Quantum Computing

 

 

     

 

 

 

Intel bought McAfee

 

 

August 19, 2010    

 

 

 

HP bought Palm for around $1.2 bn US

 

 

April 28, 2010    

 

iPad

 

 

January 27, 2010    

 

USB 3.0

 

 

2010    

 

Windows 7

 

 

October 22, 2009    
 

Netbooks

 

 

 

2008    
 

Microsoft Surface

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2008    

 

 

 

Holographic Versatile Discs

 

 

2007    

 

 

 

the Classmate PC

 

 

2007    
 

the $100 laptop

 

 

 

 

 

2007    
 

Windows Vista

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 30, 2007    

 

 

 

AMD merged with ATI

 

 

October 25, 2006    
 

Intel Core 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 2006    

 

 

 

Windows PowerShell

 

 

April 25, 2006    
 

UMPCs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2006    

 

 

 

Adobe Systems bought Macromedia

 

 

December 3, 2005    

 

 

 

digital photo frames

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

Windows Live

 

 

2005    

 

 

 

HD DVD, Blu Ray drives

 

 

2005    
 

Wine

 

 

October 25, 2005)    

 

 

 

Google Earth

 

 

2005    

 

 

 

One billion people have access to the internet

 

 

2005    

 

 

 

the Pentium D contains two Pentium 4 Prescott dies, unlike other multicore processors which place both cores on a single die

 

 

2005    

 

 

 

Multi-core CPUs

 

 

2005    
 

youtube

 

 

 

 

February 2005    
 

the Columbia is currently the second fastest computer in the world running at 51.9 teraflops, or 51.9 trillion floating point calculations per second. It knocked NEC's Earth Simulator off its perch as the world's No. 1 machine - a spot it had held since 2002, before it was surpassed in turn by the Blue Gene/L

 

 

 

 

October 2004    

 

 

 

laser mice

 

 

2004    

 

 

 

Serial Attached SCSI

 

 

2004    

 

 

 

PCI Express

 

 

2004    
 

 

 

 

Web 2.0

 

 

2004    

 

 

 

Microsoft was granted a patent on the double-click by the US Patents and Trademark Office

 

 

April 27, 2004    

 

 

 

Channel 9

 

 

April 2004    
 

smartphones began to make up an increasingly large part of the mobile phone market

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2004    
 

the Blue Gene/L is currently the fastest computer with a theoretical peak performance of 360 TFLOPS. On June 22, 2006, NNSA and IBM announced that Blue Gene/L has achieved 207.3 TFLOPS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2004    

 

 

Wi-Fi

 

 

2004    

 

 

 

SWsoft acquired the control panel companies Plesk and Confixx

 

 

2003    

 

 

 

MySpace

 

 

July 2003    
 

64 bit processors started being offered for home use with the Apple Power Mac G5, the Athlon 64, and the Itanium, which had been introduced by Intel already in 2001

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 23, 2003    
 

3G mobile phone systems

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2003    
 

Sata

 

 

 

 

 

2003    

 

 

 

Voice over IP

 

 

200?    
 

Nullsoft Streaming Video

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2003    

 

 

 

Centrino

 

 

March 2003    
 

thin clients

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

 

render farms

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

Digital terrestrial television

 

 

2002    

 

 

 

Flikr

 

 

2002    

 

 

 

.NET Framework

 

 

2002    
 

Tablet PCs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2002    

 

 

BitTorrent

 

 

 

2002    
 

Windows XP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 25, 2001    

 

 

 

Port7Alliance

 

 

2001    
 

Wikipedia began as a complement to the expert-written Nupedia. It is edited by volunteers in wiki fashion, meaning articles are subject to change by nearly anyone

 

 

 

 

 

January 15, 2001    

 

 

 

the Google search engine rose to prominence. Its success was based in part on the concept of link popularity and PageRank. Google, Inc. was established in 1998

 

 

2001    

 

 

 

300,000,000 computers on the Internet

 

 

2001    

 

 

 

the Pentium 4

 

 

November 2000    

 

 

Opera introduced tabbed browsing

 

 

 

 

2000    

 

 

 

Plesk released the first version of its hosting control panel

 

 

2000    
 

ASIMO is a humanoid robot

 

 

 

 

 

 

2000    

 

 

 

rss is a family of xml formats

 

 

2000    
 

Widescreen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     
 

flat panel displays started to replace cathode ray tube desktop monitors. Liquid crystal displays were already invented in 1971 by James Fergason

 

 

 

 

 

2000    
 

Judge Jackson ordered that Microsoft split into two companies during the antitrust trial in which the U.S. Department of Justice, joined by twenty U.S. states, alleged that Microsoft abused monopoly power. A year later the Bush administration Justice Department announced that it will no longer seek a breakup of Microsoft (Sept. 6, 2001). Already on January 13, 2000 Bill Gates had created a new role for himself -- chairman and chief software architect. Steve Ballmer became president and CEO

 

 

 

June 7, 2000  

 

 

the AMD Athlon was the first chip to reach the 1 GHz mark. Intel

came out with the 1GHz Intel Pentium III processor on March 8, 2000

 

 

 

 

 

2000    
 

the USB Flash drive

 

 

 

2000    
 

the Y2K bug turned out not to have occurred on most computers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1999-2000    

 

 

 

DDR SDRAM

 

 

1999    
 

Bluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 20, 1999    

 

 

 

DVI port

 

 

April 1999  

 

 

Napster was the first peer-to-peer file sharing network. It was developed by Shawn Fanning

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1999    

 

 

 

Pirates of Silicon Valley

 

 

1999    

 

 

ADSL was introduced in many countries with downstream rates

starting at 256 kbit/s and 8 Mbit/s as the current maximum transfer speed

 

 

 

1999    

 

 

 

PayPal

 

 

December 1998  

 

 

ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

 

 

September 18, 1998    
 

multiple monitors

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   
 

the Eiger Labs MPMan F10 was the first digital audio player on the American market

 

 

 

 

 

1998    
 

the rocket e book

 

 

 

 

 

 

1998    

 

 

 

Intel released the Accelerated Graphics Port specification

 

1997    
 

Winamp

 

 

 

 

1997    
 

Flash Memory Cards

 

 

 

 

 

 

90s    
 

IBM's supercomputer Deep Blue beat chess master Garry Kasparov in a six-game match, in a dramatic reversal of their battle the previous year

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 1997    

 

 

 

Macromedia Flash Player

 

1997    

 

 

 

the browser wars

 

late 1990s    

 

 

 

the Internet Archive

 

1996    

 

 

Alexa Internet

 

1996    
 

Webby Awards

 

 

 

 

 

 

1996    

 

 

 

ICQ

 

November 1996    
 

the Tamagotchi is a handheld virtual pet

 

 

 

November 1996    
 

the first DVD players and discs became available in Japan and in March of

1997 in the United States. By the spring of 1999, the price of a DVD player had dropped below

the US $300 mark. At that point Wal-Mart began to offer DVD players for sale in its stores

 

 

 

November 1996    

 

 

 

Hotmail

 

July 4, 1996    

 

 

 

PNG

 

July 1, 1996    

 

 

 

Triumph of the Nerds

 

1996    

 

 

 

the Computer History Museum

 

1996    

 

 

 

cnet's download.com

 

1996    

 

 

the Apache HTTP Server became the most popular server on the net

 

 

April 1996    
 

the Palm Pilot PDA was released

 

 

 

 

 

1996    

 

 

 

21,000,000 computers on the Internet the number of computers online had exceeded 10 000 in 1987, 100 000 in 1989, and 1 million in 1992. Also in 1992 the term "surfing the net" was coined by Jean Armour Polly

1996    

 

 

Java 1.0 was released after five years of development by James Gosling and colleagues

 

 

1996    

 

 

 

MultiTorg Opera

 

1995    
 

Dragon released discrete word dictation-level speech recognition software. It was the first time dictation speech recognition technology was available to consumers. IBM and Kurzweil followed a few months later. In 1997 Dragon introduced "Naturally Speaking", the first "continuous speech" dictation software available (meaning you no longer need to pause between words for the computer to understand what you're saying)

 

 

 

1995    
 

FrontPage was initially created by the Cambridge, Massachusetts company

Vermeer Technologies Incorporated. Vermeer was acquired by Microsoft in 1996

 

 

 

 

 

1995    
 

FireWire

 

 

 

 

1995    
 

the scroll wheel

 

 

 

 

1995    
 

VeriSign is a company that operates a diverse array of network

infrastructure, including two of the Internet's thirteen root nameservers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1995    

 

 

 

plug&play

 

 

     
 

USB

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 1995    
 

eBay hosted its first auction

 

 

 

 

 

September 4, 1995    
 

Windows 95

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 24, 1995    

 

 

 

the NSFNET Backbone Service, operating since 1987, was successfully transitioned to a new architecture, where traffic is exchanged at interconnection points called Network access points

 

April 30, 1995    

 

 

PHP is one of the most popular server-side scripting systems on the net

 

 

June 8, 1995    

 

 

 

Microsoft Bob

 

March 1995    

 

 

 

Yahoo!

 

1994    

 

 

 

Hackers on Planet Earth

 

1994    

 

 

 

Astalavista.box.sk

 

1994    

 

 

 

chat rooms

 

19??    

 

 

 

America Online announced that it had reached 1 million subscribers

 

1994    

 

 

 

the Zip drive

 

1994    

 

 

 

ergonomic split keyboards

 

1994  

 

 

Justin Hall who began eleven years of personal blogging while a student at Swarthmore College, is generally recognized as one of the earliest bloggers. The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger in December 1997. The shorter version, "blog", was coined by Peter Merholz, who, in April or May of 1999, broke the word weblog into the phrase "we blog" in the sidebar of his weblog. This was interpreted as a short form of the noun and also as a verb to blog, meaning "to edit one's weblog or a post to one's weblog". Usage spread during 1999, with the word being further popularized by the near-simultaneous arrival of the first hosted weblog tools: Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan's company Pyra Labs launched Blogger (which was purchased by Google in February 2003) and Paul Kedrosky's GrokSoup. As of March 2003, the Oxford English Dictionary included the terms weblog, weblogging and weblogger in their dictionary

 

 

 

 

1994    

 

 

Amazon.com was one of the first major companies to sell goods over the Internet

 

 

1994    

 

 

the World Wide Web Consortium creates standards that Web developers should try to conform to, in order to maximize the ability of others to access their Web sites

 

1994    

 

 

 

CGI

 

1993    

 

 

 

the Toughbook

 

1993    
 

sub-notebooks at the time of its introduction, the HP Omnibook 300 was the

smallest and lightest PC on the market to feature a full-size keyboard and full VGA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1993    

 

 

 

the Adobe Acrobat Reader

 

1993    

 

 

 

the first Def Con hacking conference took place in Las Vegas

 

July 9, 1993    

 

 

 

Ntfs

 

July 1993    

 

 

 

Windows NT

 

July 1993    

 

 

 

the World Wide Web Wanderer was a perl based web crawler that was first deployed to measure the size of the World Wide Web. The Software was developed at MIT by Matthew Gray. Later in 1993, it was used to generate an index called the "Wandex", providing the first search engine on the web

 

June, 1993    
 

Peripheral Component Interconnect

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1993    
 

the Mosaic web browser written at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, has been described as "the killer application of the 1990s" because it was the first program to provide a slickmultimedia graphical user interface to the Internet's burgeoning wealth of distributed information services (formerly mostly limited to  FTP, Usenet and Gopher) at a time when access to the Internet was expanding rapidly outside its previous domain of academia and large industrial research institutions. The company producing the software was founded as Mosaic Communications Corporation on April 4, 1994 by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark, and was the first company to attempt to capitalize on the nascent World Wide Web. It released a web browser called Mosaic Netscape 0.9 on October 13, 1994. This browser was subsequently renamed Netscape Navigator, and the company took on the 'Netscape' name on November 14, 1994. In January 1998 Netscape open sourced  its Web browser as the Mozilla Project. On November 24, 1998 America Online announced it would acquire Netscape Communications in a tax-free stock-swap valued at US$4.2 billion at the time of the announcement

 
April 22, 1993    
 

the earliest Pentiums were released at the clock speeds of 66 MHz and 60 MHz. Later on 75, 90, 100, 120, 133, 150, 166, 200 and 233 MHz versions gradually became available. Other versions of the Pentium line include the Pentium Pro (November 1995), the Pentium II (May 7, 1997), the Pentium III (March 2000) and the Pentium 4 which was released in November 2000

 

 

March 22, 1993    
 

Wired magazine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 1993    
 

the Internet Society is the parent corporation of the Internet Architecture Board and the Internet Engineering Task Force

 

 

1992    
 

Windows 3.1 was released two years after Version 3.0

 

 

 

 

 

August 1992    
 

the *7

 

 

 

 

 

 

1992    

 

 

 

jpeg

 

1992    
 

SAP R/3 is one of the most popular ERP (Enterprise resource planning systems)

 software products. These are management information systems that integrate and automate many of the business practices associated with the operations or production aspects of a company

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 6, 1992    
 

the SupraFax 14400 ran at the 14.4 kbit/s rate

 

 

 

 

1991    

 

 

 

the Advanced Computing Environment

 

1991  

 

 

 

 

the AIM alliance

 

1991  

 

 

the Trojan room coffee pot was the inspiration for the world's first webcam

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1991    
 

Linux is a computer operating system which is written by many programmers

at once in a process called open-source development. The software was originally programmed by

Linus Torvald only, with the aim to develop a capable UNIX operating system that could be run on

a PC. It was inspired by Minix (a kernel and operating system developed by Andrew Tanenbaum)

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 1991    
 

Pretty Good Privacy

 

 

 

 

 

 

1991    
 

the first web page

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 6, 1991    
 

Visual Basic 1.0 was released for Windows

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 1991    
 

second generation mobile phone systems such as GSM, IS-136 ("TDMA"), iDEN and IS-95

("CDMA") began to be introduced. The first digital cellular phone call was made in the United States

 in 1990, in 1991 the first GSM network opened in Europe

 

 

 

1991    

 

 

 

PCMCIA

 

 

1990    

 

 

 

MS-Works for Windows

 

 

1990    

 

 

 

Object Linking and Embedding

 

 

1990    

 

 

 

the Electronic Frontier Foundation was formed by Mitch Kapor and John Perry Barlow in part to defend the rights of those investigated for alleged computer hacking

 

 

1990    

 

 

 

the NeXTstation

 

 

1990-1993  

 

 

 

 

Windows 3.0

 

 

May 22, 1990    

 

 

 

machine learning

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

video projectors

 

 

   

 

 

the www as well as http, html and urls were invented by Tim Berners-Lee at Cern

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1990    
 

Advanced Technology Attachment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1989    

 

 

 

sound cards

 

 

1989    

 

 

 

Microsoft Office

 

 

1989    

 

 

 

Silicon Graphics introduced what was arguably the first 3D graphics workstation the IRIS 4D Superworkstation

 

 

1989    

 

 

 

the first dial-up internet service provider was world.std.com

 

 

1989    
 

the touchpad

 

 

 

 

 

 

1989    
 

the Game Boy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 21, 1989    

 

 

 

the ZIP file format

 

 

1989    
 

the GNU General Public License is the most popular license for free software

 

 

 

 

January 1989    
 

the NeXTcube

 

 

 

 

 

 

1988    

 

 

 

the Moving Picture Experts Group

 

 

1988    

 

 

 

spec

 

 

1988    

 

 

 

IRC

 

 

August 1988    

 

 

 

Flash memory

 

 

1988    

 

 

 

e-mail clients

 

 

1988    

 

 

 

raid

 

 

1988    
 

most dialup modems follow the Hayes Command Set it was originally developed for the Hayes Smartmodem 2400

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1988    
 

music sequencer software

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

late 80s    
 

Windows 2.0 was released, with icons & overlapping windows

 

 

December 9, 1987    

 

 

 

IBM Personal System/2

 

 

1987    

 

 

 

HyperCard

 

 

1987    
 

the mp3 format for digital audio encoding was invented by Karlheinz Brandenburg and Jürgen Herre of the "Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits." In the first half of 1995, mp3 files began flourishing on the Internet

 

 

 

 

 

1987    

 

 

 

Video Graphics Array

 

 

1987    
 

the Canon Cat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1987    
 

the first digital desktop slide scanner was produced by Barneyscan

 

 

 

1987    

 

 

 

vector graphics editor

 

 

1987    

 

 

 

Congress passed the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

 

 

1986    

 

 

 

RSA Security

 

 

1986    
 

386 CPU's were the standard for IBM PCs until the introduction of the 486 CPU in April 1989. The predecessor of the 80386 was the Intel 80286, a 16-bit processor with a segment-based memory management and protection system. The 80386 added a 32-bit architecture and a paging translation unit, which made it much easier to implement operating systems which used virtual memory. The first 80386-based PC was the Compaq Deskpro 386 introduced in September 1986

 

 

1986    
 

the IBM Convertible was the first real laptop

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 1986    

 

 

 

Loyd Blankenship's Hacker Manifesto

 

 

1986    

 

 

 

C++

 

 

1985    

 

 

 

the Hacker zine Phrack was first published by Craig Neidorf ('Knight Lightning') and Randy Tischler

 

 

1985    

 

 

 

Aldus PageMaker was the first desktop publishing program

 

 

1985    

 

 

 

NeXT was founded by Steve Jobs after his resignation from Apple Computer. Apple Computer  acquired NeXT in 1997 in order to use the OpenStep operating system as the basis for Mac OS X

 

 

1985    
 

Microsoft Windows 1.0 was Microsoft's first attempt to implement a multitasking graphical user interface-based operating environment on the PC platform. The program has by now come to dominate the world market for personal computer with a market share estimated to be around 95% for desktop personal computers. Developement on the project named "Interface Manager" started in September 1981

 

 

 

 

 

November 1985    
 

the File Transfer Protocol was first developed in 1971 for implementation on hosts at M.I.T. In 1985 ftp was defined by the RFC 959 documnet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 1985    
 

the CD-ROM was introduced

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1985    

 

 

 

shareware

 

 

mid-1980s    

 

 

 

Out of the Inner Circle: A Hacker's Guide to Computer Security by Bill Landreth and Howard Rheingold

 

1985    
 

the Atari ST

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1985    
 

bitmap graphics editors

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1980s    

 

 

 

multimedia

 

 

 

the Amiga 1000 was followed up with the introduction of the A500 and A2000 models in 1987 and the A3000 in 1990

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1985    

 

 

 

Cisco Systems created the first commercially successful multi-protocol router

 

 

1984    

 

 

 

Enhanced Graphics Adapter

 

 

1984    

 

 

 

the Cult of the Dead Cow

 

 

1984    

 

 

 

2600: The Hacker Quarterly was founded by Eric Corley

 

 

1984    

 

 

 

the Legion of Doom

 

 

1984    

 

 

 

the TRON Project

 

 

1984    

 

 

 

X Window System

 

 

June 1984    
 

FidoNet was started by Tom Jennings of San Francisco, California as a means to network together BBSes or mailboxes (like MausNet) that used his own "Fido" BBS software

 

 

 

 

 

 

1984    
 

the Macintosh

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 1984    
Symbolics.com

 

 

 

the Domain Name System was introduced by Paul Mockapetris. Symbolics.com became the first registered commercial domain name

1984    

 

 

 

Screensavers

 

 

December 1983    

 

 

 

ADAM computer

 

 

1983    
 

VisiOn was the first integrated graphical software environment for IBM PCs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 1983    

 

 

 

Microsoft Word took many concepts and ideas from Bravo, the original  GUI word processor developed at Xerox PARC by Charles Simonyi. Later versions were created for the Apple Macintosh (1984), SCO UNIX, and Microsoft Windows (1989)

 

November 1983    
 

the Nintendo Famicom was released in its American and European version as the NES video game console in June 1985

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 1983    

 

 

 

Smart Cards

 

 

1983    

 

 

 

PC World

 

 

1983    

 

 

 

DRM

 

 

1983    
 

the biggest-selling early laptop was the Kyocera Kyotronic 85

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1983    

 

 

 

the HP-150 was one of the world's earliest commercialized touch screen computers

 

 

1983    

 

 

 

the wired glove

 

 

1983    
 

Lotus 1-2-3 is a spreadsheet program which was the IBM PC's first killer application

 

 

 

 

January 26, 1983    
 

the Apple Lisa was the second computer with a graphical user interface (GUI)

after the Xerox Alto. Nevertheless it became a commercial failure due to its price of $9,995

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 1983    

 

 

 

freeware

 

 

1983    
 

the TCP/IP protocol began to be used for ARPAnet and the Defense Data Network

 

 

 

 

 

 

January 1, 1983    
 

the Commodore 64 with estimated sales between 17 and 25 million units  became and remains the best-selling computer model of all time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 1982-1993    

 

 

 

Norton Utilities

 

 

1982    

 

 

 

the hp 75c

 

 

1982-1986    
 

the 3 1/2-inch hard cartridge disk standard

 

 

 

1982    
 

the Epson HX-20

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 1982    
 

the GRiD Compass 1100 was arguably the first laptop computer

 

 

 

 

 

April 1982    

 

 

 

Autodesk

 

 

1982    
 

the Intel 80286 was initially released in 6 and 8 MHz editions, and subsequently scaled up to 20 MHz. It was widely used in IBM PC compatible computers during the mid 1980s to early 1990s

 

 

 

 

February 1, 1982    
 

PC Magazine

 

 

January 1982

   
 

SCSI

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1981    
 

the Chaos Computer Club was founded in Berlin by Wau Holland and others

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 12, 1981    
 

the first cell phone network with automatic roaming was started in Saudi Arabia

 

 

 

September 1981    

 

 

 

bios

 

1981    

 

 

 

Front side bus

 

     

 

 

 

Graphics processing units

 

1981    

 

 

 

Industry Standard Architecture

 

1981    

 

 

 

the CGA graphics card gave 640x200 resolution with 16 colors

 

1981    
 

with the release of the IBM PC began the WinTel (Windows-Intel) monopoly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 12, 1981    

 

 

 

IBM announced the System/23 Datamaster

 

July 28, 1981    
 

Microsoft bought all rights to 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products for US$50,000, and the name MS-DOS was adopted

 

 

 

July 27, 1981    
 

the Xerox Star was the first computer to feature a WIMP (window, icon, menu, pointing device) graphical user interface

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1981    
 

the Osborne 1 was one of the first portable computers. Despite its interesting characteristics, Osborne Computer Corporation suffered the competition of the first IBM PC compatibles and went bankrupt in 1983

 

 

 

 

 

April 1981    
 

MIDI is an industry-standard protocol that defines each note precisely and concisely, allowing electronic musical instruments and computers to exchange data

 

1981    

 

 

 

Seagate Technology created the first hard disk drive for microcomputers the disk held 5 megabytes of data, five times as much as a standard floppy disk, and fit in the space of a floppy disk drive

 

1980    

 

 

SGML

 

 

1980    
 

Ethernet

 

 

1980    
 

the optical mouse was invented by Steven T. Kirsch

 

 

 

1980    

 

 

 

Tim Berners-Lee wrote a hyperlinking program called Enquire which eventually evolved into the World Wide Web

 

1980    

 

 

 

dBASE

 

 

1980    
 

Softcard

 

 

 

March 1980    

 

 

 

the first router was created at Stanford University by a staff researcher named William Yeager

 

 

January 1980    

 

 

 

COMDEX

 

 

1979-2003    

 

 

 

the Perq graphical workstation

 

 

1979    

 

 

 

delivermail

 

 

1979    
 

VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program available for personal computers. It was the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a business tool. After the Apple II version, VisiCalc was also released for the Atari 8-bit family, the Commodore PET (both based on the MOS Technology 6502 processor, like the Apple), and the IBM PC

 

 

 

 

 

1979    
 

the Atari 400

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1979    
 

UUCP stands for Unix to Unix Copy Protocol, and is a computer program and protocol allowing remote execution of commands and transfer of files, email and netnews between Unix computers not connected to the Internet proper. In 1979 Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis of Duke University created Usenet a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network. Now widely recognized concepts and terms such as "FAQ" and "spam" were originated on the usenet

 

 

 

 

1978    
 

Space Invaders

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1978    

 

 

 

Language technology

 

 

1978    

 

 

 

InfoWorld

 

 

1978-2007    
 

the Speak & Spell talking learning aid

 

 

 

 

 

 

1978    
 

the Atari VCS was the first successful video game console to use plug-in cartridges instead of having one or more games built in. It was later renamed as the Atari 2600

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 1977    
 

the Tandy TRS-80 Model I

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 3, 1977    
 

the Commodore PET 2001

 

 

 

 

 

 

1977    

 

 

 

Lisp machines

 

 

1977    

 

 

 

the Demoscene

 

 

   

 

 

the Apple II was the first PC with color graphics. Customers used their own TV sets as monitors and audiocassette recorders for data storage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 5, 1977    
 

the Apple I was the first computer to combine a keyboard with a microprocessor and a connection to a monitor. Designed by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, it was sold as Apple's first product

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 1976    
PostScript

 

 

 

PostScript

 

 

1976    
 

the Cray 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1976    

 

 

 

the Fat file system

 

 

1976    

 

 

 

Open Letter to Hobbyists

 

 

February 3, 1976    

 

 

 

Electronic paper

 

 

1970s    
 

Byte

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 1975    

 

 

 

Fingerprint Reader

 

 

1975    

 

 

 

pipeline

 

 

1975    

 

 

 

risc cpus

 

 

1975    
 

the IBM 5100 Portable Computer weighed about 25 kg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 1975    
 

the CCD flatbed scanner was invented by Ray Kurzweil

 

 

 

 

 

1975    
 

the Homebrew Computer Club had its first meeting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 1975    
 

Micro-Soft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. Their first product was Altair BASIC - the first programming language for the world's first truly personal computer, the MITS Altair 8800. Gates and Allen had already founded Traf-o-Data, their first company, in 1972

 

 

 

 

 

1975    

 

 

 

the bus

 

 

   

 

 

the MITS Altair 8800 was a microcomputer design based on the Intel 8080A CPU. Sold as a kit through Popular Electronics magazine, the designers intended to sell only a few hundred to hobbyists, and were surprised when they sold over ten times that many in the first month

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1975    
 

Marsh’s Supermarket in Troy, Ohio was the first to use the bar-code for scanning groceries

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 1974    

 

 

 

the Intel 8080 is an 8-bit CPU generally considered to be the first truly usable microprocessor CPU design. The 8080 was used in many early computers, such as the MITS Altair 8800 and IMSAI 8080, forming the basis for machines running the CP/M operating system

 

 

 

April 1974    

 

 

 

widgets

 

19??    

 

 

 

the motherboard

 

19??    
 

the Xerox Alto was the first personal computer and the first computer to use the desktop metaphor and graphical user interface (GUI)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1973    
 

the Micral industrial microcomputer was based on the Intel 8008

 

 

 

 

1973    

 

 

 

Plankalkül was first published the first compiler for it was implemented in 2000 by the Free University of Berlin

 

1972    
 

Pong an adaptation of table tennis to the video screen, was the first commercially successful video game. It was released by Atari

 

 

 

 

1972    
 

the Magnavox Odyssey was the first home video game console

 

 

 

 

 

1972    
 

the original laser printer called EARS was developed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. The Xerox 9700 Electronic Printing System, the first xerographic laser printer product, was released in 1977

 

 

 

 

 

1971    
 

the floppy disk became a standard part of the IBM System/370

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1971    
 

the Intel 4004  a 4-bit CPU, was the world's first single-chip microprocessor. The chief designers of the chip were Ted Hoff and Federico Faggin of Intel and Masatoshi Shima of Busicom.´The chip was originally designed for the Japanese company Busicom to be used in their line of calculators

 

 

November 15, 1971    

 

 

 

fourth generation computers are build with microprocessors. The earliest models were capable of 10,000,000 calculations per second

 

1971-present    
@

 

 

 

the use of the at sign was introduced by Ray Tomlinson. Email had started in 1965

 

 

1971    

 

 

 

the electronic touch interface was invented by Dr. Samuel C. Hurst

 

 

1971    
 

the term Silicon Valley was coined by journalist Don C. Hoefler. Silicon refers to the high concentration of semiconductor and computer-related industries in the area; Valley refers to the Santa Clara Valley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1971    
 

Esquire magazine published Secrets of the Little Blue Box with instructions for making a blue box  among the perpetrators: college kids Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, future founders of Apple Computer, who launch a home industry making and selling blue boxes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1971    
 

Bowmar Instruments Corp. introduces the Bowmar Brain, the first pocket calculator for the masses

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1971    

 

 

the Texas Instruments TMS 1000 was a 4 bit processor, designed for use in video games, microwave ovens, calculators and other electronics products. It was arguably the first microcontroller developed, and was introduced on the market in 1974

 

1971    
 

the Kenbak-1

 

 

 

 

1971    

 

 

 

virtual machine software

 

 

1970s    

 

 

 

Xerox PARC

 

 

1970    
 

the Central Air Data Computer

 

 

 

 

 

 

1970    

 

 

 

cebit

 

1970    
 

Unix was officially named and ran on the PDP-11/20. The operating system was developed in the 1960s by a group of AT&T Bell Labs employees

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1970    
 

the PDP-11

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1970    

 

 

 

Microcomputing

 

 

   

 

 

the Datapoint 2200

 

 

 

 

 

 

1970    

 

 

 

Pascal is based on the Algol programming language and is named in honor of mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal

 

1970    
 

the Honeywell H316 "Kitchen Computer"

 

 

 

 

 

 

1969    
 

C is a programming language named "C" because many of its features were derived from an earlier language called "B"

 

 

 

1969    
 

RFC documents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1969    

 

 

 

Joe Engressia ('The Whistler', 'Joybubbles' and 'High Rise Joe') invented phreaking

 

 

1969    
 

the Arpanet of the U.S. Department of Defense was the world's first operational packet switching network, and the progenitor of the global Internet

 

 

 

 

 

October 29, 1969    
 

Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a  90- minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 9, 1968    

 

 

 

Virtual Reality

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

Head-mounted displays

1968    
 

the PDP-10

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

late 1960s    

 

 

 

Software engineering

 

 

1968    
 

the Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth

 

 

 

 

 

1968    
 

cmos integrated circuits

 

 

 

 

 

 

1968    

 

 

 

Consumer Electronics Show

 

 

1967    

 

 

 

the Turing Award

 

 

1966    
 

the PDP-8 was the first successful commercial minicomputer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 22, 1965    
 

the CDC 6600 is generally considered to be the first successful supercomputer,outperforming the fastest machines of the era by about three times. It remained the world's fastest computer from 1964 to 1969, when it relenquished that status to its successor, the CDC 7600

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1965    
 

embedded systems

 

 

 

 

 

 

1964    
 

the Moog synthesizer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1964    

 

 

 

CISC

 

 

   

 

 

the IBM System/360

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 7, 1964    

 

 

 

third generation computers used integrated circuits for the first time. They achieved 1,000,000 calculations per second

1964-1971    

 

 

 

random access machines

 

1964    
 

the BASIC programming language was devised by Profs. John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz of Dartmouth College

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1963    

 

 

the IEEE is an international non-profit, professional organization for the advancement of technology related to electricity

 

1963    

 

 

 

Sketchpad was the first program ever to utilize a complete graphical user interface and is considered to be the ancestor of modern computer-aided drafting (CAD) programs

 

1963    
 

the first computer mouse was invented by Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute

 

 

 

 

 

 

1963    

 

 

 

the SABRE system

 

 

1963    
 

ASCII

 

 

 

 

1963    
 

Intel's chairman Gordon Moore suggested that integrated circuits would double in complexity every year while prices will stay the same. This suggestion will be known as Moore's Law

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1963    

 

 

 

Transistor-transistor logic

 

 

1962    
 

the ATLAS computer of the University of Manchester was arguably the fastest computer in the world until the release of the CDC 6600

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1962    
 

the CDC 160A

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1962    

 

 

 

Control Data Corporation

 

 

1960s    

 

 

 

resistor-transistor logic

 

 

1961    

 

 

 

Wearable computing

 

 

1961    

 

 

 

the metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor was invented by Dawon Kahng and Martin Atalla at Bell Labs

1960    

 

 

 

Project Xanadu was founded by Ted Nelson as the original hypertext project

 

 

1960    

 

 

 

PLATO

 

 

1960    

 

 

 

Seti

 

 

1960    

 

 

 

the Perceptron

 

 

1960    
 

the PDP-1 was the first computer in Digital Equipment's PDP series and is famous for being the computer most important in the creation of hacker culture, at MIT, BBN and elsewhere

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1960    

 

 

 

workstations

 

 

   
 

the IBM 1620

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1959    

 

 

 

Jean Hoerni's Planar process

 

1959    

 

 

 

Ural

 

1959    

 

 

 

ERMA

 

1959    
 

the integrated circuit

 

 

 

1958    

 

 

 

Lisp

 

1958    

 

 

 

Time-sharing

 

1957    
 

the LA30 was a 30 character/second dot matrix printer produced by Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Massachusetts

 

 

 

 

 

1957    
 

the drum scanner was developed for the SEAC computer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1957    
 

the first transistorized computer the TX-O was completed  at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1956    

 

 

 

second generation computers were built with transistors and achieved 10,000 calculations per second

1956-1963    

 

 

 

the IBM 305

 

1956    

 

 

 

Z22

 

1955    

 

 

 

TRADIC

 

1955    
 

Texas Instruments was the first company to start commercial production of silicon transistors

 

 

 

 

1954    

 

 

 

Popular Electronics

 

October 1954-2003    

 

 

 

Wang B-machines

 

1954    

 

 

 

Register machines

 

 

   

 

 

the first Fortran compiler was developed for the IBM 704 by a team led by John W. Backus. The language was widely adopted by scientists for writing numerically intensive programs, which encouraged compiler writers to produce compilers that generate faster code

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1954    
 

the IBM 650 was the world’s first mass-produced computer. Over 2000 systems were produced between its introduction in 1954 and its final manufacture in 1962

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1954    
 

the first high-speed printer was developed by Remington-Rand for use on the Univac computer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1953    

 

 

 

mainframes

 

 

   

 

 

the IBM 701 known as the Defense Calculator while in development, was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer. Its business computer sibling was the IBM 650

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 7, 1953    
 

the hard disk was developed Reynold Johnson. The first computer with a hard disk drive as standard was the IBM 350 Disk File, introduced in 1956 with the IBM 305 computer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1952    
 

John von Neumann´s IAS computer became operational at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, N.J.

 

 

 

 

 

 

1952    
 

the LEO I was the first computer used for commercial business applications

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 1951    

 

 

 

microprogramming

 

 

1951    
 

the UNIVAC I was the first commercial computer made in the United States. A-0 was the name of the programming language used on this computer and its successor the UNIVAC II

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 31, 1951    
 

the Ferranti Mark I

 

 

 

 

 

 

February 1951    
 

the EDVAC

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1951    

 

 

 

SWAC

 

 

1950    

 

 

 

the monitor

 

 

   

 

 

the Whirlwind computer developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was the first computer that operated in real time, used video displays for output, and the first that was not simply an electronic replacement of older mechanical systems

 

 

 

 

 

 

1950    
 

the Turing test

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1950    

 

 

 

Floating point units

 

 

   

 

 

the Z4 was the first commercially available computer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 1950    
 

the EDSAC

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 6, 1949    
 

the Manchester Mark I is historically significant due to its pioneering inclusion of a kind of index registers in its architecture, as well as being the platform on which Autocode was developed, one of the first "high-level" computer languages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

early April 1949    
 

the Williams Tube was the first Random Access Memory and provided the medium on which the first ever electronically stored-memory program was written in the Manchester Mark I computer

 

 

 

1948    
 

the SSEM aka Baby was the first stored-program computer to run a program and to implement the main features of the von Neumann Architecture. The SSEM developed into the Manchester Mark I, which led to the Ferranti Mark I

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 21, 1948    
 

Shockley's Junction-Transistor

 

 

 

 

January 1948    
 

the Transistor was invented at Bell Telephone Laboratories by John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain, and William Bradford Shockley. Ironically, they had set out to manufacture a field-effect transistor (FET) predicted by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld as early as 1925 but eventually discovered current amplification in the point-contact transistor that subsequently evolved to become the bipolar junction transistor (BJT). The transistor, considered by many to be one of the greatest inventions in modern history, ranks with the printing press and the telephone. It is the key active component in practically all modern electronics

 

 

December 23, 1947    

 

 

 

the ACE was designed by Alan Turing

 

 

February 19, 1946    
 

the ENIAC short for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, was the first all-electronic computer designed to be Turing-complete

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

February 14, 1946    
 

Vannevar Bush's Memex

 

 

 

 

 

 

1945    
 

the von Neumann architecture

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

the ALU

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

the First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC by John von Neumann

 

 

June 30, 1945    

 

 

 

Thomas J. Watson Research Center

 

 

1945    
 

the Mark II Colossus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 1944    

 

 

 

the Harvard Architecture

 

 

     
 

the Harvard Mark I was also called the IBM ASCC, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

December 1943    

 

 

 

Emil Leon Post's tag system

 

 

1943    

 

 

 

the Church-Turing thesis was first proposed by Stephen C. Kleene but named after Alonzo Church and Alan Turing

1943    

 

 

 

the CPU

 

 

 

the Z3 was developed by Konrad Zuse and was the earliest working computer that has been shown to be Turing-complete

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1941    
 

the Atanasoff-Berry Computer has been described as the first "electronic digital computer". However, it was not a stored program machine, which distinguishes it from later machines

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 1939    
 

the Lorenz SZ 40 was a cipher machine used during World War II

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1939    

 

 

 

the Z2

 

 

1939    
 

the Z1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1938    
 

George Stibitz, then working at Bell Labs completed a relay-based computer he dubbed the Model K which calculated using binary addition

 

 

 

 

November 1937    

 

 

 

first generation computers used vacuum tubes and achieved 1,000 calculations per second

 

 

1937-1956    

 

 

 

Claude Shannon's A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits

 

 

1937    

 

 

 

Universal Turing machines

 

 

     
 

Turing machines were described by Alan Turing

 

 

 

 

1936    
λ x. x + 1

 

 

 

Alonzo Church used lambda calculus to give a negative answer to the Entscheidungsproblem

1936    

 

 

 

Dvorak Simplified Keyboard

 

 

1936    

 

 

 

IBM provided the Third Reich with punch card machines that helped the Nazis increase the efficiency of the Holocaust

1930s-1940s    

 

 

 

Gödel's incompleteness theorems

 

1931    

 

 

 

Gödel's completeness theorem

 

1929    
 

Entscheidungsproblem

 

 

 

 

1928    

 

 

 

the Ackermann function is a not primitive recursive function

 

 

1928    
 

a practical version of the differential analyser which was invented in 1876 by James Thomson, was first constructed by H. W. Nieman and Vannevar Bush at MIT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1927    
 

the Model 12 was the first general purpose teletype

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1922    

 

 

 

Station X

 

 

1919    
 

the Enigma machine was a portable cipher machine used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1917    
 

the Monroe High-Speed Adding Calculator

 

 

 

 

 

 

1914    

 

 

IBM was born when Herman Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Co. merged with two other companies to form the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R for short). In 1924 it changed its name to International Business Machines

 

1911    
 

the Millionaire Calculator was developed by Otto Steiger and built in Zurich by the firm of Hans W. Egli

 

 

 

 

 

1892    
 

the eleventh United States Census was the first to be compiled on a tabulating machine, developed by Herman Hollerith

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1890    

 

 

 

Dedekind introduced primitive recursive functions

1888    
 

Léon Bollée's Multiplier

 

 

 

 

 

1888    
 

the modern punch card was a patent by Herman Hollerith, it was used as an input method for calculating machines, as well as music machines

 

 

 

 

 

June 8, 1887    
 

the Comptometer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1887    
 

the Odhner Arithmometer

 

 

 

 

1886    

 

 

 

bugs

 

 

   

 

 

Jevons' Logic Piano

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1869    
 

the QWERTY keyboard was invented by Christopher Sholes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1863    

 

 

 

boolean logic

 

 

1854    
 

Ada Byron's notes on the Analytical engine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1842    

 

 

 

logic gates

 

 

 

   
 

the Analytical engine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1837    

 

 

 

the relay was invented by Joseph Henry

 

 

1837    
 

a model for a Difference engine was presented to the Royal Astronomical Society in a paper entitled "Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables" by Charles Babbage  (1791-1871). Between 1833 and 1842 he tried to build a  machine that would be programmable to do any kind of calculation, not just ones relating to polynomial equations. The first breakthrough came when he redirected the machine's output to the input for further equations. He described this as the machine "eating its own tail". It did not take much longer for him to define the main points of his analytical engine

 

 

 

 

June 14, 1822    
 

the Arithmometer

 

 

 

 

1820    
 

the Jacquard loom used the holes punched in pasteboard punch cards to control the weaving of patterns in fabric

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1801    
 

Mathieus Hahn designed the first functional mechanical calculator

 

 

 

 

 

1773    
 

Antonius Braun developed the first calculator with the four base calculations

 

 

 

 

1727    
 

a loom controled by perforated paper tape was invented by Basile Bouchon. In 1726 his co-worker Jean-Baptiste Falcon improved on his design by using perforated paper cards attached to one another, which made it easier to quickly change the program Further refinements by others eventually lead to the wildly successful Jacquard loom

 

 

 

 

 

 

1725    

 

 

 

Giovanni Poleni's Pinwheel calculator

 

 

1709    
 

the binary system was invented by Leibniz, who published his ideas in the "Explication de l'Arithmétique Binaire" in 1703

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1679    
 

the the step reckoner a mechanical calculator that could execute all four arithmetical operations was invented by Leibniz

 

 

 

 

1671    

 

 

 

Leibniz' calculus ratiocinator

 

 

1667    
 

the Pascaline was the second mechanical calculator in history, invented by Blaise Pascal

 

 

 

 

 

 

1645    
 

the first calculator was built by Wilhelm Schickard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1623    

 

 

the slide rule was invented by William Oughtred

 

 

1622    
 

Napier's bones

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1617    
 

Leonardo da Vinci's ratio machine

 

 

 

 

 

1493    
 

Al-Khawarizmi described an algorithm for solving Linear equations and Quadratic equations. The word algorithm comes from his name and was coined in the 18th century

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

early 9th century    
 

the Antikythera mechanism

 

 

 

 

80 bc    
 

the Abacus

 

 

 

 

3000 bc    

 

 

 

counting rods were used by ancient Chinese before the invention of the abacus

 

 

4000 bc    
 

the Ishango Bone is a tally stick, made of bone, which contains sequences of prime numbers, and some series of multiples. The bone was found in the area of the headwaters of the Nile River

 

 

20,000 bc