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Charles Babbage
Invented the Analytical Engine. In 1989, the conference established the Charles Babbage Award to be given each year to a conference participant in recognition of exceptional contributions to the field. -
Herman Hollerith
Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was an American statistician and inventor who developed a mechanical tabulator based on punched cards to rapidly tabulate statistics from millions of pieces of data. He was the founder of the Tabulating Machine Company that later merged to become IBM -
Z1 Computer
Built in 1936
Created by Konrad Zuse
Mechanical calculator
Included control unit and separate memory functions
Important breakthrough for future computer design. The Z1 contained almost all parts of a modern computer, e. g. control unit, memory, micro sequences, floating point logic -
First Generation Computers
Univac and others like it used vaccum tubes. First generation computers relied on machine language, the lowest-level programming language understood by computers, to perform operations, and they could only solve one problem at a time. Input was based on punched cards and paper tape, and output was displayed on printouts. -
Eniac
the first electronic general-purpose computer. It was Turing-complete, digital, and capable of being reprogrammed to solve "a large class of numerical problems". This computational power, coupled with general-purpose programmability, excited scientists and industrialists. -
Univac
First commercially successful digital computer
Operated on magnetic tape, not punch cards. The main memory consisted of tanks of liquid mercury implementing delay line memory, arranged in 1000 words of 12 alphanumeric characters each. -
2nd generation computers
Transistors replaced vacuum tubes and ushered in the second generation of computers. The transistor was invented in 1947 but did not see widespread use in computers until the late 1950s. The transistor was far superior to the vacuum tube, allowing computers to become smaller, faster, cheaper, more energy-efficient and more reliable than their first-generation predecessors. -
Jack Kilby
Integrated circuits (1958)
Invented by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments
Small chip containing thousands of transistors
Enabled computers to become smaller and lighter.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics on December 10, 2000 -
3rd generation computers
The development of the integrated circuit was the hallmark of the third generation of computers. Transistors were miniaturized and placed on silicon chips, called semiconductors, which drastically increased the speed and efficiency of computers. -
BASIC
Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC). Revolutionized software industry. Futurist and sci-fi writer David Brin mourned the loss of ubiquitous BASIC in a 2006 Salon article[14] as have others who first used computers during this era. -
4th generation computer
The microprocessor brought the fourth generation of computers, as thousands of integrated circuits were built onto a single silicon chip. What in the first generation filled an entire room could now fit in the palm of the hand. The Intel 4004 chip, developed in 1971, located all the components of the computer—from the central processing unit and memory to input/output controls—on a single chip. -
The Graphical User Interface
GUI not invented by computer company
Apple was first company to take commercial advantage of GUI. sometimes pronounced "gooey" -
The Altair Computer
Only 256 bytes of memory. Did not come with a monitor of key board and required assembly. Sold for 439$ in 1975, now listed on Ebay for 3 grand. -
Steve Jobs
Co-founder of Apple, released the Apple 1 with Steve Wozniac.
He also played a role in introducing the LaserWriter, one of the first widely available laser printers, to the market. -
Apple II
Colored monitor, sound and game padels. 4kb of memory. Used ROM.You would need at least 850 of those [Apple II] computers to equal the single [computational] power of this one small [modern Apple] phone. -
Word star
First word processesing application. In spite of its great popularity in the early 1980s, these problems allowed WordPerfect to take WordStar's place as the most widely used word processor from 1985 onwards -
Bill Gates
IBM asked Gates of Microsoft to write an OS program for the IBM PC, he then created MS-DOS. This software gave Microsoft reign as one of the dominant players in the personal computer land scape. Bill Gates is spending $1 million to develop a mouse in Cincinnati, but not the kind you plug into a computer. This one is an actual rodent, and it could save lives. -
Osbourne Computer
The first portable computer. Adam Osborne damaged his company's current sales when he began showing the Osborne Executive to journalists in early 1983 -
Page maker
The first desk top publishing software. Development of Pagemaker had flagged in the later years at Aldus, and by 1998 PageMaker had lost almost the entire professional market[20] to the comparatively feature-rich QuarkXPress 3.3, released in 1992, and 4.0, released in 1996. -
Excel
One of the first spread sheets to use GUI. It has been a very widely applied spreadsheet for these platforms, especially since version 5 in 1993, and it has replaced Lotus 1-2-3 as the industry standard for spreadsheets. Excel forms part of Microsoft Office -
Mosiac
Caused 350% increase in Internet traffic. Twenty years after Mosaic's introduction, the most popular contemporary browsers, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Mozilla Firefox retain many of the characteristics of the original Mosaic graphical user interface (GUI), such as the URL bar and forward/back/reload buttons, and interactive experience.[citation needed] -
Bill Gates
