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Charles Babbage was born
Charles Babbage, FRS (26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer. Considered a "father of the computer", Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs. Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on display in the London Science Museum. -
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The History of Computers
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Ada Lovelace
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 - 27 November 1852), born Augusta Ada Byron, was an English writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be processed by a machine; thanks to this, she is sometimes considered the "World's First Computer Programmer". -
CRT
The cathode ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing an electron gun (a source of electrons) and a fluorescent screen used to view images. It has a means to accelerate and deflect the electron beam onto the fluorescent screen to create the images. The image may represent electrical waveforms (oscilloscope), pictures (television, computer monitor), radar targets and others. -
Enigma
An Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Enigma was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I. The early models were used commercially from the early 1920s, and adopted by military and government services of several countries — most notably by Nazi Germany before and during World War II. -
The Colossus
The Colossus was the first electric programmable computer and was developed by Tommy Flowers and first demonstrated in December 1943. The Colossus was created to help the British code breakers read encrypted German messages. -
The ENIAC
The ENIAC was invented by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania and began construction in 1943 and was not completed until 1946. It occupied about 1,800 square feet and used about 18,000 vacuum tubes, weighing almost 50 tons. Although the Judge ruled that the ABC computer was the first digital computer, many still consider the ENIAC to be the first digital computer because it was fully functional. -
UNIVAC
First delivered to the United States Government in 1950, the UNIVAC 1101 or ERA 1101 is considered to be the first computer that was capable of storing and running a program from memory. -
Tim Berners Lee
Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA (born 8 June 1955, also known as "TimBL", is an English computer scientist, MIT professor and the inventor of the World Wide Web. He made a proposal for an information management system in March 1989 and on 25 December 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student at CERN, he implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet. -
The Mouse
A mouse is a pointing device that functions by detecting two-dimensional motion relative to its supporting surface. Physically, a mouse consists of an object held under one of the user's hands, with one or more buttons. It sometimes features other elements, such as "wheels", which allow the user to perform various system-dependent operations, or extra buttons or features that can add more control or dimensional input. -
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (often called TCP/IP, although not all applications use TCP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. -
Floppy Disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles. They are read and written by a floppy disk drive (FDD). Floppy disks, initially as 8-inch (200 mm) media and later in 5.25-inch (133 mm) and 3.5-inch (89 mm) sizes, were an ubiquitous form of data storage and exchange from the mid-1970s well into the first decade of the 21st century. -
Pong game
Pong (marketed as PONG) is one of the earliest arcade video games, and is a tennis sports game featuring simple two-dimensional graphics. While other arcade video games such as Computer Space came before it, Pong was one of the first video games to reach mainstream popularity. The aim is to defeat the opponent in a simulated table tennis game by earning a higher score. The game was originaly manufactured by Atari Incorporated (Atari), who released it in 1972. -
GPS
The GPS project was developed in 1973 to overcome the limitations of previous navigation systems, integrating ideas from several predecessors, including a number of classified engineering design studies from the 1960s. GPS was created and realized by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and was originally run with 24 satellites. It became fully operational in 1994. -
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, United States that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. Established on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. -
Cray 1
The Cray-1 was a supercomputer designed, manufactured, and marketed by Cray Research. The first Cray-1 system was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976, and it went on to become one of the best known and most successful supercomputers in history. The Cray-1's architect was Seymour Cray and the chief engineer was Cray Research co-founder Lester Davis. -
Apple 1
Steve Wozniak designed the first Apple known as the Apple I computer in 1976. -
1st CGI Film
An animated 3D wireframe graphic is used for the first time in the first Star Wars film. This new technology was used for the trench run briefing sequence in the first Star Wars film. Larry Cuba, who worked out of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois, explains his part in the computer graphics for the first Star Wars in the video below. -
Sinclair ZX80
The Sinclair ZX80 is a home computer brought to market in 1980 by Science of Cambridge Ltd. (later to be better known as Sinclair Research). It is notable for being the first computer (unless you consider the MK14) available in the United Kingdom for less than a hundred pounds (£99.95). It was available in kit form, where purchasers had to assemble and solder it together, and as a ready-built version at a slightly higher cost for those without the skill or inclination to build their own unit. -
The IBM 5150
The IBM 5100 is the first portable computer, which was released on September 1975. The computer weighed 55 pounds and had a five inch CRT display, tape drive, 1.9MHz PALM processor, and 64KB of RAM. -
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64, commonly called C64, C=64 (after the graphic logo on the case) or occasionally CBM 64 (for Commodore Business Machines), or VIC-64,[3] was an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International. -
Mac OS
Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. (formerly Apple Computer, Inc.) for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface. The original form of what Apple would later name the "Mac OS" was the integral and unnamed system software first introduced in 1984 with the original Macintosh, usually referred to simply as the System software. -
CD ROMs
CD-ROMs are popularly used to distribute computer software, including video games and multimedia applications, though any data can be stored (up to the capacity limit of a disc). Some CDs hold both computer data and audio with the latter capable of being played on a CD player, while data (such as software or digital video) is only usable on a computer (such as ISO 9660 format PC CD-ROMs). These are called enhanced CDs. -
Amstrad PCW
The Amstrad PCW series was a range of personal computers produced by British company Amstrad from 1985 to 1998, and also sold under licence in Europe as the "Joyce" by the German electronics company Schneider in the early years of the series' life. When it was launched, the cost of a PCW system was under 25% of the cost of almost all IBM-compatible PC systems in the UK. -
Windows
Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs).[2] Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal computer market, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984. -
Browsers
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content.[2] Hyperlinks present in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related resources. -
SNES- Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (also known as the Super NES, SNES[b] or Super Nintendo) is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia (Oceania), and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, -
Playstation 1
The PlayStation (プレイステーション Pureisutēshon?, officially abbreviated PS) brand is a series of video game consoles created and developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. Spanning the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth generations of video gaming, the brand was first introduced on December 3, 1994 in Japan.[1] The brand consists of a total of three home consoles, a media center, an online service, a line of controllers, two handhelds and a phone, as well as multiple magazines. -
DVD
DVD is an optical disc storage format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions. -
TFT
Thin film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) is a variant of liquid crystal display (LCD) which uses thin-film transistor (TFT) technology to improve image quality (e.g., addressability, contrast). TFT LCD is one type of Active matrix LCD, though all LCD-screens are based on matrix addressing. TFT LCDs are used in television sets, computer monitors, mobile phones, handheld video game systems, personal digital assistants, navigation systems, projectors, etc. -
Memory Sticks
Memory Stick is a removable flash memory card format, launched by Sony in October 1998, and is also used in general to describe the whole family of Memory Sticks. In addition to the original Memory Stick, this family includes the Memory Stick PRO, a revision that allows greater maximum storage capacity and faster file transfer speeds; Memory Stick Duo, a small-form-factor version of the Memory Stick (including the PRO Duo); and the even smaller Memory Stick Micro (M2). -
Ipod
iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc.. The product line-up consists of the hard drive-based iPod classic, the touchscreen iPod touch, the compact iPod nano and the ultra-compact iPod shuffle. iPod classic models store media on an internal hard drive, while all other models use flash memory to enable their smaller size (the discontinued mini used a Microdrive miniature hard drive). As with many other digital music players. -
The Xbox
The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe. -
Nintendo Wii
The Wii ( /ˈwiː/) is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others. As of May 2012, the Wii leads the generation over the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in worldwide sales, and in December 2009 broke the record for best-selling console in a single month in the U.S.A. -
Ipad
The iPad ( /ˈaɪpæd/ EYE-pad) is a line of tablet computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, apps and web content. Its size and weight fall between those of contemporary smartphones and laptop computers. The iPad runs on iOS, the same operating system used on Apple's iPod Touch and iPhone, and can run its own applications as well as iPhone applications.
