-
Joseph Marie Jacquard
invents a loom that uses punched wooden cards
but also influenced the future development of computing technology. -
Charles Babbage
conceives of a steam-driven calculating machine that would be able to compute tables of numbers. -
Ada Lovelace
writes the first program while translating a paper on Babbage's Analytical Engine from French into English. -
Per Georg Scheutz
and his son Edvard design the world's first printing calculator. -
Herman Hollerith
designs a punch-card system to help calculate the 1890 U.S. Census. -
Annevar Bush
invents and builds the Differential Analyzer, the first large-scale automatic general-purpose mechanical analog computer -
Alan Turing
presents the principle of a universal machine.Turing machine -
Electric-only computer
without using gears, cams, belts or shafts. -
David Packard and Bill Hewlett
found the Hewlett Packard Company in Palo Alto, California. -
John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert
design and build the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC) -
Mauchly and Presper
they building the UNIVAC, the first commercial computer for business and government applications. -
William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain
invent the transistor. -
EDSAC
A team at the University of Cambridge develops the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator -
Grace Hopper
develops the first computer language, which eventually becomes known as COBOL, -
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce
unveiling the integrated circuit, known as the computer chip. -
Douglas Engelbart
reveals a prototype of the modern computer at the Fall Joint Computer Conference -
UNIX
Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and a group of other developers at Bell Labs produce UNIX -
Intel 1103
The newly formed Intel unveils the Intel 1103, the first Dynamic Access Memory (DRAM) chip. -
FLOPPY DISK
A team of IBM engineers invents the "floppy disk," enabling data to be shared among different computers. -
Robert Metcalfe
develops Ethernet for connecting multiple computers and other hardware. -
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
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
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 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
the abbreviated term for "wireless fidelity" is developed, initially covering a distance of up to 300 feet -
AMD
AMD's Athlon 64, the first 64-bit processor for personal computers, is released to customers. -
FIREFOX
The Mozilla Corporation launches Mozilla Firefox 1.0. The Web browser is one of the first major challenges to Internet Explorer -
GOOGLE
Google buys Android, a Linux-based mobile phone operating system -
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
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is developing a new "Molecular Informatics" program that uses molecules as computers.