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First time the word 'computer was used
The word 'computer' was recorded to first be used in 1613, and it was used to describe a person who performed calculations - and this was actually a job title! The definition of 'computer' remained as a job, until sometime in the 19th century, people began to realize that a machine could never get tired, perform the calculations faster, and eliminate human error (unless it is programmed incorrectly, of course). That's where the name for the electronic 'computers' came from. -
Difference Engine
In 1822, Charles Babbage started to design a machine that could calculate polynomial functions, because he had seen a need for machines that could do long and tedious astronomical calculations, and could also cancel out any human error. It is the first design for an automatic calculating machine The design done in 1830 showed a machine that had 25,000 different parts, weighed around 15 tons and was about eight feet tall. You would turn a knob, and it would give you the answer, -
Analytic Engine
A british mathmetician called Charlse Babbage designed a mechanical device called the Analytic engine, which could do complex calculations. It used punch cards to do the calculation, so in a way, it was programmable. Babbage named the two main parts of the Analytic engine the Store and the mill. The store was were the numbers were held, and the mill was where they were 'woven' (made) into new things (calculations). -
First computer program
Ada Lovelace was a friend of Charles Babbage, and is known as the first person to write a program. Lovelace showed through notes that she understood the Analytic engine as much as Babbage did, and she even understood that the Analytic engine could do things that the computer could. She was the one that suggested that data input that would enable the machine to calculate Bernoulli numbers - and this is considered as the first program. -
First telephone
On February 14th, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Grey both filed a patent for a telephone, but the patent was awarded to Bell. 10th March 1876 marks the day that Bell telephone managed to work, after four long years. Bell's success had come from trying to improve the telegraph. The first words to be heard through a telephone were: "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you." -
Hollerith Desk
An entrepreneaur called Herman Hollerith thought that USA's 1809 census could have been done far more effieciently, so he proposed and built the Hollerith Desk. It consisted of a card reader (which 'read' the holes of the punch cards), a gear-driven mechanism (which did the counting) and a large board of indicators (which showed the numbers). Herman Hollerith later went on to start his own company called IBM, and it grew to be one of the biggest computer makers. -
Colossus
Colossus was invented by Tommy Flowers, and was used durring World War 2 to decode the enemies' message. It was programmed with binary, and consisted of switches and amplifiers. As it's name suggested Colossus was huge, and easily took up a whole room. -
Mark 1 Computer
The US military needed a calculator for scientific computations, and invested into schemes for these sort of calculators. One of the successes was the Mark 1 computer - this was designed by Harvard Aiken and IBM. However, it was not a purely electronic computer, and it was made with switches, rotating shafts, etc. The machine weighed a shocking 5 tons, was 8 feet tall and 51 feet long, and had an incredible 500 miles of wire! It's full name is actually the Harvard Mark 1 computer. -
Debugging - Grace Hopper
Grace Hopper is creditted with the word 'debugging', which is a word to describe the procses of eliminating a program's fault or a computer's glitches. The first 'bug' was actually a real moth that was found stuck in the Mark 1 computer - her associates had found the moth, and she said that they were 'debugging' the system. -
Transistor and Microprocessor
Transistors and microprocessors are basically like switches and amplifiers. In short,a microprocessor could do the work of the huge colossus. Transistors were first developed by Bell Labatories in 1947, and soon, many othe companies started using them. They were first made with a material called germanium, but they added impurities to make it a sort of weak conductor, known as a semiconductor, so that they could allow electricity conductivity in various degrees. -
Flow-matic Grace Hopper
Grace Hopper invented the first high-level language called Flow-matic, which eventually became COBAL. A high-level language was one that was understood by computing machinery, but it was also more understandable for humans than binary (which is a another computing language that consists of 1 & 0). -
First online chatroom
The first online chat system was developed by Doug Brown and David Woolley. It was called Talkomatic. It had several different channels, and eat channel could have up to five people/ The messages would appear on all of the users' screen, character by character, as they typed. Talkomatic was created on the PLATO system. The picture on the left shows how it looked fourty years ago. -
Apple 1 - first Apple computer
The Apple 1 computer was the first computer built by Apple. It was released on the 11th April 1976. It was designed and built by a man called Steve Wozniak, who was a friend of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs then got the idea to sell it.They got some money together, and got some printed circuit boards made Steve Jobs got an order from a local computer store for 100 computers, at the price of $500 each. Inspired by the success of the Apple 1, Wozniak then went on to make the Apple 2 -
First .com domain
The first dot com domain got registered, on the 15th of March, 1985. The Symbolics Computer Company, which was a small computer manufacturer, registered as Symbolic.com. However, this was years before World Wide Web made a formal start in computer history. Two years later, there were only around 100 ,com domains registered, .com was actually intended to mean commercial, but today, it is used for everything ranging from blog posts to social networks. -
World Wide Web
In 1973, Bob Khan and Vint Cerf had an idea about a form of communications between different computers through packets ot data - which was the basic idea of the internet. Tim Beners-Lee created the World Wide Web. A year later, there were already more than a million computers connected to the internet.
