The Computer and its History

The Computer
a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. a programmable electronic device that can store, retrieve, and process data. a machine that performs computations according to instructions.

History of Computer
2400 BCE The abacus, (an early aid for mathematical computations) was the first known calculator, that was invented in Babylonia. 500 BCE P nini introduced the forerunner to modern formal language theory.

300 BCE Pingala founded the binary number system. 87 BCE Antikythera mechanism (an ancient mechanical computer designed to calculate astronomical positions) was built in Rhodes to track movement of the stars. 60 AD Heron of Alexandria invented machines which follow a series of instructions.

724 AD Liang Ling-Can (a Chinese Engineer) invented the first fully mechanical clock. 1492 Leonardo da Vincis drawings depict inventions such as flying machines, including a helicopter, the first mechanical calculator and one of the first programmable robots.

1614 John Napier invented a system of moveable rods (Napier's Rods) based on logarithms which was able to multiply, divide and calculate square and cube roots. 1622 William Oughtred developed slide rules. 1623 Wilhelm Schickard invented the calculating clock.

1642 Blaise Pascal invented the Pascaline, a mechanical adding machine. 1671 Gottfried Leibniz built a four-function (add, subtract, multiply, and divide) calculator that he called the Stepped Reckoner. He is one of the founding Fathers of Calculus. 1801 Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented an automatic loom controlled by punched cards.

1820 Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar invented Arithmometer, the first mass-produced calculator . 1822 Charles Babbage designs his first mechanical computer. 1834 Charles Babbage invented the Analytical (Difference) Engine.

1835 Samuel Morse invented the Morse code. 1848 George Boole invented the Boolean algebra 1853 Per Georg Scheutz and his son Edvard invented the Tabulating Machine. 1869 William Stanley Jevons designs a practical logic machine.

1878 Ramon Verea invented a fast calculator with an internal multiplication table. 1880 Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone called the Photo phone. 1884 The Comptometer is an invention of Dorr E. Felt which is operated by pressing keys.

1890 Herman Hollerith invented a counting machine which increment mechanical counters 1895 Guglielmo Marconi invented Radio signals. 1896 Herman Hollerith formed the Tabulating Machine Company which later becomes IBM (International Business Machines).

1898 Nikola Tesla invented the Remote control. 1906 Lee De Forest invented the electronic tube. 1911 IBM is formed on June 15, 1911. 1923 Philo Farnsworth invented the Television Electronic.

1924 John Logie invented the Electro Mechanical television system. Walther Bothe developed the logic gate. 1930 Vannevar Bush developed a partly electronic Difference Engine. 1931 Kurt Friedrich Gdel published a paper on the use of a universal formal language.

1937 Alan Turing developed the concept of a theoretical computing machine. 1938 Konrad Zuse created the Z1 Computer a binary digital computer using punch tape. 1939 George Stibitz developed the Complex Number Calculator - a foundation for digital computers.

William Hewlett and David Packard started Hewlett Packard. John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry developed the ABC (Atanasoft-Berry Computer) prototype. 1943 Adolf Hitler used the Enigma encryption machine. Alan Turing developed the code-breaking machine Colossus.

1944 Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper designed the MARK series of computers at Harvard University. 1945 John Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly develop the ENIAC ( Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). The term computer bug as computer bug was first used by Grace Hopper.

1946 Frederic Calland Williams developed his cathode-ray tube (CRT) storing device the forerunner to random-access memory (RAM). 1947 Donald Watts Davies joined Alan Turing to build the fastest digital computer in England at the time, the Pilot ACE. William Shockley invented the transistor at Bell Labs. Douglas Engelbart theorized on interactive computing with keyboard and screen display instead of on punch cards.

1948 Andrew Donald Booth invented magnetic drum memory. Frederic Calland Williams and Tom Kilburn developed the SSEM Small Scale Experimental Machine digital CRT storage which was soon nicknamed the Baby. 1949 Claude Shannon built the first machine that plays chess. Howard Aiken developed the HarvardMARK III.

1950 Hideo Yamachito created the first Electronic Computer in Japan. Alan Turing published his paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence which helps create the Turing Test. 1951 Raymond Thompson and John Simmons developed the first computer business, the Lyons Electronic Office (LEO) at Lyons Co. UNIVAC I (UNIVersal Automatic Computer I) was introduced - the first commercial computer made in the United States and designed principally by John Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly.

The EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) begun performing basic tasks. Unlike the ENIAC, it was binary rather than decimal. 1953 The IBM 701 became available and a total of 19 are sold to the scientific community. 1954 John Backus and IBM developed the FORTRAN Computer Programming Language

1955 Bell Labs introduced its first transistor computer . 1956 Basil Hirschowitz, Wilbur Peters, and Lawrence E. Curtiss invented the Optical fiber. 1957 Sputnik I and Sputnik II are launched by the Russians.

1958 ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) and NASA is formed. The first integrated circuit, or silicon chip, is produced by the US Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce. 1959 Paul Baran theorized on the survivability of communication systems under nuclear attack, digital technology and symbiosis between humans and machines.

1960 The COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) programming language is invented. 1961 Motors puts the first industrial robot, Unimate, to work in a New Jersey factory. 1962 The first computer game, Spacewar Computer Game was invented by Steve Russell and MIT.

1963 Douglas Engelbart invented and patented the first computer mouse (nicknamed the mouse because the tail came out the end). The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is developed to standardize data exchange among computers. 1964 IBM introduced the first word processor. John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz developed the Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Language (BASIC).

1965 Andries van Dam and Ted Nelson coined the term hypertext. 1967 IBM created the first floppy disk. 1969 Seymour Cray developed the CDC 7600 (the first supercomputer). Gary Starkweather invented the laser printer whilst working with Xerox.

The U.S. Department of Defense sets up the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET ) this network was the first building blocks to what the internet is today but originally with the intention of creating a computer network that could withstand any type of disaster. 1970 Intel introduced the world's first available dynamic RAM ( random-access memory) chip and the first microprocessor, the Intel 4004.

1971 E-mail was invented by Ray Tomlinson. Liquid Crystal Display ( LCD ) was invented by James Fergason. Pocket calculator was invented by Sharp Corporation. Floppy Disk was invented by David Noble with IBM - Nicknamed the "Floppy" for its flexibility. 1972 Atari released Pong, the first commercial video game. The compact disc (CD) is invented in US.

1973 Robert Metcalfe created the Ethernet, a local-area network (LAN) protocol The minicomputer Xerox Alto (1973) was a landmark step in the development of personal computers. Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn developed gateway routing computers to negotiate between the various national networks. 1974 IBM developed SEQUEL (Structured English Query Language ) now known as SQL.

Charles Simonyi coined the term WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) to describe the ability of being able to display a file or document exactly how it is going to be printed or viewed. 1975 Altair produced the first portable computer. The Microsoft Corporation was founded on April 4, 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800.

1976 Apple Computers was founded by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. 1977 Apple Computers Apple II, the first personal computer with color graphics, is demonstrated. Ward Christensen wrote the programme MODEM allowing two microcomputers to exchange files with each other over a phone line.

1978 The first magnetic tape is developed in the US. 1979 Over half a million computers are in use in the United States . 1980 IBM hired Paul Allen and Bill Gates to create an operating system for a new PC. They buy the rights to a simple operating system manufactured by Seattle Computer Products and use it as a template to develop DOS.

1981 MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) Computer Operating System increased its success. 1982 WordPerfect Corporation introduced WordPerfect 1.0 a word processing program. The Commodore 64 became the bestselling computer of all time. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is introduced.

1983 More than 10 million computers are in use in the United States. Manny Fernandez promoted his machines as the first laptop computers in May 1983. Domain Name System (DNS) pioneered by Jon Postel, Paul Mockapetris and Craig Partridge. Seven top-level domain names are initially introduced: edu, com, gov, mil, net, org and int. Microsoft Windows introduced eliminating the need for a user to have to type each command, like MS-DOS, by using a mouse to navigate through drop-down menus, tabs and icons.

1984 Apple introduced the Macintosh with mouse and window interface. William Gibson coined the word cyberspace when he published Neuromancer. 1985 Paul Brainard introduced PageMaker for the Macintosh creating the desktop publishing field. The Nintendo Entertainment System made its debut.

1986 More than 30 million computers are in use in the United States. 1987 Microsoft introduced Microsoft Work. Larry Wall introduced Perl 1.0. 1988 Over 45 million PCs are in use in the United States.

1990 Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau proposed a 'hypertext' system starting the modern Internet. Microsoft and IBM stopped working together to develop operating systems. 1991 The World Wide Web is launched to the public on August 6, 1991. 1993 At the beginning of the year only 50 World Wide Web servers are known to exist.

1994 The World Wide Web Consortium is founded by Tim Berners-Lee to help with the development of common protocols for the evolution of the World Wide Web. YAHOO is created on April, 1994. 1995 Java is introduced. Amazon.com is founded by Jeff Bezos. EBay is founded by Pierre Omidyar. Hotmail is started by Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia.

1996 WebTV is introduced. 1997 AltaVista introduced its free online translator Babel Fish. Microsoft acquired Hotmail. 1998 Google is founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page on September 7, 1998. PayPal is founded by Peter Thiel and Max Levchin.

2001 Bill Gates introduces the Xbox on January 7, 2001. 2002 Approximately 1 billion PCs been sold. PayPal is acquired by eBay. 2005 Google Maps is on launched February 8, 2005. YouTube is founded and became online on February 15, 2005.

On September 12, 2005 eBay acquired Skype. 2006 The blu-ray disc is first announced and introduced on January 4, 2006. Toshiba released the first HD DVD player in a computer with the introduction of the Toshiba Qosmio 35 on May 16, 2006. Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 is introduced October 18, 2006. Skype announced that it has over 100 million registered users. Nintendo released the Wii on November 19, 2006.

Twttr, now known as Twitter is officially launched July 15, 2006. 2007 Apple introduced the iPhone to the public at the January 9, 2007. Intel released the Core2 Duo Processor E4300 (2M Cache, 1.80 GHz, 800 MHz FSB) January 21, 2007. 2008 Microsoft released the WorldWide Telescope (WWT) program February 27, 2008.

2009 Microsoft launched the Bing search engine June 3, 2009. 2010 Apple introduced the iPad on January 27, 2010. Apple introduced the iPhone 4 on June 24, 2010. 2011 Watson, an IBM Super computer beat the two best human Jeopardy players in a three day event with a score greater than the two human players combined on February 16, 2011.