Major Events and People in the History of Computers

Charles Babbage

Sep 4, 1834

Designed the first automatic calculator, called the Analytical Engine

Herman Hollerith

Sep 4, 1890

Was the first to take Jacquard's punch card concept and aplly it to computing with his Hollerith Tabulating Machine, which automatically read data punched onto small punch cards

Eniac

Mar 10, 1944

Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer.
A US government sponsored machine developed to calculate the settings used for weapons.
Thought of as the first successful high speed electronic digital computer, although it was big and clumsy.

1st Generation Computers

Sep 4, 1951

Last to use vacuum tubes to store data

Univac

Dec 3, 1951

Universal Automatic Computer.
First commercially successful electronic digital computer.
Gained notoriety when as a publicity stunt it was used to predict the outcome of the Stevenson-Eisenhower presidential race, and was correct in its prediction.
Considered first-generation computers and amoung the last to use vacuum tubes to store data.

2nd Generation Computer

Sep 4, 1952

Used transistors

3rd Generation

Sep 4, 1958

Integrated Circut

Jack Kilby

Sep 4, 1958

Invented the worlds first integrated circut, a small chip capable of containing thousands of transistors

BASIC

Aug 5, 1964

Beginners All-Purpose Sybolic Instruction Code
A programming language easily understood.
The key language of PC

Bill Gates

Sep 4, 1964

Used BASIC to write a program for Altair, and lated created the software company Microsoft

4th Generation

Sep 4, 1971

Used microprocessor chips

GUI

Feb 7, 1972

Graphical User Interface
Allowed users to interact with the computer more easily.
(the Lisa was the first computer to introduce GUI to the market)

Altair Computer

Sep 2, 1975

First Personal Computer

Steve Jobs

Sep 4, 1976

Co-Created the Apple Computer Company.
Previously worked for atari

Apple II

Nov 4, 1977

Color Monitor, Sound, and Game Panels

WordStar

Sep 4, 1978

First word processing application

VisiCalc

Sep 4, 1978

First electronic spreadsheet application

Osbourne Computer

Sep 2, 1981

First Portable Computer
Weighed 24.5 ponuds
(Osbourne later closed, and design bought by Compaq in 1983)

PageMaker

Sep 4, 1985

The first desktop publishing software

Excel

Sep 4, 1985

One of the first spreadsheets to use graphical user interface

Mosaic

Mar 15, 1993

Web browser thatallowed users to view multimedia on the web.
Caused internet traffic to increase by nearly 350%

Netscape

Sep 4, 1994

Browser which soon became prodominate in browser software