Timeline of the History of Computers

1617 Mathematician John Napier uses wooden rods for calculating. This calculation
method was called Napier’s Bones.

1642 Inventor Blaise Pascal introduces to the world the digital adding machine referred
to as the Pascaline digital adding machine.

1822 Charles Babbage shines forth the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine
which is considered a real general purpose computing machine.

1906 Inventor Lee De Forest patents the vacuum tube triode. It was used as an electronic
switch in the first electronic computer systems.

1937 John V. Atanasoff creates what is considered the official first electronic computer. It
is known as the Atanasoff Berry Computer, or simply ABC.

1943 During World War II, Alan Turing develops the Colossus, a top secret British code-
breaking computer. It was built to decode German secret messages.

1945 John von Neumann outlines the architecture of the modern stored program
computer system.

1946 An electronic computing machine called ENIAC is built by John Mauchly and
Presper Eckert.

1947 The semiconductor revolution is blasted off when William Shockley, John Bardeen,
and Walter Brattain invent and test what is called a point contact transistor.

1949 At Cambridge University, Maurice Wilkes assembles the first practical stored
program computer called the EDSAC.

1950 The ERA 1101 is built by the Engineering Research Associates of Minneapolis. It is
one of the first commercially produced computer systems.

1952 The UNIVAC used by the U.S. Census Bureau becomes the first commercial
computer to attract substantial public attention.

1953 IBM ships its first electronic computer system called the 701.

1954 Gordon Teal from Texas Instruments perfects a silicon-based junction transistor
which brings a tremendous reduction in costs to build a computer. IBM’s 650
magnetic drum calculator is also established as the first mass-produced computer.
In the ’50s, 450 computers were mass-produced, if you can believe that.

1955 The first fully-transistorized computer TRADIC is announced by Bell Laboratories.

1956 The TX-0 is built by MIT researchers. It is the first general purpose, programmable
computer that is built using transistors. Also, the era of magnetic disk storage is
about to blossom when IBM ships a 305 RAMAC to Zellerbach Paper in San
Francisco, California.

1958 The first integrated circuit is created by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments. This proved
that both resistors and capacitors could exist on the same semiconductor material.

1959 IBM’s 7000 series mainframes become its first transistorized computer. Also in
1959 Robert Noyce’s integrated circuit allows printing of electrical conducting
channels directly on a silicon surface.

1960 The first commercial modem called Dataphone is designed by Bell Labs. It was
designed specifically for converting digital computer data to analog signals for
transmission across a long-distance network.
1961 According to Datamation magazine, IBM has approximately an 81.2 percent share
of the computer market. IBM also introduced the 1400 Series computer system in
this year.

1964 IBM announces a family of six mutually compatible computers and 40 peripherals
that work together called the System/360. Seymour Cray’s CDC supercomputer
performs up to three million instructions per second which literally is a processing
speed three times its closest competitor, IBM’s Stretch system. Also in 1964, IBM’s
SABRE reservation system is also setup up for American Airlines.

1965 Digital Equipment Corporation introduces the first commercially successful

1966 Hewlett-Packard enters the all- purpose computer business with its release of the
HP-2115. The HP-2115’s computing power is that which is formerly found only in
far larger computer systems before it.

1968 Intel was founded on July 18, 1968, by Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andrew
Grove.

1970 The computer-to-computer communication revolution expands when the U.S.

1971 The 8-inch floppy disk is invented by a team at IBM’s San Jose Laboratories.
One of the first personal computers called the Kenbak-1 is advertised for $750 in
Scientific American magazine. Also in 1971, the first advertisement for a
microprocessor appears for the Intel 4004 in Electronic News.

1972 Intel’s 8008 microprocessor makes its debut. Hewlett-Packard announces the HP-
35. Steve Wozniak builds his blue box which is a tone generator to make free phone
calls.

1973 At the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Robert Metcalfe devices the Ethernet
method of networking. Using the Intel 8008 processor, Micral becomes the earliest
commercial non-kit personal computer system based on a microprocessor. Also
1973, the TV Typewriter was designed by Don Lancaster. It provided the first display
of alphanumeric information on an ordinary television.

1974 Researchers at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center design the Alto which is the
first workstation with a built-in mouse for input. Also in 1974, Scelbi advertises the
8H computer. What makes the 8H special is the fact that it is the first commercially
advertised U.S. computer based on a microprocessor. It used the Intel 8008
computer processor.

1975 Microsoft is founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975. The first
commercial packet switching network called Telenet is created. It is the civilian
equivalent of ARPAnet. The January edition of Popular Electronics features on its
cover the Altair 8800 computer, which uses the Intel 8080 microprocessor. 1975
also was the year of the visual display module prototype. Designed by Lee
Felsenstein, it was the first implementation of a memory-mapped alphanumeric
video display for personal computer systems.

1976 Apple is established on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald
Wayne to sell a single board computer called the Apple I. The 5 ¼-inch flexible disk
drive and disk is introduced by Shugart Associates. The Cray I makes its name as
the first commercially-successful vector processor also in 1976.
1977 Apple Computer introduces the Apple II computer system. The TRS-80 is also
introduced by Tandy Radio Shack. Commodore also introduces the PET, or
Personal Electronic Transactor.

1978 The VAX 11/780 from Digital Equipment Corporation features the capability to
address up to 4.3GB of virtual memory. This provided hundreds of times the capacity
of most minicomputers of the time.

1979 Motorola introduces the 68000 microprocessor.

1980 The first hard drive for microcomputers, called the ST-506, is created by Seagate
Technology. Also in 1980 the first optical data storage disk contains 60 times the
capacity of a 5 ¼-inch floppy disk. Another sweet kick-off for the ’80s is the invention
of the computer ―worm‖ by John Shoch from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.
This so-called worm is a short program that searches a network for idle processors.

1981 IBM introduces its Personal Computer (PC), kicking off the fast growth of the
personal computer market and revolution. Xerox also introduces the Star which is
the first personal computer with a graphical user interface (GUI). The first portable
computer is also completed by Adam Osborne. Like many inventions of the day, it
gets its name from the inventor; hence, it’s called the Osborne I which weighed in
at 24 pounds and sold for $1795 dollars at the time. Also in 1981 Sony Corporation
introduces and ships the first 3 ½-inch floppy disk drive and disks.

1983 Apple introduces its Lisa computer incorporating a GUI very similar to that first
introduced on the Xerox Star. Compaq Computer Corporation introduces its first PC
clone that uses the same software as the IBM PC.

1984 Apple Computer launches the Macintosh, which is the first successful mouse driven
computer with a GUI. It was launched, in fact, with a single $1.5 million commercial
during the 1984 Super Bowl. Also in 1984 IBM releases the PC-AT, which is three
times faster than original PC’s. Its speed came from its usage of the Intel 286
processor. The PC-AT also introduced a new computer bus called the 16-bit ISA
bus.

1985 Philips introduces the CD-ROM.

1986 Compaq announces the Deskpro 386, which is the first computer on the market to
use Intel’s new 386 chip.

1987 IBM introduces its PS/2 computers making the 3 ½-inch floppy disk drive and VGA
video standard for PC’s. Also introduced with the PS/2 was its inclusion of the first
plug-and-play computer bus for PC’s called MicroChannel Architecture (MCA).

1988 After leaving Apple, Apple cofounder Steve Jobs unveils his own company called
NeXT. Also in 1988 Compaq and other PC makers develop a new computer bus
called the Enhanced Industry Standard Architecture (EISA). What was especially
unique about this bus was that unlike MicroChannel, EISA remained backward
compatible with the ISA bus.

1989 Intel releases the 486 microprocessor which contains more than one million
transistors. Intel also introduces alongside it the 486 motherboard chipsets.

1990 The World Wide Web (WWW) is born after researcher Tim Berners-Lee develops
HTML, the Hypertext Markup Language.

1993 Intel releases the Pentium processor, leaving behind its old numbered naming
convention in the process as they realized it’s impossible to trademark a number.
Intel also releases motherboard chipsets and for the first time completes
motherboards.
1994 Yahoo is founded by two Stanford graduate students named Jerry Yang and David
Filo. (Fun Fact: Yahoo originally started out with the name, Jerry’s Guide to the
World Wide Web.)

1995 Microsoft releases the first mainstream 32-bit operating system Windows 95 in huge
numbers. Intel releases the first processor in their P6 family called the Pentium Pro
processor.

1997 Intel releases the Pentium II processor and AMD introduces the K6, which is
compatible with the Intel Pentium.

1998 Google is co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they are students at
Stanford University. The company is first incorporated as a privately held company
in September of 1998. Microsoft releases Windows 98. Intel releases their Celeron
processor, which is basically a low-cost version of the Pentium II processor of the
time.

1999 Intel releases their Pentium III processor and AMD introduces their Athlon line of
processors.

2000 Microsoft releases Windows Millennium Edition or Me, and Windows 2000. The
1GHz milestone is hit when both Intel and AMD introduce processors running at
1GHz