THE COMPUTER HISTORY

  • Joseph Marie Jacquard

    Joseph Marie Jacquard

    invents a loom that uses punched wooden cards
    but also influenced the future development of computing technology.
  • Charles Babbage

    Charles Babbage

    conceives of a steam-driven calculating machine that would be able to compute tables of numbers.
  • Ada Lovelace

    Ada Lovelace

    writes the first program while translating a paper on Babbage's Analytical Engine from French into English.
  • Per Georg Scheutz

    Per Georg Scheutz

    and his son Edvard design the world's first printing calculator.
  • Herman Hollerith

    Herman Hollerith

    designs a punch-card system to help calculate the 1890 U.S. Census.
  • Annevar Bush

    Annevar Bush

    invents and builds the Differential Analyzer, the first large-scale automatic general-purpose mechanical analog computer
  • Alan Turing

    Alan Turing

    presents the principle of a universal machine.Turing machine
  • Electric-only computer

    Electric-only computer

    without using gears, cams, belts or shafts.
  • David Packard and Bill Hewlett

    David Packard and Bill Hewlett

    found the Hewlett Packard Company in Palo Alto, California.
  • John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert

    John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert

    design and build the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC)
  • Mauchly and Presper

    Mauchly and Presper

    they building the UNIVAC, the first commercial computer for business and government applications.
  • William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain

    William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain

    invent the transistor.
  • EDSAC

    EDSAC

    A team at the University of Cambridge develops the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator
  • Grace Hopper

    Grace Hopper

    develops the first computer language, which eventually becomes known as COBOL,
  • Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce

    Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce

    unveiling the integrated circuit, known as the computer chip.
  • Douglas Engelbart

    Douglas Engelbart

    reveals a prototype of the modern computer at the Fall Joint Computer Conference
  • UNIX

    UNIX

    Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and a group of other developers at Bell Labs produce UNIX
  • Intel 1103

    Intel 1103

    The newly formed Intel unveils the Intel 1103, the first Dynamic Access Memory (DRAM) chip.
  • FLOPPY DISK

    FLOPPY DISK

    A team of IBM engineers invents the "floppy disk," enabling data to be shared among different computers.
  • Robert Metcalfe

    Robert Metcalfe

    develops Ethernet for connecting multiple computers and other hardware.
  • Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak

    Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak

    They unveil Apple I, the first computer with a single-circuit board and ROM (Read Only Memory), according to MIT
  • ACORN

    ACORN

    IBM's first personal computer, is released onto the market at a price point of $1,565, according to IBM. Acorn uses the MS-DOS operating system from Windows. Optional features include a display, printer, two diskette drives, extra memory, a game adapter and more.
  • Tim Berners-Lee

    Tim Berners-Lee

    submits his proposal for what would become the World Wide Web. His paper details his ideas for Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), the building blocks of the Web.
  • MICROSOFT

    MICROSOFT

    Microsoft invests $150 million in Apple, which at the time is struggling financially. This investment ends an ongoing court case in which Apple accused Microsoft of copying its operating system.
  • WI-FI

    WI-FI

    the abbreviated term for "wireless fidelity" is developed, initially covering a distance of up to 300 feet
  • AMD

    AMD

    AMD's Athlon 64, the first 64-bit processor for personal computers, is released to customers.
  • FIREFOX

    FIREFOX

    The Mozilla Corporation launches Mozilla Firefox 1.0. The Web browser is one of the first major challenges to Internet Explorer
  • GOOGLE

    GOOGLE

    Google buys Android, a Linux-based mobile phone operating system
  • W7

    W7

    Microsoft launches Windows 7 on July 22. The new operating system features the ability to pin applications to the taskbar, scatter windows away by shaking another window, easy-to-access jumplists, easier previews of tiles and more
  • DARPA

    DARPA

    The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is developing a new "Molecular Informatics" program that uses molecules as computers.