIAC computer is created

    John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, design and build the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC). The machine is the first "automatic, general-purpose, electronic, decimal, digital computer

  • Grace Hopper develops first computer language

    : Grace Hopper develops the first computer language, which eventually becomes known as COBOL

  • Douglas Engelbart makes a prototype

    Douglas Engelbart reveals a prototype of the modern computer at the Fall Joint Computer Conference, San Francisco.

  • Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak co-found Apple

    Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak co-found Apple Computer on April Fool's Day. They unveil Apple I, the first computer with a single-circuit board and ROM (Read Only Memory), according to MIT(opens in new tab).

  • Apple Macintosh is announced

    The Apple Macintosh is announced to the world during a Superbowl advertisement. The Macintosh is launched with a retail price of $2,500, according to the NMAH.

  • Mac OS X is released

    Mac OS X, later renamed OS X then simply macOS, is released by Apple as the successor to its standard Mac Operating System.

  • MacBook Pro is released

    The MacBook Pro from Apple hits the shelves. The Pro is the company's first Intel-based, dual-core mobile computer.

  • First reprogrammable computer is created

    The first reprogrammable quantum computer was created. "Until now, there hasn't been any quantum-computing platform that had the capability to program new algorithms into their system.