Technology Timeline

The Analytical Engine

1812

Charles Babbage created what is considered the first computer. It was essentially an advanced calculating machine. It functioned on punch cards.

Hollerith Punch Card Device

Aug 14, 1888

Stored data via punched holes on a card. A punched card device then read, counted, and sorted these cards. These were widely used to input data into early computers.

The Turing Machine

1936

The Turing Machine was a mathematical model of computation. It helped to investigate the limitations of what can be computed. It performed computations by reading and writing to an infinite tape.

Hewlett-Packard Founded

Jul 1, 1939

Bill Hewlett and David Packard founded HP and released their first product, the 200A oscillator, in 1939. They gained a reputation for releasing good-quality electronics. The company released their first computer, the 2116A, in 1966. Their first personal use computer, the HP 85, released in 1980. It was a portable and self-contained unit.

COBOL

May 28, 1959

Grace Hopper, an American computer scientist, invented developed the Common Business Oriented Language. It is an English-like computer programming language. It increased the ease of computer use.

Engelbart GUI

Dec 9, 1968

The first graphical user interface, this was the first hypertext system and preceded the internet by 20 years. It allowed for word processing, point-and-clicking, dragging-and-dropping, hyperlinking, and collaborative groupware.

Apple Founded

Apr 1, 1976

The Apple company was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. They released the Apple I PC in July of 1976. It was one of the first personal use computers.

Windows 1.0

Nov 20, 1985

Windows 1.0 by Microsoft was a family of graphical operating systems made for personal computers. It included multi-tasking and mouse use. It also included paint, a calculator, and a notepad. It functioned in the form of "windows" which could not be overlapped but were instead tiled.

Tim Berners Lee

Mar 12, 1989

Lee invented the World Wide Web. It allowed media servers to be accessed by web browsers. This also allowed people to make their own websites.

Wifi

Sep 21, 1997

Originally called the 802.11 protocol, wifi first provided up to 2Mbit/s link speeds. The term wifi was trademarked in 1999. By that time, 11Mbit/s link speeds were available. It provided wireless internet access.

iPhone

Jan 9, 2007

Apple released a touchscreen mobile phone with access to the internet, an Appstore, and a camera. The iPhone 1 had up to 8 GB of storage, but a 16 GB model was later released.

Chromebook

Jun 15, 2011

The AC700 by Acer and the Samsung series 5 were both released around this time and are considered the first Chromebooks. Both ran on the AtomN570 processor and ran up to 4 GB of RAM. Screens were below 13 inches.

Apple Watch

Apr 24, 2015

The Apple Watch gen 1 is a compact smart watch equipped with 8GB of storage. It can be used as a fitness tracker, texting device, music player, a game player, and GPS when paired with an iPhone. It is essentially a very compact phone.