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The Punch cards
Punch cards were invented by Herman Hollerith in New York in 1890. The cards were inspired by those from looms in France, they were made from stiff paper. These were similar to the early punch cards however they were able to be read by a computer, meaning they were a form of information storage. The cards were 7 3/8 inches wide, 3 1/4 inches high and .007 thick. They had 22 columns with 8 positions for holes, able to store 176 values. They were invented to store medical statistics in New York. -
Turing Machine
In 1936 Alan Turing invented the Turing machine, a concept capable of computing anything computable. His automatic machine and computing theory proved general properties of computing as a whole and his ideas are the foundation of modern automation theory. This provided a description in mathematical terms of a machine capable of performing arbitrary computations. The machine manipulates a set of symbols on a tape according to a set of rules, Turing foundation for automation within computing. -
First Computer - Atanasoff-Berry Computer
The Atanasoff-Berry computer was created in 1941 by Atanasoff and one of his students, it was the first computer to be able to store information in a main memory unit and was capable of 29 equations simultaneously. The ABC unfortunately wasn't recognized until after his death but was revolutionary for things like binary arithmetic and electronic switching, it didn’t get much credit otherwise because of its comparison to the ENIAC. The ABC wasn’t flexible, but it was the first digital computer. -
Microsoft
In 1975 the two “computer geeks” Paul Allen and Bill Gates formed their own software company, Microsoft in New Mexico, United States. This was after they were very successful in their endeavor to write software for the Altair which was the so called first minicomputer and could compete with commercial models using the new BASIC programming language. -
The Internet
The Internet is a global network that connects billions of machines to one another. It can be used for the exchange of information across the world. The internet was invented by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in 1983 in Silicon Valley. It was invented in order to share military information across computers, for better contact. The internet was created when a group of scientistscame together in a beer garden to do an experiment which ended up working, proving that a network like the internet is possible. -
Wi-fi
Wi-fi is a system for wireless connection between computers and the internet using radiowaves to send information between them. Wi-fi was invented by John O'Sullivan and his colleagues in the Netherlands and the first public version was published in 1997. Wi-fi was invented as a product of trying to filter out radiowaves from black holes, which was inspired by Stephen Hawking’s theory of evaporating black holes. They made a system that could filter certain radiowaves, therefore information.