4000 BCE to 2001 BCE

4000 BCE Pre-Abacus - It is likely that at this time the Babylonians as well as the Chinese and others used a tray filled with fine sand to make computations.

3000 BCE from Dust to Abacus - The abacus debuts. The abacus is an ancient counting device, composed of a rigid frame with beads strung on wires, each bead representing a numerical value.

2400 BCE  Library - The Egyptians begin common tablet and scroll collections for research and education.

2300 BCE - Pepi I Pharaoh Egypt writes "Instructions to a son" one of the oldest surviving documents.

2800 BCE Coins replace barley - Metal work allows coins to be made and they begin to replace barley as the most common measure of trade.

3500 BCE Numbers in Egypt - Number are first used in Egypt, long before they reach Europe.

2600 BCE Ink Invented - The Egyptians and Chinese use an ink made of lampblack ground with a solution of glue or gums.

2000 BCE to 601 BCE

900 BCE Chinese Math Book - Chinesse textbook includes information on arithmetic, the rule of three, geometry and equations.

0775 BCE Greek Alphabet - The Greek alphabet is introduced. Unlike all previous writing systems, the Greek alphabet is completely phonetic, representing vowels as well as consonants. It is written from left to right.

780 BCE Celtics - The Celts move into Northern England.

755 BCE September, October... - Romulus, first king of Rome, divides the year into 10 months naming the 10th and last month December.

720 BCE Need some money? - Nineveh is a major trading center.  Preserved documents show rentals, leases, and low interest mortgages.

750 BCE Horsepower - The Etruscans introduce horse drawn chariots to Italy.

600 BCE to 451 BCE

450 BCE Play Ball! - The Greeks begin playing organized ball games.

550 BCE Tell me a story - Aesop's Fables compiled.

550 BCE Philosophers everywhere - About this time Budda Sidhartha, Confucius, Zoaraster, Lao-tse, the Old testament prophets and Greek poets are all alive.

550 BCE Attraction in Greece - Thales of Miletus discovers the properties of magnetic attraction of iron and amber.

560 BCE - Theodorus of Samos is credited with inventing the Lack and key, casting metal, turning lathe and the carpenter's square.

451 BCE to 1 BCE

323 BCE Side A is opposite angle C - Euclid's Geometry published.  Still a major basis for teaching Geometry.

198 BCE Vellum Books - King Atallus I of Pergamum has books written on vellum parchment made from calfskin. His library, under the direction of Crates of Mallus, has 200,000 books.

221 BCE How much do you want- all weights and measures standardized in China. 

332 BCE - Alexander the Great founds the port of Alexandria (Egypt).

46 BCE Julian Calendar - Rome adopts a 365 day year with leap year.

105 BCE Mulberry Paper - T'sai Lun, who perial workshops at the Han Court of s a technique of making paper from m e e . he substance replaces silk and leads W e development of rag paper by 137 CE

1 CE to 600 CE

550 Chess - A game that is very similar to modern Chess appears in India.

360 Books - Books start becoming more common than scrolls in Europe for church and government information.

552 Silk to Europe - Justinian sends missionaries to Ceylon and China to smuggle out silk worms.  This starts the European silk Industry.

524 Boethius' Mistake - Roman philosopher Boethius attempts to replace the standard table abacus with one that uses fewer counters, though he is unsuccessful.

271 I'm Lost - Chinese invent a compass like instrument.

410 Turn Iron into Gold.- Alchemy research begins in Europe.

527 Follow the carrot - Animal driven paddle-wheel boats appear.

601 CE to 800 CE

625 Indian Geometry - Brahmagupta teaches mathematics in Ujjain. He also  writes an important work on astronomy Brahma-sphuta-siddhanta- The Opening of the Universe (628). He developed some algebraic notation. He gives remarkable formulas for the area of a cyclic quadrilateral and for the lengths of the diagonals in terms of the sides.

750 Lay down - Beds on frames become popular in France and Germany.  People stop sleeping on the ground at home.

751 Paper Captured - The Arabs capture Chinese paper makers at the Battle of Samarkand (750 CE) and learn how to make paper.  Arab influence overtakes Chinese control in central Asia.

670 Mohammed born in Medina - Mohammed shapes the beliefs and values of millions for the next millennium and beyond.

735 AD and BC separate - Venerable Bebe suggests counting of dates in before Christ and "in the year of our Lord" format.  Unfortunately he gets the date of Christs's birth off by about 4 years.

674 Look out - Glass windows first are added to English churches.  Glass is still rare across Europe and does not become common for homes until the 1800s.

720 Chemistry advances - Abu Masa Dshaffar, an Arab Chemist invents processes to make: Sulfuric acid, nitric acid, aqua regia and nitrate of silver.

801 CE to 1000 CE

830 Al-Khowarizmi - The Muslim mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khowarizmi writes a book about the Hindu number system and algebra calleo "Al-jabr wa'l muqabalah". The word "algebra" is from a sloppy translation of "Al-jabr."

800 Carolingian Script - Alcuin , the Abbot of Tours, France directs the scholars of his abbey to write in minuscule script The result of this tiny, clear script is the standardization of writing. It becomes the model for modern upper and lower case lettering.

976 Numeration in Europe - One of the earliest appearances of Hindu or Arabic numerals in Europe is in 976. Before this time Roman Numerals were used. Roman Numerals are harder to use for all kind of math.

Medieval

1096 First Crusade - Christians retake the area that is now Israel and destroy persial and Islamic knowlege of the time.

1455 The Printing Press - With his moveable type printing press, Johannes Gansfleisch zur laden zum Gutenberg of Mainz completes his masterpiece: a version of the Latin bible.

1392 Moveable Type - T'ai Tsung, King of Korea, establishes a foundry for casting moveable type in bronze.

Age of Discovery

1489 Plus and Minus Signs - The plus and minus signs are first used in "Mercantile Arithmetic" by Johann Widmann , published in Leipzig.

1470 Printed Page Numbers - Hoernen of Cologne publishes a book called "Sermo ad Populam" by Wemer Rolewinck. It contains a new feature - page numbers.

1472 Printed Music - Printed music first appears in Constanz, Germany

1476 Italic Type - Francesco Griffo of Venice creates the Italic typeface for a series of books printed by Aldus Manutius.

1476 English Printing - Moveable type comes to England when William Caxton opens his printshop in London. One of Caxton's wares is an indulgence offered by the Church to raise money for building a fleet to sail against the Turks.

1500s to 1600s CE

1617 Napier 's Bones - John Napier, a mathematician, inventor and astrologer in Merchiston, Scotland, invents a calculation instrument composed of numbered rods made of bone. These rods, known as Napier's Bones, pave the way for mechanical computation.

1622 Circular Slide Rule - Rev. William Oughtred develops a circular slide rule. He calls the instrument the "circles of proportion," and thinks of it as a toy. He also invents the trigonometric abbreviations "sin" and "cos."

1679 Binary Arithmetic - In a letter to a Jesuit priest Wilhelm Leibniz of Leipzig introduces a new concept: binary arithmetic, with which he can express every number using only two symbols: one and zero.

1645 Rossignol's Black Chamber - Atoine Rossignol demonstrates a talent for cryptanalysis to the Prince of Conde. His efforts lead to the successful siege of RealmonL Rossignol becomes France's first full time cryptologist, and establishes the first Black Chamber - Chambre Noir - in Europe in 1645.

1656 John Wallis - John Wallis, English mathematician, originates the first English Black Chamber. He decodes Royalist messages for the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War. He invents the modem symbol for infinity (¥).

1642 Mechanical Calculator - At age 19, Blaise Pascal invents a mechanical calculator for his father, to relieve the tedium of adding columns ,of tax figures. It can add and subtract. Pascal's adding machine will be marketed in 1645 as the Pascaline .

1671 Leibniz Calculator - German Tnathematician Gottfried Leibniz improves on Pascal 's calculator by building his own mechanical counter or "stepped reckoner." The Leibniz machine can multiply and divide as well as add.

1507 America - The German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller publishes "Cosmographiae introductio" (Introduction to Cosmography). It includes an account of the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci, with a map showing the discoveries in the New World as part of a new continent.

1620 Plymouth Colony Organized - The Mayflower brings pilgrims to practice their religious freedom of controlling other people's religion.

1700s CE

1790 Jefferson 's Wheel Cipher - Thomas Jefferson devises the wheel cipher, a series of rotating wheels with jumbled alphabets on their peripheral edges. As late as 1967 the US Navy will be using a similar device.

1737 Didot Points - A Parisian printer, Francois-Ambrose Didot, creates the Didot points for standardizing type sizes.

1774 Lesage's Telegraph - Georges Lesage of Geneva builds a telegraph machine using electrostatic machines and one wire for each letter of the alphabet.

1725 Bouchon's Silk Loom - Basile Bouchon, the son of an organ maker, applies the basic concept of the automated organ to the design of a silk- loom. Bouchon's work will ultimately influence Jacquard 's punched card loom.

1764 Perfected Chronometer - After 36 years of experimentation, an accurate marine chronometer that helps navigators to correctly determine longitude is introduced by John Harrison. His chronometer No. 4 is in error by only 54 seconds after a voyage of 156 days.

1748 Observation of Cathode Rays - In Britain, William Watson describes watching rays of electricity in a tube.

1750 Papier Mache - An English printer named John Baskerville invents papier mache. He also designs 55 typefaces.

1800 CE to

1865 CE

1854 Boolean Algebra - George Boole , an English mathematics professor in Ireland, publishes his "Investigation of the laws of thought", throducintlogic to simple rules. He sets a new course for logic by introducing it into mathematics.

1833 Phenakistoscope - Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau invents a parlor toy - the Phenakistoscope. A series of drawings showing successive stages of a continuous motion are displayed on a spinning disc. When the drawings are seen one at a time through a small opening, an illusion of motion is created. Plateau loses his eyesight by conducting too many experiments on his own retinas.

1844 Morse Telegraph line - It has taken Samuel Morse several years of perseverance to talk Congress out of the $30,000 needed for the experimental telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore. Morse's dot and dash code makes the single wire telegraph practical. Public usage is inaugurated on the Baltimore-Washington telegraph line in 1844 when Morse transmits the first message, "What hath God wrought."

1852 Glossary, Lexicon, List - Peter Mark Roget publishes the "Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition"

1805 Punched Card Loom - Frenchman Joseph Marie Jacquard modernizes the textile industry with a loom, the operation of which is governed by punched cards. A weave to reproduce any pattern can now be repeated without errors.

1823 Difference Engine - Charles Babbage , Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University , attempts to build a prototype computer, and defines the principles upon which computers will be based. Babbage is fascinated with statistics and logarithmic tables, and amuses himself by compiling tables of mortality.

1833 Analytical Engine - After ten years of development work on the difference engine, Charles Babbage drops the project in favor of a "better idea" - the construction of a more advanced digital computing machine that is fully automatic and program controlled, using punched cards such as those invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1805 for his textile weaving machine. Funded by £17,000 of government money as well as his own fortune, he begins work on his "analytical engine." His designs call for the machine to store 50,000 numbers. Babbage never quite completes his engine. Babbage is truly a man ahead of his time. Machining techniques are not precise enough to fulfill his vision.

1842 Lady Lovelace 's Program - ­Mathematical genius Lady Augusta Ada (Byron) Lovelace documents the work of inventor George Babbage , and in doing so develops the concept of computer programming . She serves as inspiration to Babbage in his efforts to design the analytical engine. The designer of the punch cards that will drive the engine, she writes, "We may say most aptly the Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns as the Jacquard Loom weaves flowers and leaves." Lady Lovelace will die of cancer (maybe porphyria) at the age of 36.

1855 Mechanical Computer - George and Edvard Scheutz of Stockholm win a gold medal at the Paris Exposition for their design of the first practical mechanical computer. Their design is based on Babbage 's work.

1837 Blind Reading the Blind - Frenchman, Louis Braille devises the Braille system for the blind. Braille himself was accidentally blinded by an eye injury when he was three years old.

1860s CE to

1870s CE

1878 Cathode Ray Tube - British chemist William Crookes creates the first primitive cathode ray tube. In 1897 Karl Ferdinand Braun invents the oscilloscope, the first practical cathode ray tube (CRT). In this device a narrow stream of electrons traces patterns on the fluorescent screen of the tube.

1878 First Television System - In Ireland, Denis Redmond builds the first television system, transmitting an image electrically.

1879 Television Scanning - Carlo Peresino suggests the concept of television scanning. This is the practice of breaking down an image into picture elements which are then reassembled on the screen of the television receiver. In the 1880s the idea is seconded by W. E. Sawyer and Maurice LeBlanc.

1872 Western Electric - Anson Stager, Enos Barton and Elisha Gray found the Western Electric Company. Gray is experimenting with the electrical transmission of sound - telephone.

1878 Verea Multiplier - Spanish inventor Ramon Verea devises the first direct multiplication machine. He does not try to market it commercially, declaring that he built it only to prove that a Spaniard can invent just as well as an American.

1867 Fluorescent Lamp - French physicist Antoine Becquerel develops the first fluorescent lamp. It uses a fluorescent phosphor coating to provide an extremely efficient light source. Becquerel is the grandfather of Henri Becquerel, the discoverer of radioactivity.

1877 Phonograph - Thomas Alva Edison first successfully records sound with his most original invention: the phonograph. The phonograph, his proudest creation, makes Edison internationally famous.

1880s CE

to

1890s CE

1886 Burroughs ' Calculator - William Burroughs, an American bank clerk, invents a practical mechanical calculator to relieve the drudgery of manual calculation. It is a commercial success, and he will go on to found the Burroughs Corporation.

1887 Esperanto - Dr. Lazarus Ludwig Zamenhof , develops an artificial language to be used as an second means of communication among international speakers. Known as Esperanto, it uses a regular and consistent set of grammatical word endings.

1899 Wire Recorder - Vaidemar Poulsen of Denmark invents a sound recording device, forerunner of the modem tape recorder. Poulsen demonstrates his device at the Paris Exhibition of 1900, and later adapts it to create a recording telephone.

1889 Hollerith's Tabulating Machine - ­Dr. Herman Hollerith, an American inventor and entrepreneur, designs a data processing system for the U.S. Census Bureau. Hollerith's tabulating device is applied to the 1890 census, which is completed at twice the speed of the 1880 census at r estimated saving of half a million 1890 dollars. it uses cards the size of dollar bills because there are already plenty of dollar bill holders. In 1896 Hollerith founds the Tabulation Machine Company, which is bought by IBM In 1957.

1883 Edison Effect - Thomas Edison accidentally discovers what comes to be known as the "Edison Effect" The Edison Effect will become the basis of the electron tube, and the foundation of the electronics industry in the 20th century.

1900 CE to

1929 CE

1923 Von Neumann - At the age of 20, Hungarian-bom mathematician John von Neumann proposes a new definition of ordinal numbers that gains universal acceptance. He is also a significant force in the development of high speed computers. his MANIAC computer is used to produce and test the hydrogen bomb.

1912 Titanic SOS - As a sales gimmick, a Department Store has 20 year-old Russian-­American wireless operator David Sarnoff sit in the front window, demonstrating the wireless telegraph. Sarnoff is at his post when he receives the SOS from the sinking Titanic. He contacts a steamer in the North Atlantic which wires back that it Is picking up survivors.

1925 FM - Edwin Howard Armstrong invents frequency modulation - FM - as a technique of eliminating radio static. In 1954, in poor health, with most of his money gone, and a discouraging history of losses in lawsuits, he commits suicide.

1921 IBM - Thomas Watson, president and CEO of the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Armonk, New York , changes its name to International Business Machines Corporation, also known as IBM.

1924 Spiral Notebook Binding - Staale invents the Spirex spiral binding technique for notebooks.

1915 Germanium Crystal - American physicist Manson Benedicks discovers that the germanium crystal can be used to convert alternating current Into direct current. This discovery will be the basis of the integrated circuit.

1921 The Term 'Robot' - The term "robot" is first used to describe remote controlled mechanical men in the successful play 'R.U.R.' (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Czech playright Karel Capek.

1927 Robots on Film - Robots appear in "Metropolis," Fritz Lang's film of a futuristic slave society.

1930 CE

to

1939 CE

1938 New Ways of Problem-Solving - Working for the Bell Telephone Company, George Stibitz devises the first binary calculator using telephone relays, two light bulbs and a cigar box.

1938 New Ways of Problem Solving - Mathematician Claude Shannon demonstrates how logical problems can be solved with algebra. In the future, this system will develop into a fundamental element of computer programming .

1931 Regular TV Broadcasts - Regular television broadcasts start on December 23. The one-hour programs, which come from W6XAO, provide a daily dose of movies on VHF.

1931 Sound On Film - 16 mm sound projectors are introduced in the UK, influencing the increased use of film as an educational tool.

1931 Stereophonic Sound - Alan Dower Blumlein, at EMI develops stereo recording. Stereo remains experimental until 1958 when the first stereo records are commercially released by Audio Fidelity, and Decca.

1932 Times New Roman - The Times New Roman typeface is introduced to the London Times newspaper reading public on October 3, In three sizes: 5 1/2, 7 and 9.

1936 Life -Saving Telephone - The Signophone, an innovative emergency telephone system, is devised in France. When activated by a pushbutton or thermostat, the system automatically calls the needed emergency service and tells them essential rescue information.

1933 The Power of Technology - The age of technology spurs the Technocracy movement, built on the idea that engineers should be the elected leaders, and that workers should be paid with energy coupons instead of money.

1933 Clock Talk - Paris' telephone system employs M. Escalangon's speaking clock, which provides callers with the correct time.

1934 Communications Act - In 1934 the Communications Act is passed by Congress. As a result, the FCC is established.

1933 Enigma - Hugo Koch, a Dutchman, invents the Enigma, an enciphering machine. But Polish cryptographers break the system by creating replicas they call "bomby", after an Ice cream confection they were enjoying when they thought of the idea. Two British cryptographers, Gordon Welchman and Alan Turing , make substantial improvements to the bomby; the advantage they gain yields the decryption of 90,000 Enigma messages per month by midway through the war.

1936 Turing Machine - Alan Turing outlines the theory of mathematical logic behind computer design, and describes a simple theoretical machine that defines the baseline functionality of a computer.

1936 Zuse 's Z1 - Konrad Zuse ' builds the Z1 computer in the living room of his parents' Berlin apartment. It boasts mechanical switches, a row of light bulbs for data display, and a keyboard for data entry.

1937 Aitken Begins Computer Work - Engineer Howard Aitken embarks upon research into digital computer technology.

1934 Teletype Introduced in UK - The London Times uses TTS to transmit reports from Parliament to its Printing House Square offices.

1939 CE

to

1944 CE

World War II

1939 UK Halts TV Broadcasts - TV transmitters are shut down in Britain, to eliminate the danger of providing the enemy with navigational beacons. The suspension of broadcasts will continue for seven years.

1942 WWII Hits Broadcasting - The FCC curtails television broadcast schedules, and gradually all but six stations shut down. Restrictions on TV broadcasting will not be lifted until 1946.

1943 ABC - NBC is forced to sell one of its two radio networks. Life Savers tycoon Edward Noble buys the NBC Blue Network, and renames it the American Broadcasting Company - ABC.

1939 Hewlett-Packard - David Packard and William Hewlett found Hewlett-Packard Company to manufacture electronic instruments. The business starts in a garage behind the Packards' Palo Alto home.

1943 First Computer Company - German engineer Konrad Zuse founds the first successful computer manufacturing company, Zuse KG.

1943 Grace Hopper Programs - Grace Murray Hopper enters the Naval Reserve and starts a career in programming . She works with Howard Aiken to develop the original operating programs for the Mark 1, a 51 foot-long, 8 foot-high and 5 foot-deep machine. Hopper later said "That was an impressive beast."

1941 Zuse 's Z3 - Berlin scientist Konrad Zuse follows his Z2 computer with the Z3, the first operational electronic calculator. The Z3 can perform three to five multiplications per second. All three calculators will be destroyed in a bombing raid in World War 11, but he manages to save the partially completed Z4.

1943 Colossus Breaks Code - Alan Turing designs an electronic decoding apparatus called Colossus. The machine is kept on all the time, to avoid component failure. Ten colossus machines will be built In all. Some of the resulting intelligence ultimately contributed to the success of D-Day. The existence of Colossus is kept secret until 1976.

1944 IBM 's 5-Ton Calculator - The Mark I is unveiled at Harvard University as the first general purpose digital computer. The brainchild of Howard Aitken (he proposed the project as a graduate student in 1937) and an IBM research team, the computer Is developed with $500,000 of funding provided by IBM and the US Navy . Weighing In at a hefty five tons, the mammoth machine eats its instructions on punched paper, and spits out answers to fairly simple mathematical problems. it is the first calculator to have a built ­in stored program.

1945 CE

1945 MEMEX - Vannevar Bush describes the MEMEX. The MEMEX can store and index an almost unlimited number of documents for immediate retrieval by a user. The documents are extensively linked, in a manner which will later be imagined more fully by Ted Nelson.

1945 Clarke's Science Fact - The concept of geo-synchronous satellites is proposed by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.

1945 Von Neumann ',s Architecture - John Von Neumann writes his "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC ." In this paper he describes the general purpose computer. Following this report, ENIAC is adapted to programming by Adele Goldstine, who writes a 55 operation computer language. ENIAC is used is used to do calculations for Robert Oppenheimer's Los Alamos atomic bomb project.

1945 The Mighty ACE Computer - The Pilot ACE (Automatic Computing Engine) debuts as the quickest and most sophisticated computer to be developed so far. It is developed commercially by the English Electric Co. with help from Alan Turing and England 's National Physical Laboratory.

1946 CE to

1949 CE

1949 All The Right Moves - At Manchester University , researchers construct MADM, the first computer able to play a complete game of chess.

1948 First Cable TV Systems - Cable television systems appear in the US.

1947 IBM Stays Out Of Computers - IBM decides not to enter the computer business. There are only 6 computers installed worldwide, and the business seems too small.

1947 Transistor - At Bell Labs in the US, William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain develop the first transfer resistance device. It is a small block of semiconductor to which three electrical contacts are made. It is a revolutionary replacement for the cumbersome vacuum tube, and superior by virtue of being smaller, cooler and more permanent than tubes. It will be known as the transistor .

1948 IBM SSEC - Thomas Watson of IBM orders an ENIAC -like computer built. The Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator - SSEC - has more than 12,000 vacuum tubes, and can do complicated calculations, based on stored data. The IBM SSEC represents the first time that instructions and data coexist in a machine.

1946 ENIAC Bows in Pennsylvania - J. Presper Eckert , John Mauchley and John Grist Brainerd, plus a team of 50 people at the University of Pennsylvania, design and assemble the ENLAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator). ENIAC weighs 30 tons, stands two stories high, contains 18,000 vacuum tubes and covers I 5,000 square feet, virtually filling a 30-by-50-foot room. This mammoth computer is a great success, although it takes hours to reprogram and consumes so much electricity that merely turning it on causes the lights in a nearby community to fail. Eckert and Mauchley leave the school one-month later over patent disagreements, and form the Electronic Control Company to create the UNIVAC computer.

1947 No-Muss Program Changing - ­Pennsylvania University 's von Neumann builds EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer ). It is the first computer with the storage capacity for a flexible program that can be changed without modifying the computer circuits.

1949 The Flexible EDSAC - A major step in the streamlining of computer technology is made with the development of EDSAC (Electronic Delayed Storage Automatic Computer ), built by Maurice Wilkes and his team at Cambridge University in England . After two years of research, EDSAC does its first automatic computation on May 6, 1949. With only 3,000 valves, It is less cumbersome than ENIAC , its predecessor.

1947 A Bug for the Books - American programming pioneer Grace Hopper coins the term "bug." When the Navy 's. Mark II computer dies, she finds a dead moth has caused the problem. The insect is immortalized when she pastes it in her log book-.

1949 MIT 's Flight Simulator - Aircraft flight simulation is achieved by the Whirlwind computer, built by engineers at MIT.

1950 CE to

1953 CE

1950 First Pay TV - WOR in New York broadcasts the first commercial TV program.

1950 EPICAC in Love - Kurt Vonnegut writes a computer love story. The "hero" computer of the story is called EPICAC - less of a tribute to the ENIAC computer than it is to the pharmaceutical that induces vomiting.

1951 First VTR Demonstrated - In the US, Armour Research demonstrates a crude VTR - Video Tape Recorder - to Alexander Poniatov and Ampex executives. The team of engineers includes Ray Dolby, destined to make his own impact on the sound industry.

1952 UNIVAC in 1952 Election - Walter Cronkite calls UNIVAC "...that marvelous electronic brain," honoring its performance during the 1952 CBS election coverage. The system correctly predicts Eisenhower's wide victory within an hour of the close of the polls. CBS does not believe the computer at first and broadcasts predictions closer to what their human experts are telling them. Later they admit the computer was right.

1953 NTSC - A color television broadcast system is standardized by the NTSC - National Television System Committee. Engineers joke that the acronym stands for 'Never The Same Color.'

1950 Remington Rand Buys In - Remington Rand Corporation buys Eckert and Mauchley's troubled Electronic Control Company, birthplace of the UNIVAC computer.

1953 IBM 701 Computer - IBM markets its first computer. The IBM 701 is a stored program computer made of vacuum tubes. In the next decade IBM will have more than 70 percent of the world computer market.

1950 ATLAS - ATLAS is delivered to the Naval Security Group. It has a 16 kb capacity, and is the first parallel electronic computer with a drum memory.

1950 EDVAC - EDVAC is completed. It is the first binary or digital computer.

1950 SEAC Gets the SCOOP - USAF officials contact the National Bureau of Standards to build a computer. The result is SEAC (Eastern Automatic Computer ). Magnetic wire replaces punched tape in SEAC, accelerating reading speed from 30 to 10,000 words per minute. The SEAC programmers also attach an amplifier to the machine, so as to monitor the sounds for problems in operation, some SEAC programs are whimsically designed with routines that play songs such as "Camptown Races" and "Dixie."

1951 UNIVAC I - Remington Rand's UNIVAC I is the first large scale commercial American computer, developed by engineers J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly specifically for the business world. Grace Hopper , one of the first programmers of modem computers, is part of the team that works on the UNIVAC.

1952 Compiler Sense - Grace Hopper , senior mathematician at the Eckert -Mauchly Computer Corporation (home of ENIAC ), writes the first practical "compiler" program, making simpler programming possible by eliminating the need to repeat simple steps. Many doubted that it could be done.

1952 Integrated Circuit Proposed - ­Geoffrey Dummer of Britain's Royal Radar Establishment first proposes the idea of an integrated circuit.

1953 IBM 726 - IBM introduces the Model 726. It is the first magnetic tape storage peripheral, and can store 100 cpi and move at 75 ips.

1954 CE

to

1959 CE

1954 FORTRAN - John B develops. the formula translation - FORTRAN programming language at IBM . It is an algebraic programming language, originally designed for the IBM 704.

1954 3D TV in Mexico - 3D television broadcasts begin in Mexico. Glasses for 3D cost 25 pesos.

1955 Frankie Scores on Television - ­"Love and Marriage," sung by Frank Sinatra, is the first hit song to get its start on a television program. It was more recently used as the theme song for Married with Children.

1955 Fiber Optics - Dr- Narinder Kapary of the University of London invents optical fibers. Strands of optical glass are stretched until they are as thin as human hair. Light shining at one end can travel the length of the fiber through any number of curves and loops without escaping. The new science cal of fiber optics is First employed by the medical profession for looking into the body.

1956 Video Telephone - Bell Telephone Co. ,tests a video telephone, "Picturephone,' between New York and Los Angeles, transmitting the image along telephone cable, but the Image takes up 125 telephone lines and the idea is shelved.

1954 UNIVAC for Business - The first commercially owned UNIVAC is delivered to GE.

1959 C0B0L - COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language), the first user-friendly computer language for business, is developed by Grace Hopper of the Eckert -Mauchly Computer Corporation, where she works as director of automatic programming .

1958 The Perceptron - IBM announces the initial development of a new electronic "brain," the Perceptron. This 704 computer when fully developed, will be able to read , write, translate from several languages, speak, and recognize human faces. The Perceptron, using photoelectric cells and a CRT screen to duplicate the input /output functions of the human brain, opens the door to the era of artificial intelligence.

1959 Transistorized Computer - The New York Life Insurance Company installs the RCA 501, the first fully transistorized computer in the world. RCA's next entry in the computer market is the compact 301, which will compete with similar products from IBM and Sperry Rand.

1956 Desktop Computer - Burroughs Introduces a desk-sized computer, the E-101. Designed for use by mathematicians and scientists, the "baby brain" bridges the gap between the mechanical adding machine and the large electronic computer.

1956 The Leprechaun - The second generation of computers begins when Bell Labs builds the Leprechaun, the first experimental transistorized computer. The transistor makes the computer more reliable and more cost-efficient. GE, IBM and Philco quickly build their own versions.

1958 Cray 's 1st Supercomputer - Seymour Cray builds a supercomputer for Control Data Corporation - the CDC 1604. It is based solely on transistor technology.

1958 LISP- John McCarthy develops the first programming language for AI. Called LISP -List Processor, it is based on Lambda notation.

1959 STRETCH - The NSA - National Security Agency - installs the IBM STRETCH, the result of Project Lightning, commissioned by President Eisenhower in 1957. It is the fastest computer in the world. Its speed of half a million decisions a second is reported to be 100 times that of any other general-purpose computer. STRETCH is also capable of simultaneous communication between input and output units and memory. At the NSA installation, it is hooked up to TRACTOR, which is capable of automatically locating desired information from a library of 160 magnetic tape cartridges, loading the right tape, and loading the information at over I mb per second. The system will be in use for over 14 years. thereafter.

1954 Silicon Transistor - Texas Instruments manufactures transistors using silicon instead of germanium .

1956 Artificial Intelligence - John McCarthy coins the term "artificial intelligence" to describe the science of the simulation of human abilities.

1958 The Integrated Circuit - Jack S. Kilby of Texas Instruments makes the first working integrated circuit.

1959 Silicon Chip - The age of microelectronics begins when Hoeni of Fairchild Superconductors invents the planar process for integrated circuits, creating transistors on the surface of a silicon wafer. Integrated circuits are first applied to space and defense technology and will not be incorporated into computers until the mid- 1960s.

1960 CE

to

1963 CE

1962 APL - Kenneth Iverson, working for Harvard and IBM develops APL ("A Programming Language"). It is strong on mathematics, and uses a weird symbol set for notation.

1960 The LASER - US scientists create the first LASER through a rod of synthetic ruby. A million times brighter than sunlight, it shines over a distance of 25 miles (40 km) with a spread of only 8 ft. (2.43 m) per mile. Because the light waves are almost all on a single wavelength, it is suggested that they can be modulated like radio waves to carry communication signals.

1961 Light Wave Communication - Bell Labs produces the first maser to emit coherent infrared light, making communication by light waves possible. A 40 in. (1m) gas tube "beats" together t%in light waves with very close frequencies. Ught waves can carry far more information than radio waves because their frequency is millions of times greater.

1962 First FM Radio Station - The first FM radio station begins broadcasting in Alpine, New Jersey. FM radio will not become popular in America until the mid 1 960s, when it becomes associated with underground and rebellious musical styles. In the 1970s, its superior frequency response will allow it to surpass AM radio in the size of its audience.

1962 DAC-1 - General Motors uses the DAC-1 system, set up on an IBM7094, a transistor -based computer of the early 1960s. It is used to generate sketches of proposed automobile designs. It is arguably the first Computer -Assisted Design - CAD - system.

1962 EDS - H. Ross Perot , a former IBM salesman, founds Electronic Data Systems (EDS).

1963 PDP 1 - DEC introduces the PDPL, which incorporates the first practical Video Display Terminal.

1963 SKETCHPAD - Ivan Sutherland of MIT designs SKFRCHPAD, the first computer graphics paint program. The input device is a ligh"n, and the graphic display is vector based. There is no color, only black and white display. However, the interaction between artist and machine is immediate. The system is built using the Whirlwind and TX-2 lab computers.

1963 Computer Traffic Cop - Following tests of a similar system in New York tunnels, a computer in Toronto registers magnetically the number of vehicles passing through the intersections of the city and times the traffic signals accordingly. The result is a 28% drop in traffic congestion and an increase in average speed of 3 mph (5.6 kmh). The computer also alerts police to unusual traffic patterns.

1960 IBM 7090 - The IBM7090 is introduced and becomes the standard computer at many universities and research institutions, worth $1 million new. It will be outdated and replaced withinsix years. In 1970, Sotheby Parke Bernet will offer a used IBM7090 for auction, selling it for less than $1000.

1961 Computer Designs Computer - At Bell Labs , one computer designs another for use in the Nike Zeus antimissile system.

1961 Computer Acoustics - Computers assist in the design of concert halls, assessing the acoustic properties of a given design by calculating the path sound waves will follow from the stage into the hall and how long it will take t em to bounce back. Given a digitally sampled piece of music the computer will play the piece back as It would sound in a hall of given dimensions.

1962 Minicomputers - The third generation of computers, the minicomputer, is introduced by Digital Equipment Inc. Integrated circuits drastically reduce the size of computers without any loss of performance. The first of the new breed are sold for $15,000. In ten years they will cost only a tenth as much.

1962 PLATO - Don Bitzer, an engineer at the University of Illinois , imagines PLATO. This mainframe computer system, relying upon special terminals, is dedicated to the task of computer­aided instruction (CAI).

1960 Language Lab - The USSR's Gorky Educational Institute introduces a machine programmed to give lessons in a foreign language and then test the student's assimilation of the material.

1960 Light-Emitting Diode - Nick Holonyak, Jr. invents the light-emitting diode. It contains gallium arsenide phosphide, a compound that glows when conducting electric current

1962 MOS Integrated Circuit - RCA perfects the MOS (metal oxide semicondenser) integrated circuit, making it possible to fit more circuits onto a single chip. This innovation reduces the size and price of a wide variety of electronic products.

1962 Wozniak 's First Machine - Steve Wozniak- builds a calculator at home, with a few transistors.

1963 ELIZA - Joseph Weidenbaum of MIT develops EUZA. It is a program designed to simulate, through the use of artificial intelligence, a psychotherapeutic consultation.

1964 CE

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1968 CE

1964 ALGOL - The computer language ALGOL evolves from [AL (international Algebraic Language) as an alternative to FORTRAN.

1966 Hand Held Calculator - Jack S. Kilby, Jerry D. Merryman and James H. Van Tassel at Texas Instruments create the first solid state hand held calculator. TI introduces a very inexpensive hand held calculator, and Pickett's slide rule sales drop from over SI 0 million per annum, to less than $500,000.

1965 Phonavid - Westinghouse develops the Phonovid process in an attempt to produce a commercial videodisc. While this disc provides a good quality picture it can only store 200 images per disc.

1968 HAL in 2001 - Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" suggests the possibility of a computer with a will of its own, HAL

1964 The Word Processor - IBM pioneers the word processor. Typed material is coded on magnetic tape, changes are incorporated and the entire document can be retyped automatically.

1965 BASIC - Tom Kurtz and John Kemeny of Dartmouth College write a programming language for beginners. They call it BASIC - Beginner's All­Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

1965 Computer Timesharing - Computer timesharing enables multiple users to receive information simultaneously from a central computer. This brings the computer to more businesses, improving warehouse stock control and theater and airline booking.

1966 Computer Handicapping - British bookmakers use computers to handicap horse races such as the Grand National.

1968 INTEL - Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce start Integrated Electronics Corporation - INTEL

1968 Reading Machine - Plessey of the UK manufactures the Cyclops 3, an inexpensive device that can read legible handwriting. It can recognize changes in letter size and gaps in the ink flow and will be used for processing handwritten forms.

1964 IBM 360 - IBM announces the IBM360. It is the first modular and compatible series of general purpose computers. It is based on integrated circuits, and is available as a 4bit, 8bit, 16bit, 32bit or 64bit machine. The sales literature calls it "one machine for all purposes, business and scientific." The name "360" implies a full circle of applications. With this line of computers, IBM introduces a replacement for ASCII , the standard Industry code for alphabetic characters. It is called EBCDIC - Extended Binary Coded Decimal Information Code.

1968 Self Correcting Computer - The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena completes the first computer that can diagnose and correct its own faults. When it notices a fault it switches power to a spare module and tests the faulty one. If necessary, it requests a replacement.

1968 Computer Diagnosis - Joshua Lederberg and associates at Stanford University create the first computer capable of medical diagnosis.

1964 Computer Crime - A programmer steals $5 million worth of his employer's software. Although certainly not the first computer crime, it is the first to suffer prosecution in TEXAS v. HANCOCK.

1969 CE

1969 The Microchip - Marcian E. "Ted" Hoff invents the first "computer on a chip." Marketed in 1971 by Intel , the 4004 microprocessor comprises a miniature integrated circuit on a tiny silicon chip. Only a few millimeters square, it vaelds more computing power than the mainframe computers of the fifties, and revolutionizes microelectronics the world over.

1969 Magnetic Memory - The memory of computers is improved by a magnetic device which stores information on tiny "bubbles" of magnetism. One chip can carry hundreds of thousands of bubbles, allowing any memory detail to be retrieved within 100 microseconds.

1969 Mr. Barker born - In Southwestern Ohio, Dan Barker is born.

1970 CE

1970 The Game of Life - Martin Gardner publishes a description of John Horton Conway 's game of Life. It is popular throughout the years as a computer game, and is one of the first games to appear on the Macintosh.

1970 PROLOG - Alain Colmerauer develops PROLOG, a computer language designed not only for numerical calculation, but also for inference. Its target is artificial intelligence applications. In the early 1980s, PROLOG will be chosen as the foundation of a new generation of computers designed for deduction, by the MITI Fifth Generation Computer research Project, in Japan.

1970 Telemart - Telemart, the first attempt at telemarketing for consumer grocery items, is tested in San Diego. Shoppers are expected to dial In by touch tone phone, and key in their orders. The orders will be automatically delivered. The store must close because the demand for transaction processing excedes the capacity of the computer.

1970 IBM Weather Computer - The UK orders an IBM 360 Model 195 computer for weather forecasting. It is the largest computer in Europe and forecasts weather for the northern hemisphere a week ahead of time, probable rainfall for the UK 24 hours in advance.

1970 Internist - Jack Meyers and Harry Pople of the University of Pittsburgh create Internist, a medical diagnostic computer program. Later called Caduceus, it can identify over 500 diseases and 3,000 symptoms.

1970 C Language - In the early 1970s at Bell labs, Dennis Ritchie develops the C programming language on a PDP- 1 1, under the UNIX operating system. C evolves from an older language called BCPI, which in turn influenced a language called B, invented by Ken Thompson. For some time the de facto standard for C is the version supplied with the Unix Version 5 Operating system. C combines elements of higher level programming languages, with the control found in assembly language. Software written in C can often be moved without alteration from computer to computer.

1970 IBM 370 - IBM releases the IBM370 series of computers in the early 1970s, based on medium scale integration technology.

1970 Floppy Disk - The floppy disk goes on the market as part of the IBM 3740 system and becomes the standard computer memory device almost immediately. It has three times more storage space and much faster access than its closest competitor.

1971 CE

1971 Calculator Market Grows - Of the two and a half million electronic calculators sold, 80% are made in Japan. The UK becomes a ready market for the product after the British currency is decimalized. The US market is still small.

1971 Silicon Valley - Don Hoefler coins the term "Silicon Valley" to describe the flatlands around Stanford University , which is full of high technology firms. The growth of high tech businesses in the area was encouraged by creative tax laws and the free transfer of information and talent from the halls of Stanford to the business community.

1971 More Transistors On a Chip - IBM develops electron scan technology that can fit 100,000 transistors onto a single silicon chip. This reduction in the size of integrated circuits will make all electronic products smaer, cheaper and more efficient.

1971 Pascal - Niklaus Wirth of Switzerland invents Pascal. It is a programming language for systems development that is characterized by its structured form, and strong and definitive declaration of data types.

1971 Think Fast - The University of Illinois builds Illiac IV, a battery of 64 computers that work together to respond to 200 million instructions a second.

1972 CE

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1973 CE

1972 Pong - Nolan Bushnell develops Pong, a computer game which emulates, both in sound and graphics, a game of ping pong. It is an immediate success for Bushnell's fledgling business, Atari . 1972 The Death of the Slide Rule - TI introduces an extremely inexpensive electronic hand calculator. Pickett, a leading manufacturer of slide rules, sees its business slide from S20 million per annum to less than $I million. By 1974 the average price of a consumer calculator will be S25.

1972 Phillips Optical Videodisc - ­Phillips offers an optical videodisc, employing laser technology and a photc>diode. A laser beam is reflected off the surface of a microgrooved disc, and reflected back to the photosensor with no mechanical contact.

1972 TV Typewriter - Radio Electronics Magazine publishes an article describing how to make a TV Typewriter.

1973 Universal Product Code - The transition to electronic cash registers has begun. Product packages now include a computer printed label identifying the product according to a Universal Product Code (UPC ). The cashier passes the label over a scanner and the correct price is retrieved from computer memory and automatically rung up uri the cash register.

1972 EMI Brainscanner - The UK's EMI brainscanner is a new device for performing computerized axial tomography (CAT scan). This technique takes x-ray views from all around the brain and then compiles them to create a cross section image which reveals any abnormal growth, swelling, tumor or hemorrhaging.

1972 PUl - Gary Kildall , a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Pacific Grove, California, writes a low level program for generating machine code for the Intel 4004. An IBM 360 is used for text entry, and compilation. From this product is spawned the earliest version of CP/M. He calls it PUl.

1972 8008 - Intel introduces the 8008, an 8 bit microprocessor. An ad, prepared by Regis McKenna, proclaims, "A New Era in Integrated Electronics: A Microprogrammable Computer on a Chip." Adam Osborne writes the manual for the product.

1973 Calculator In a Kit - Sinclair , Europe's largest manufacturer of pocket calculators , introduces a model for home assembly. "The Cambridge" uses four inexpensive batteries and can be assembled in only two and a half hours.

1973 Troung's 8008 Machine - Thi T. Troung, an immigrant from Viet Nam, develops the first 8008-based microcomputer, called MICRAL, for the French company R2E. The business fails.

1973 Atanasoff Wins - John Atanasoff wins his patent infringement suit against Honeywell and Sperry Rand. The US District Court decision makes Atanasoff the undisputed inventor of the modern computer.

1974 CE

1974 Pocket Cakulator - Hewlett Packard produces the HP65, the first programmable pocket calculator.

1974 Breakout - Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak crystal displays but their products are not yet design the first break-out game. It is done in a znatter of days for Nolan Bushnell at Atari . reliable enough to prevent BDH from establishing a monopoly by decade's end.

1974 Automatic Tellers - Banks (especially - Bank One of Columbus, Ohio) begin to experiment Bank with automatic teller machines.

1974 8080 - Intel introduces the 8080 microprocessor in April.

1974 Z8O - Two leading talents from Intel breakaway to found Zilog. Their intention is to compete with the Intel 8080, and the product is the Z80.

1974 Hypertext and Xanadu - Ted Nelson coins the term "hypertext" for multidimensional text reference systems. In his seminal and very peculiar work "Computer Ub / Dream Machines," he derines hypertext as 'non-sequential writing." He also imagines a literary composed of interconnected computers, and cata bases of infirritely linked texts. This he cali's Xanadu. It is the best way he can imagine to describe a world in which everything is "deeply intertmngled." "Hypertext," he writes, "at last offers the possibility of representing and exploring it all without carving it up destructively."

1975 CE

1975 Watches and Calculators - ­Production of miniature electronic gadgets booms and the prices come within reach of the average consumer. Worldwide production of pocket calculators reaches 50 million. Competition brings the price of electronic watches down to $50 each.

1975 Are the Shows Clean? - The US has 130 million TV sets, it has more TVs than it has bathtubs.

1975 Liquid Crystal Displays - BDH of the UK markets the first liquid crystal displays for digital watches, clocks and calculators . Companies in Japan and the US have also developed liquid

1975 Hypercube - Bruce Van Natta imagines the Hypercube, which would link microprocessors in order to achieve the effect of a mainframe computer. This idea became what is now called a Local Area Network - LAN - with parallel processing.

1975 Superpaint - Richard Shoup of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center - PARC - develops the Superpaint system. The system uses a and a digital frame buffer to create computer publishing system graphics for TV. Shoup leaves PARC to start Aurora Systems in 1980, which will market one of the first videographics systems.

1975 The Computer Store - Dick Heiser starts the first retail computer store in Los Angeles. He calls it, simply, The Computer Store.

1975 IMSAI 8080 - Bill Millard, a former crack IBM salesman, starts IMSAI. The IMSAI 8080 becomes the best selling microcomputer in 1976, outselling the MITS Altair .

1975 BASIC for the Altair - Bill Gates and Paul Allen write a BASIC compiler for the MITS Altair. It requires that all 18 slots be filled with 256 byte memory cards. The user must flip the front panel switches roughly 30,000 times to enter the code in the computer. The BASIC Is published by MITS on paper tape, at a price of $500. It is immediately and widely pirated.

1975 Cray I - Seymour Cray introduces the Cray 1. It is the fastest computer on earth at the time, and can perform at over lmips, and occupies a tiny fraction of the space of ENIAC . Were it not for the unique Freon-based cooling system, it would melt when turned on. The Cray I can store up to 30 billion words, with access time of 80 millionths of a second.

1975 MITS ' Altair - Popular Electronics Magazine runs an article on the MITS Altair microcomputer. The machine is based on the 8080, has no keyboard or display, and must be programmed by tripping a bank of switches on its front. The machine has 256 bees of memory, and 16 slots for expansion. It sells for $397.00. MITS has roughly IO employees, and is in a storefront between a laundromat and a massage parlor in AIbuquerque, New Mexico . Within two weeks of the publication of the article, MITS has hundreds of orders

1976 CE

1976 Trapdoor Algorithm - Martin Heilman and Whitfield Diffie invent the first significant advance in cryptography since polyalphabetic substitution in the Renaissance. It is called the public key encryption system (public because one of the two keys can be public). Martin Gardner publishes a description of the technique in Scientific American Magazine. The NSA seeks to suppress the Information.

1976 Smallest TV Set - US Air Force helicopter pilots get a 3/4 inch TV screen built into their visors. The TV tube is built into the helmet. This smallest TV set ever is a product of the Ferranti company.

1976 VHS - JVC (Japan Victor Co.) introduces VHS, a half inch cassette system designed for home consumer video recording.

1976 Smailtalk - David Ingalls develops a modeless environment for Smalltalk-, developed at XEROX PARC . SMALLTALK has some important ideas of its own, including the concept of windowing, later exploited thoroughly by the Macintosh and VANDOWS.

1976 Non-Impact Printing - IBM develops a new computer-assisted non-impact process for printing address labels. The names and addresses are stored on magnetic tape and a magnetic field controls an ink jet that sprays the appropriate characters onto the printing surface.

1976 Apple Computer - Steve jobs sells his VW Microbus, and Steve Wozniak his two HP calculators to pay for the creation of a printed circuit board for the Apple 1. The machine debuts at a meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club. Together they sell 200 of the machines. Mike Markkula, independently wealthy from stock options exploited as a marketing manager at Intel , invests $91,000, and aims Apple Computer Corporation at becoming the first company to make the Fortune 500 in less than five years.

1976 Shugart Cheap Drive - Shugart introduces the cheap floppy disk drive.

1976 Social Security Error - The Social Security Administration sets a record. Over half the budget for AFDC is spent to pay for the correction of computer errors.

1976 Electric Pencil - Michael Shrayer creates the first word processor program for microcomputers. He calls the program "Electric Pencil."

1976 Dynabook - Alan Kay, while working at Xerox PARC , imagines the Dynabook. It is a laptop computer, with adequate storage, graphics and memory to support the creation and display of full­sized documents on its flat screen display. As imagined it uses the SMALLTALK language and graphic environment.

1976 Big Year for MITS - Mark Chamberlain of MITS creates the first shareware library, for the free distribution of software. This year MITS grosses $13 million. David Bunnell leaves to start Personal Computing Magazine. The Altair bus - the standard connecting slot for the add-on boards for the Altair - is slightly modified and put forward as an industry standard, the SIOO bus.

1976 Boston Computer Society - At the age of 13, Jonathan Rotenberg starts the Boston Computer Society.

1977 CE

1977 TRSBO - Tandy announces the TRS80 computer. Among programmers it is known as the Trash 8O.

1977 MITS Sold - Ed Roberts sells MITS to Pertec.

1977 CP/M Licensed for the IMSAI - ­IMSAI buys the rights for CP/M - Control Program Monitor - for the IMSAI from Gary Kildall for a flat $25,000. Seymour Rubenstein negotiates the deal. The first license deal Kildall negotiated was for $90. Kildall by now has a company, and he calls it Intergalactic Digital Research. Formality takes hold, and the company name is foreshortened to a simple Digital Research.

1977 Apple II - The Apple II is introduced at the West Coast Computer Faire. It incorporates a keyboard in a case attractively designed for the mass market. It can load data from a cassette player, and uses a video monitor as a display. Ted Nelson complains about the fact that it can only display upper case characters and only 40 characters across the screen. But it costs only $1200.00.

1977 Computer Faire - Jim Warren holds the first West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco . Its style is very loose and unbusiness­like, borrowing more from the Renaissance Faire in Los Angeles than from the NCC. No one seems to mind. 13,000 people attend the first event, which in years to come will be a tradition for the growing industry. As Warren moves about the exposition hall on roller skates, Apple unveils the Apple 11, and Commodore debuts the PET.

1978 CE

1978 Solar Calculator - Consumers in the US can now buy a calculator powered by a solar panel.

1978 Computer Games - Computer and video games, including the talking Chess Challenger, are selling widely. In San Francisco a high speed computer programmed to play chess defeats the Grand Master Peter Biyasis.

1978 Speak And Spell - Texas Instruments (TI) offers a unique educational toy called Speak and Spell . The game uses digital speech synthesis to create voices electronically.

1978 Cellular Telephone - The first cellular telephone system is installed in Chicago , Illinois . Cellular telephones transmit calls, with antennae located at strategic sites throughout a metropolitan area.

1978 Accounting for Micros - Peachtree Software of Atlanta publishes the first serious general accounting system for microcomputers. This marks the trend in microcomputer sales away from hobbyists, and toward the business community.

1978 Visicalc - Dan Bricklin and Robert Frankston create Visicalc, the first spreadsheet program for microcomputers. It is a program designed to display rows and columns of dynamically recalculable figures. One figure can be changed, and every dependent formula in the spreadsheet will Immediately yield a different result.

1978 Wordstar - Seymour Rubenstein starts Micropro. The most significant product of the new company is a word processing program called Wordstar. This product takes the unique approach of presenting text on the screen in much the same manner as it will appear when it issues forth from the printer. The effect is called WYSRVYG - What You See Is What You Get - a popular laugh line used by comedian Flip Wilson.

1978 Cap'n Crunch - John Draper , the notorious Captain Crunch is arrested for unauthorized use of the telephone system. In his possession, when arrested, is an Apple 11. A condition of his parole will be that he not use a microcomputer for a specified period of time. Draper is a close friend of Steve Wozniak 's, and he is thought to be the originator of the Blue Box, a device which allows the simulation of AT&T's tone based dialing code system. In 1981 Draper will author Easywriter , the first word processor IBM will market along with its new PC.

1979 CE

1979 Cartridge Computer Games - Philips makes a new computer toy with a touch-sensitive keyboard that takes cartridges with different video games on them.

1979 Video Laser Disc - Philips of the Netherlands markets LaserVision, a digital video disc system that uses a helium neon laser to read the disc, eliminating the interference caused by dust or scratching. The player itself is smaller than many cassette decks.

1979 Electronic Blackboard - Bell Labs announces the electronic blackboard. It records images drawn on It and can recreate them on a screen.

1979 Micropad - Quest Automation of the US introduces Micropad, the first computer terminal that can accept direct handwritten data.

1979 Laser Printer for China - The Monorype Corp. of the UK devises a computerized laser printer for publishing houses in China. Until this time, Chinese printers had to rollerskate between rows of type to select from among the 6,0,000 characters used in written Chinese.

1980 CE

1980 Trailer for TRON - The impact of mass media is felt at the SIGGRAPH trade show, the traditional showcase for computer graphics technology. Robert Abel debuts a 60 second advertising film for a motion picture which employs advanced computer graphics modeling techniques. The ad is for TRON, a computer graphics movie produced by Walt Disney Studios. The audience oc programmers and hardcore techies whoops and hollers its approval.

1980 MS-DOS - IBM approaches Bill Gates of Microsoft, looking for software for their as yet unannounced PC. For an operating system, a rudimentary file management system which includes drivers for the PC's floppy disk drives, Gates initially sends them to Gary Kildall and Digital Research. Kildall's company balks at the restrictive non-disclosure agreement they must sign. IBM returns to Gates, who is ready for them with a product he has licensed from a local Seattle software developer. It looks and acts very much like Kildall's CP/M, but it works on the Intel 8088, which CP/M at that time cannot. It is the foundation of Microsoft's meteoric rise in the software industry.

1980 Hard Disk - Shugart Associates releases the Winchester disk drive, a hermetically sealed spinning disk. The storage technique is magnetic, and allows IO mb and more of storage. The technology will come to be known as the hard disk.

1980 Listening Computer - The State of Illinois installs a "listening" computer to perform credit card clearance for credit phone calls. The caller reads his card number into the phone and the computer is able to recognize the numbers by their sounds.

1981 CE

1981 Modern Gravure Printing - Crosfield Electronics manufactures a digital modular scanner which can be hooked up to a laser gravure cylinder machine. This technology makes gravure printing fast and economical.

1981 Computer Prices Drop - Buyers of personal computers are getting more for less. The Sinclair ZX81 offers new features such as animates graphics and complex math programs but only costs -­L70 ($140) - little more than two thirds the price of last year's model.

1981 VIC-20 - Jack Tramiel and Commodore introduce the VIC-20. It is the first computer designed for the home, and over four million are sold to consumers.

1981 Xerox 820 - Xerox introduces the Xerox 820. It is an 8 bit computer, based on the Z80 microprocessor. It has 8" floppy disk drives, and practically no software. It dies a horrible death in the marketplace.

1981 Apple III - Not believing that the Apple 11 can last forever, executives at Apple release the Apple III. Designed by Wendell Sander to be compatible with the Apple II. Unfortunately, the machine never comes close to equaling the sales of the Apple II, which will still be selling strong a decade after its introduction.

1981 Osborne 1 - Adam Osborne introduces the Osborne 1 microcomputer. It is the first computer designed to be portable, and it is sold with S2000 worth of bundled software. It is a bit unwieldy, but an immediate success.

1981 IBM PC - IBM introduces its personal computer. The PC, as it comes to be known, features two 360 kb floppy disk drives, a choice of black and white or color monitors, and it uses the 8088 microprocessor. In another extraordinary move, IBM licenses the use of someone else's operating system. PC-DOS is really MS-DOS, a product of Microsoft. IBM takes the additional step of offering a library of additional programs for the IBM PC. Among the products are 'Easywriter ', a word processing program written by John "Captain Crunch" Draper , and an adventure game from Microsoft. By year's end, IBM sells 13,000 units.

1981 Intel IAPX 432 - Intel produces the IAPX 432, a mini computer whose three silicon chips give it the capacity of 225,000 transistors, enabling it to perform the same functions as a mainframe at a speed that would make a mainframe overheat and use too much power. Much of the program is built directly into the chips.

1981 MODULA - Niklaus Wirth develops a new programming language in answer to the criticisms of his PASCAL It is called MODULA, and is characterized by highly modularized programs, event handling, concurrent process management, and careful version control. Like PASCAL it is highly structured, and features strong data typing.

1981 NEC APC - NEC introduces the APC. It uses the 8086 microprocessor from Intel . It is the first microcomputer to boast high-resolution graphics, with a 640 x 400 display, and 8 colors.

1982 CE

1982 TRON - Walt Disney Studios produces TRON, a movie with a plot that unfolds inside a computer.

1982 Carter's Little Floppy Disk - ­Retired President Jimmy Carter uses a Lanier word processing system to write his memoirs (biography). Several times he loses his work on bad floppy disks.

1982 Latest Supercomputers - Two new supercomputers, Cray I from Cray Research Inc., and CYBER 205 from Control Data Corp., can perform 100 million arithmetical operations in a second. Since the arrival of the electronic computer in 1951, large-scale computers for science have virtually doubled their speed every two years.

1982 The Bionic Woman - Dr. Jerrold Petrovsky of the biomedical laboratory at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio pioneers the use of computers to control electrical stimulation of paralyzed limbs. Nan Davis, a paraplegic, is able to walk with the aid of a computer, inaugurating digital prosthesis.

1983 CE

1983 Videodisc Game - Cinematronics shows the first laser videodisc based video game. The videodisc game "Dragon's Lair" makes its debut in the video arcades.

1983 Digital Movie Scenes - John Whitney Jr. and Gary Demos use a Cray XMP super computer to simulate scenes digitally for the Lorimar Productions motion picture "The Last Starfighter."

1983 Lotus 123 - Mitch Kapor founds Lotus. Lotus' flagship product is 123, a spreadsheet program designed to take full advantage of the IBM PC line of computers. Because of its additional performance, and a $1 million introductory advertising campaign, 123 supplants VISICALC as the premier product in its class.

1983 Osborne Computer Dies - Osborne Computer files for bankruptcy.

1983 Radio Shack Model 100 - Tandy , through its Radio Shack subsidiary, offer the Model 100, which is a book-sized computer, with built-in modem and LCD display.

1983 Apple LISA - Apple's new computer, the LISA is released. With its windoving system and a full line of applications packages, the LISA is a technical marvel. Its pricing is near $10,000, and there seems to be little market for it. However the ideas stick and surface again in the Macintosh.

1984 CE

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1985 CE

1985 Apple Laserwriter - Apple Computer releases the Laserwriter. It can print at 300 dots per inch - DPI - which, though quite a bit lower in resolution than conventional typesetting systems boasting 1200 dpi and above, is far superior to the quality of printing microcomputer users have come to expecl

1985 Desktop Publishing - Paul Brainerd introduces Pagemaker via his Aldus Corporation . Pagemaker takes the WYSPVVYG idea one step further, by exploiting the Macintosh's graphics screen, to represent not just character position on the screen, but also the aesthetics of the typography. Brainerd coins the term "desktop publishing" to describe the phenomenon.

1985 Talking Computer - Dr. Dennis H. Klatt of MIT with Ed Brucker-t and Wait Tetschner of Digital Equipment Corp. create DE-Ctalk, a computer system which can read aloud from text. Its synthetic voice can pronounce more than 20,000 different words accurately and offers the user a choice of pitches and intonations.

1985 HP Laserjet - Hewlett Packard (H P, until now a failure in the microcomputer business, hits upon a great idea: the inexpensive laser printer. The Laserjet sells over 300,000 units in its first few years of production. Even the aftermark-et digital typefont products will be a success, generating an estimated $45 million in revenue in 1986.

1984 Translating Computer - The Japanese company Fujitsu produces the Atlas 11 translating computer. It can translate Japanese text into English at the rate of 60,000 words an hour.

1984 Macintosh - Apple Computer releases the Macintosh computer. It uses the Motorola 68000 32 bit microprocessor. Its design is extraordinary, borrowing liberally from what Steve jobs has seen at PARC . Most notable is the Desktop Interface, which replaces the customary line-oriented prompting characteristic of the first generation of microcomputers. Instead, files and directories are represented by icons. These icons are selected and manipulated via a pointing device called a mouse.

1985 IBM AT - IBM releases the 640k AT personal computer, featuring the Intel 80286 microprocessor. It is set up to run at 6mhz, but users immediately find that they can replace the clock crystal and achieve substantially higher performance. IBM, once it recognizes the trend, alters the design to keep people from improving the performance.

1986 CE

1986 Electronic Encyclopedia - Gary Kildall 's Activenture - later known as Knowledgeset - and Grolier Publishing jointly create the Electronic Encyclopedia. It is the Grolier Encyclopedia on Compact Disk (CD-ROM) and it boasts a complete keyword based search engine, which Kildall calls the Knowledge Retrieval System (KRS). A user can choose any word, and within seconds retrieve all the articles in which the word occurs. The whole work occupies only one fifth of the space on the compact disk. The initial Interface for the system is alphanumeric. A graphic version, employing GEM, is suppressed by Grolier.

1986 Ventura Publisher - The first major desktop publishing software for the IBM PC is licensed and marketed by Xerox . It is called Ventura Publisher. The authors are Don Heiskell and Lee Lorenzon, the creators of the GEM system at DigitaJ Research. They employ the GEM system as a software foundation for their producl

1986 520 ST - Atari , under the new leadership of the Tramiel family, introduces the 520st. It is based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, and employs the GEM operating system. It has half a megabyte of memory, and is priced at $795.

1986 Deskpro 386 - Compaq Computer Corporation releases the Deskpro 386. The first personal computer to use the 16 bit 80386 microchip from Intel Corp., the DeskPro 386 is the most powerful personal computer yeL It runs standard software three times faster than the fastestl6 bit PC.

1986 The Connection Machine - Danny Hillis creates the Connection Machine, purportedly the fastest computer ever built. It consists ' of 65,536 1 bit microprocessors with performance In excess of 2500 MIPS. The first two units are rumored to have been delivered to the US National Security Agency.

1986 Windows - After several years of development, and a constantly delayed release date, Microsoft introduces WINDOWS, a graphic environment for the IBM PC which closely emulates the Macintosh. Although not revealed until almost a year later, Microsoft has signed an accord with Apple to avoid copyright litigation.

1987 CE

1987 Microsoft Bookshelf - Microsoft introduces Bookshelf, a CD-ROM product which allows a user to have immediate access to a variety of writer's research tools, including Webster's Dictionary, Roget 's Thesaurus , Bartlett's Quotations, The Chicago Elements of Style Manual, a national Zip Code directory, an almanac and several other reference works.

1987 Smart Cards - The conventional credit card may become a thing of the past as credit card companies in the US and Japan are experimenting with smart cards which record and store transactions. A million smart cards are already in use in France, and the French government has ordered all retailers to install devices for reading the cards.

1987 Hypercard - Apple announces Hypercard. In many ways, this new graphic operating system and screen environment fulfills the promise of some of the original SMALLTALK research at XEROX PARC , as wefl as the ideals of Hypertext espoused by Ted Nelson.

1987 PC Clones - Three new PC clones hit the market: the Atari PC from the US, the Bondwell XPressl6 from Hong Kong and the Hyundai Blue Chip from Korea.

1987 16 Megabit Chip - IBM is experimenting with a 4 megabit chip, Nippon Telephone & Telegraph with a 16 megabit chip. Both companies lower the voltage in the experimental computers from Sv to 3.3v to reduce heat and to avoid the introduction of stray current into their systems.

1987 IBM PS/2 - IBM announces its PS/2 series of microcomputers. The line is characterized by heightened performance in the areas of both speed and graphics. All members of the line can be equipped with a mouse, and a variant of the Microsoft Windows system is planned for general distribution on the machines.

1987 MAC II - Apple introduces the MAC 11. Positioned as a second generation Macintosh, It shares the same windowing environment, but is based on the 68020 microprocessor from Motorola . With 64Ox480 8-bit deep color graphics, 32-bit data path, and 16 mhz clock rate, it achieves the performance Alan Kay has said is necessary to create his Dynabook.

1988 CE

1988 New Laser Printers - Apple Computer launches three new laser printers incorporating the upgraded Canon SX engine for improved printing and longer operating life. It is the first of Apple's laser printers not to include the Adobe Systems' PostScript language.

1988 Transatlantic Fiber Optic Cable ­- AT&T and its European partners complete construction of the first transatlantic fiber optic cable. Called the TAT-8, this 4186-mile cable provides high-performance digital transmission for voice communication , video, fax and computer data between Europe and America.

1988 What's Your Hurry? - A new communications laser developed by GTE emits 22 billion pulses per second. It can be used to transmit digitized audio, video or written information over fiber optic networks at incredible speed. For example, this laser would make it possible to transmit the entire text of the Encyclopedia Britannica in a single second.

1988 Motorola RISC Chips - Ordinary microprocessors, called CISC (complex Instruction set computing) chips, can handle many different types of software, but even a 32-bit chip, such as the Intel 80386, can only handle 3.5 million instructions per second @3.5 MIPS). But the Motorola 88000 series microprocessors are RISC (reduced set instruction computing) chips, which, although they cannot handle as many types of programs as CISC chips, can process appropriate programs at a speed of 17 MiPs.

1988 NeXT Computer - Steve Jobs produces the NeXT personal computer. Notable features of the NeXT are a high-resolution monitor which displays exactly what will come out of the printer, digital audio recording and playback function, and a removable, erasable optical disk drive with massive memory. The computer comes with Its own word processing and data base programs, a dictionary, thesaurus, a book of quotations and the complete works of William Shakespeare . The list price for the machine is $6500.

1988 Computer Virus Scare - A computer virus, coded instructions that reproduce inside a computer system, frequently destroying or altering information - invades two unclassified networks of the US Department of Defense. In a matter of hours it has infected as many as 6000 computers across the country. The infected computers are part of military, university and corporate networks. This virus is the work of Robert Tappan Morris , Jr., a graduate student at ComeU University . Morris is the son rf one of the US Govemment's computer security experts.

1988 OS/2 - IBM and Microsoft jointly develop a new operating system for personal computers: OS/2. The new system is designed for the new 32­bit microprocessors, which can handle a larger memory than the older MS-DOS system. Other versions of the OS/2 will be used in personal computers manufactured by Compaq and Tandy Radio Shack.

1989 CE

1989 The Automated Home - A prototype automated home displayed at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas demonstrates the new CEBus (Consumer Electronics Bus) wiring standard. The Electronic Industries Association/Consumer Electronics Group, a trade organization comprising Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Philips, RCA , Sony and Tandy , is promoting the new standard so that computerized home appliances from different manufacturers can communicate with one another and be controlled by a single computer.

1989 Computer Animation - "Tin Toy", a short subject composed wholly of computer­generated animation, is the first such film to win an Academy Award. Jim Clark, chairman of Silicon Graphics, foremost manufacturer of hardware like that used in the production of "Tin Toy", predicts that the kind of three-dimensional images seen in the film will be available on home computers within the next eight years.

1989 Bug Jailed - Kevin Mitnick 's career as one of the most resourceful, and destructive, of computer criminals may be at an end. Mitnick's record of computer crime began when he was 17 years old. Throughout his career, judges and probation officers assigned to his cases, as well as companies which failed to hire him, have suffered from unexpwned computer-related mishaps: credit records altered, phone service disconnected, false and damaging stories reported to financial news services. When Mitnick Is jailed in Los Angeles, he is forbidden to use a telephone without supervision.

1990 CE

1990 Optical Computer , Light and Mirrors - AT&T Bell Laboratories' begins employing a computer processor developed by Bell Labs physicist David Miller between 1984 and 1987 which uses laser beams to replace silicon micro­chips called S-SEEDs (Symmetric Self-Electro-optic Effect Devise). Using specially coated mirrors an array of relays replaces the wires with light, making transfers with photons instead of electrons.

1991 CE

1991 Pen-based Computers - These computers are about the size of a notebook and use a pen or stylus instead of a keyboard for input -

1993 CE

1993 Personal Data Assistants - These are a small version of Pen Computers that are designed to hook to desktop computers and make the desktop's data portable and easy to use.

1994 CE

1994 PowerPC computers - These computers are being built by IBM and Apple Computer as the next generation processor. The Power PC RISC Processors are built to emulate existing computers while being able to run their own software up to ten times faster than past computers.

People

Companies

Computers

Components

Parts

Acronyms

Blaise Pascal

John Napier

Pascal

Charles Babbage

Ada Lovelace

Herman Hollerith

Alan Turing

Grace Hopper

Jack Kilby

Adam Osborne

Thomas Watson

Seymour Cray

Steve Jobs

Steve Wozniak

Bill Gates

Charles Tandy

Apple Computer

IBM

Tandy

Microsoft

Motorola

Word Perfect

Intel

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Analytical Engine

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ENIAC

MANIAC

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TRS-80

Osborne l

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Clone

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Pascaline

Difference Engine

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CRT

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NIC

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Pixel

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Program

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Mouse

Card

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er

Vacuum Tube

Transistor

Chip

Integrated

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COBOL

UPC

WYSIWYG

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RAM

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IC

CRT

LAN

MAN

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ASCII

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Measurement

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MS-DOS

System 7

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Windows 32

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Driver

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Word Processor

MS-Word

Lotus 123

Pagemaker

Database

MS-Works

Screen Saver

Spreadsheet

Draw

Paint

Hypercard

Binary

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Byte

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Gigabyte

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Laserjet

TELEX

Bar Code

File

Document

Data

Folder

Directory

80286

80386

80486

Pentium

Pentium II

K6

PowerPC

Z80

68000

G3