History of Computer

Precomputers and Early

Computers
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Year: 500 B. C.
Abacus
The earliest recorded calculating device,
the abacus, is believed to have been
invented by the Babylonians sometime
between 500 B. C. and 100 B. C. it and
similar types of counting boards were
used solely for counting.
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Year: 1621
Slide rule
The slide rule, a precursor to
the electronic calculator, was
invented. Used primarily to
perform multiplication,
division, square roots, and
the calculation of logarithms,
William Oughtred
its wide-spread use continued
until 1970s.
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Year: 1642
Pascaline Arithmetic Machine
Blaise Pascal invented the
first mechanical calculator,
called the Pascaline
Arithmetric Method. It had
the capacity for eight digits
and could add and abstract.

Blaise Pascal
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Year: 1804
Jacquard Loom
French silk weaver Joseph-Marie
Jacquard built a loom that read holes
punched on a series of small sheets
of hardwood to control the weave of
the pattern. This automated machine
introduced the use of punch cards
and showed that they could be used
to convey a series of instructions.
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Year: 1937
Atanasoff-Berry Computer
Dr. John V. Atanasoff and
Clifford Berry designed and
built ABC (for Atanasoff-
Berry Computer), the world
first electronic computer.
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Year: 1944
Mark I
The Mark I, considered to be the first
digital computer, was introduced by
IBM. It was developed in cooperation in
Harvard University, was more than 50
feet long, weighed almost 5 tons, and
used electromechanical relays to solve
addition problems in less than a Howard H. Aiken
second; multiplication and division
took about 6 and 12 seconds,
respectively.
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Year: 1947
Transistor
John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and
William Shockley invented the
transistor, which had the same
capabilities as a vacuum tube but
was faster, broke less often, used
less power and created less heat.
They won a Nobel prize for their
invention in 1956 and computers
began to be built with transistors
shortly afterwards.
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Year: 1951
UNIVAC
The UNIVAC 1, the first computer to be
mass produced for general use, was
introduced by Remington Rand. In 1952,
it was used to analyze votes in the U. S. John Mauchly
presidential election and correctly
predicted that Dwight D. Eisenhower
would be the victory only 45 minutes
after the polls closed, though the results
were not aired immediately because they
weren’t trusted. J. Presper Eckert
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