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300 BCE
Abacus and Counting Board
A common problem for traders in ancient times was counting the cost for goods purchased or traded. A solution was made to their problem and it was counting machines. The first counting machine most likely used pebbles on lines to count and the oldest surviving one is the Salamis Tablet witch is made of marble and said to be from 300 BC. The true origins of the Abacus is unknown but in Rome it was commonly used at a counting machine in 300 AD. https://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/abacus/history.html -
Napier's Bones from https://tinyurl.com/y233byxk
Napier's bones is a chart or table that was used to do multiplication for the numbers 2-9. The numbers 2-9 can be multiplied by very large numbers like 4896 with ease due to the tool. The way Napier's bones works is that the multiplication of the numbers 1-9 are put into rows in boxes cut diagonally with the tens digit going on the top and the ones at the bottom. You then put the single number on the left and the other on top then put the columns together and add the numbers in each row. -
The slide rule
The slide rule was made in 1622 and was credited to William Oughtred. The slide rule was made off of logarithmic scales and was used with two side by side logarithmic scales next to each other to perform multiplication and division. This was used by sliding the scales to see the distance relationships of the numbers. Over 40,000,000 slide rules were produced in the 20th century relating to electronics, chemistry, ect. https://tinyurl.com/lvcoxe -
Pascaline (Blaise Paxcal)
The pascaline made by Blaise Pascal in 1642-1644 was the first mechanical adding machine. The adding machine was operated by manipulating dials on the device and could only add and subtract. Pascal made the device for his father who was a tax collector and Pascal then made 50 others. The Pascaline was also the first business machine as well due to it being used for tax calculations. https://www.britannica.com/technology/Pascaline -
Stepped Reckoner (Gottfried Leibniz)
In 1673 Gattfried Lebniz created the first four function calculators. The calculator could successfully add, subtract, multiply, and divide the numbers that were imputed by the diles in it. The calculation had a single gear be able to represent any number 0-9 and was called the step drum approach. Leibniz’s Stepped Reckoner became the basis of calculator design for 275 years. https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/calculators/1/49 -
Jacquard Loom (Joseph-Marie Jacquard)
In 1801 Joseph-Marie Jacquard made the first Jacquard Loom. In 1804-1805 he made an attachment that could be put on any loom to make it into a Jacquard loom. The loom simplified the way of producing textiles and made it easier to produce more complex designs. It was operated by chains and cords that would be used to signal what type of pattern would be woven into the article they were creating.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Marie-Jacquard -
Arithmometer (Thomas de Colmar)
The Arithmometer was invented in 1820 by Thomas de Colmar. The device was the first commercially produced adding machine and was the first commercially produced calculator in the world. It could go up to the number 999,999 and had the digits 0-9. It is operated by diles that move up and down and could add, subtract , multiply and divide. Over 1000 were made before 1870 and were mainly sold to banks, government agencies, and insurance companies. https://tinyurl.com/y5b2rlgm -
Difference and Analytical Engines (Charles Babbage)
The Analytical Engine was the first automatic mechanical digital computer and was made and worked on in the 17th century. The 4 ton computer had 4 parts: the mill, the store, the reader, and the printer. The difference engine was considered to be more complex than the analytical engine due to it storing a 1000 50-digit numbers to operate while the Analytical used punch cards to insert different numbers rather than storing it internally. https://www.britannica.com/technology/Analytical-Engine -
Scheutzian Calculation Engine (Per Georg Scheutz)
The Scheutzian Calculation Engine made by Per Georg Scheutz was the first calculation engine. The device made in 1837 was used to make logarithmic tables. The piano sized device was shown in the World's fair in Paris where it was sold in 1856. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_Georg_Scheutz -
Augusta Ada Byron
Augusta Ada Byron better known as Ada Lovelace was considered the first computer programmer published an article in 1843 about programming. She translated engineering documents from Italian to English adding notes to it making it 3 times as long. In the translation and notes she theorized a computing method called looping witch would have an engine repeat a series on instructions. The process are still used today by programmers. https://www.biography.com/scholar/ada-lovelace -
Tabulating Machine (Herman Hollerith)
On 12/9/1888 the first Tabulating Machine was insulted in a government. The machine was used to calculate the population of the united states in 1890 because the process wasn't automated before that. The machine wound use cards with hold punched in it to stop certain electrical contact while letting other contact happen resulting in it being able to store the in formation represented in what contact happened in the card. https://tinyurl.com/y6flud9a -
Havard Mark 1 (Howard Aiken)
The Havard Mark 1 made by Harvard graduate Howard Aiken was made to solve complex physics problems he encountered in his work. The calculator was a long machine that used dials to communicate the information it calculated. The machine was used in WWII by the US Navy to calculate mathematical problems that previously were done by a large team of people. http://sites.harvard.edu/~chsi/markone/about.html -
Z1 (Konrad Zuse)
The Z1 made by Konrad Zuse was the first freely programmable computer in the world. The Z1 was a 22bit computer that used punched celluloid film to read the instructions it was given. The binary electrical driven machine was destroyed in WWII but was Konrad Zuse's first step in a line of devices he would make. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_(computer) -
ENIAC (Eckert & Mauchly)
The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer or ENIAC was the first computer built under classified conditions because of WWII. The US military needed a device to generate firing tables quickly in order to improve gun warfare for them. Vacuum tubes made it so the device could use electrical pulses that enabled it to make calculations in fractions of a second. https://www.fi.edu/case-files/mauchly-and-eckert -
The transistor made by William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain
The transistor is a part to electronics that amplify electronic signals. William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain were on a team to make the first transistor. John Bardeen and Walter Brattain were the first to make and patent a transistor called the point contact transistor made of Germanium. William Shockley a month later made and patented the junction transistor. Shockley did this because he felt betrayed that his team built the part without him. https://tinyurl.com/y5kt9j9d -
EDVAC
The Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer was made by John von Neumann as one of the earliest binary electrical computers. The computer designed in 1944 was completed in 1949 and was implemented in US Army research lab in 1951. The computer was a 34 bit system that could automatically add, subtract, multiply, and divide in milliseconds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDVAC -
UNIVAC 1(Eckert & Mauchly)
UNIVAC 1 made by Eckert & Mauchly as the first general purpose digital computer. The first UNIVAC was used by the census burro in 1951. The UNIVAC 1 directly competed against punch card machines resulting in a hindrance in sales because of companies not wanting to manually convert the data later. Later the problem was solved with the UNIVAC tape card converter that would translate the information n the cards onto the tapes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_I -
FORTRAN
FORTRAN was one of the first ever high-level general purpose computer programming languages and was made by John Backus. It was written so people could access computers without having deep knowledge of the machinery of the computer. FORTRAN is still used today with the bugs it had back then mostly gone. https://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/john-backus -
Grace Hopper COBOL
Common business-oriented language or COBOL was made by Grace Hopper who was a Navy commander and a programmer of the Harvard 1. The program was written to provide a profitable programming language for processing data. The statements in the program have an English like syntax to make it more readable and self documenting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL -
Computer Chip (Jack Kilby & Robert Noyce)
The integrated circuit chips "computer chips" was made in 1958-1959 by Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce. Kilby invented the first hybrid IC chip witch was a circuit made of individual devices bonded to a circuit-bored. Noyce created the first monolithic IC chip that was made of electronic circuits, a semiconductor, and MOS transistors. The invention of both chips caused a licencing war that ended in both groups cross incising the chips. -
The mouse
A problem with computers before 1964 "when the first prototype mouse was built" was interacting with the computer was very difficult. Douglas Engelbart and his team made many different varieties of mice but all of them were made to have an indicator on the screen move in the x and y dimensions to interact with the information displayed on the screen. The final report from Engelbart on the mouse said that the mouse the most efficient screen selection tool. https://tinyurl.com/yy49ohop -
The floppy disk
The Floppy Disk was the first memory disk that was made of a 8 inch flexible magnetic iron oxide disk. The first functional floppy disk could hold up to 100 KB of data and was invented by Alan Shugart in 1971. The device was considered revolutionary due to the portability of it making data sharing a lot easier. https://www.thoughtco.com/invention-of-the-floppy-disk-1991405 -
Ethernet
Robert Metcalfe invented Ethernet when he was working at Xerox PARC when he was tasked with connecting personal computers to each other. The Ethernet cable was a way for computers to share information with each other. The way it would work was electromagnetic waves would travel in the cable containing data packets from the sender to the recipient over a short distance.
http://scihi.org/robert-metcalfe-ethernet/ -
Atari Home Pong Console
Kids in the 70s wanted a way to take the arcade games they loved home with them and the simple game of pong was the first game adapted to home TVs. Many pong consoles were released in the 70s so the first one made isn't known but the first major step was the Atari Home Pong Console. The Console was the first home entertainment machine with sound.
http://www.pong-story.com/atpong2.htm -
Radio Shack’s TRS-80
Radio Shack’s TRS-80 was one of the first mass produced home computers. The computer was marketed at $399 today that would be around $2,500 and had a full stroke keyboard, 4KB DRAM, 64 characters per line monitor, and a basic language interpreter. The computer was also marketed with add-ons like a cassette tape drive, ram expansions, and 4 floppily drives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80 -
Apple II
The Apple II made in 1977 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak was one of the most popular computers of all time. The computer had a color display, 8 internal expansion slots, a case with a keyboard, and 48K RAM. The price ranged from $1,298 to over $2,638 because of the different RAM options as well as adons that could be included with the computer. https://www.oldcomputers.net/appleii.html -
IBM Acorn
IBM PC was going to release a new computer in 1980 and the plans were called Acorn. When it was formally released in 1981 it was called the IBM PC with the price of $1,565. It had 4.77 megahertz processor, 1 or 2 floppy disk drives, an optional color monitor, and 16K memory that could expand to 256K.
https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-the-ibm-pc-1991408 -
The Video Game Crash of 1983
The market for home video game consoles was vast with many options for the consumer. But their were to many consoles leading to business bankrupting, people being uninterested, and to only major video game companies surviving. https://www.ign.com/articles/2011/09/21/ten-facts-about-the-great-video-game-crash-of-83 -
The Nintendo Entertainment System
The NES was the first Nintendo console released in North America and was the one of the first effective cartage loading systems. The NES was one of the best selling consoles of all time and lead to the video game industry returning after the crash of 1983 due to over saturation of the market. The NES featured many attachments like the light gun witch was innovative for the time because of the similarity to arcade shooters. https://tinyurl.com/ybclqd7h -
ROB
The video game industry was saved by Nintendo and their invention of the Robotic Operating Buddy. ROB was marketed as a toy with the NES that could play games with the people. ROB was only compatible with 2 games during its life Gyromite and Stackup but the two games it had were fun and lead to people buying more Nintendo games as a result. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.O.B. -
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows 1 was released in 11/20/1985 for computers and ran off of a 16 bit multitasking shell. It could run graphical programs and run multiple tabs at a time. Even though it had a very positive response and was a milestone for Microsoft Windows it wasn't received well by critics due to the near necessity of a mouse witch wan't widespread at the time. -
Bit Wars
After the release of the Genesis the video game marketing war known as the bit war occurred. Sega released the Genesis in 1988 starting the bit wars when their one selling point was that the Genesis was 16 bit while the NES was only 8 bit. The response from Nintendo was releasing the super NES witch had 16 bit and was superior to the Genesis in almost every way. The consols after the SNES were then named after the bits they had like the Nintendo 64 and Sega's 32x. https://tinyurl.com/6rz46le -
Mac OS X
Mac OS X was the operating system for apple computers in 2001. Mac OS X was the tenth major version of the Macintosh's operating system but was not compatible with the older software designed for older systems. The years after its release Apple updated the system several times improving and fixing the flaws in the system, version 10.4 added fast file searching and better graphics processing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS#Mac_OS_X -
Iphone
The first Iphone made by apple was the first touch screen phone and was considered very advanced for the time. The Iphone could connect to the internet, connect to a cellular network could access media, had a camera, and came in a 4GB or 8GB model. The first Iphone lead to a very long and successful line of products including the Iphone line, Ipad line, Apple watch, and Ipod line. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_(1st_generation) -
Chromebook
The Chromebook is a line of affordable lightweight computers that are browser only. The first Chromebook was looked at as a cheep alternative that could only function as a browser. However the affordability and the lack of other functions made it excel in the education sector because schools could work with the limitations of the device and could afford to get them for the students. https://www.imperosoftware.com/us/blog/the-evolution-of-chromebooks/ -
Molecular Informatics (DARPA)
DARPA is a program that is researching the capacity to store data in molecules. DARPA was founded in 1958 but has been constantly researching and striving for technological advancements. The research of Molecular Informatics is difficult and demands people to take nontraditional approaches to solve if and how to code information into molecules and how to read it again. If the process they hope to make is a success people in my never have to worry about data again. https://tinyurl.com/yxq6zekk
