HISTORY OF

COMPUTERS
Famed mathematician Charles Babbage
designed a Victorian-era computer called the
Analytical Engine. This is a portion of the mill
with a printing mechanism. (Image credit:
Science Museum | Science & Society Picture
Library)
The computer was born not for entertainment or email but out
of a need to solve a serious number-crunching crisis. By 1880,
the U.S. population had grown so large that it took more than
seven years to tabulate the U.S. Census results. The government
sought a faster way to get the job done, giving rise to punch-
card based computers that took up entire rooms.

Today, we carry more computing power on our smartphones

than was available in these early models. The following brief
history of computing is a timeline of how computers evolved
from their humble beginnings to the machines of today that surf
the Internet, play games and stream multimedia in addition to
crunching numbers.
1801: In France, Joseph Marie Jacquard invents a loom that uses
punched wooden cards to automatically weave fabric designs.
Early computers would use similar punch cards.

1822: English mathematician Charles Babbage conceives of a

steam-driven calculating machine that would be able to
compute tables of numbers. The project, funded by the English
government, is a failure. More than a century later, however,
the world's first computer was actually built.

1890: Herman Hollerith designs a punch card system to calculate

the 1880 census, accomplishing the task in just three years and
saving the government $5 million. He establishes a company
that would ultimately become IBM.

1936: Alan Turing presents the notion of a universal machine,

later called the Turing machine, capable of computing anything
that is computable. The central concept of the modern
computer was based on his ideas.

1937: J.V. Atanasoff, a professor of physics and mathematics at

Iowa State University, attempts to build the first computer
without gears, cams, belts or shafts.

1939: Hewlett-Packard is founded by David Packard and Bill

Hewlett in a Palo Alto, California, garage, according to the 
Computer History Museum
1941: Atanasoff and his graduate student, Clifford Berry,
design a computer that can solve 29 equations
simultaneously. This marks the first time a computer is able to
store information on its main memory.

1943-1944: Two University of Pennsylvania professors, John

Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, build the Electronic Numerical
Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC). Considered the grandfather
of digital computers, it fills a 20-foot by 40-foot room and has
18,000 vacuum tubes.

1946: Mauchly and Presper leave the University of

Pennsylvania and receive funding from the Census Bureau to
build the UNIVAC, the first commercial computer for business
and government applications.

1947: William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain of

Bell Laboratories invent the transistor. They discovered how to
make an electric switch with solid materials and no need for a
vacuum. 

1953: Grace Hopper develops the first computer language, which

eventually becomes known as COBOL. Thomas Johnson
Watson Jr., son of IBM CEO Thomas Johnson Watson Sr.,
conceives the IBM 701 EDPM to help the United Nations keep
tabs on Korea during the war.
1954: The FORTRAN programming language, an acronym for FORmula
TRANslation, is developed by a team of programmers at IBM led by
John Backus, according to the University of Michigan.

1958: Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce unveil the integrated circuit, known
as the computer chip. Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in
2000 for his work.

1964: Douglas Engelbart shows a prototype of the modern computer,

with a mouse and a graphical user interface (GUI). This marks the
evolution of the computer from a specialized machine for scientists
and mathematicians to technology that is more accessible to the
general public.

1969: A group of developers at Bell Labs produce UNIX, an operating

system that addressed compatibility issues. Written in the C
programming language, UNIX was portable across multiple platforms
and became the operating system of choice among mainframes at
large companies and government entities. Due to the slow nature of
the system, it never quite gained traction among home PC users.

1970: The newly formed Intel unveils the Intel 1103, the first Dynamic
Access Memory (DRAM) chip.

1971: Alan Shugart leads a team of IBM engineers who invent the
"floppy disk," allowing data to be shared among computers.
1973: Robert Metcalfe, a member of the research staff
for Xerox, develops Ethernet for connecting multiple
computers and other hardware.

1974-1977: A number of personal computers hit the

market, including Scelbi & Mark-8 Altair, IBM 5100,
Radio Shack's TRS-80 — affectionately known as the
"Trash 80" — and the Commodore PET.

1975: The January issue of Popular Electronics magazine

features the Altair 8080, described as the "world's first
minicomputer kit to rival commercial models." Two
"computer geeks," Paul Allen and Bill Gates, offer to
write software for the Altair, using the new BASIC
language. On April 4, after the success of this first
endeavor, the two childhood friends form their own
software company, Microsoft. 

1976: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak start Apple

Computers on April Fool's Day and roll out the Apple I,
the first computer with a single-circuit board, according
to Stanford University. 
1977: Radio Shack's initial production run of the TRS-80
was just 3,000. It sold like crazy. For the first time, non-
geeks could write programs and make a computer do
what they wished.

1977: Jobs and Wozniak incorporate Apple and show

the Apple II at the first West Coast Computer Faire. It
offers color graphics and incorporates an audio
cassette drive for storage.

1978: Accountants rejoice at the introduction of VisiCalc,

the first computerized spreadsheet program.
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1979: Word processing becomes a reality as MicroPro

International releases WordStar. "The defining change
was to add margins and word wrap," said 
creator Rob Barnaby in email to Mike Petrie in 2000.
"Additional changes included getting rid of command
mode and adding a print function. I was the technical
brains — I figured out how to do it, and did it, and
documented it.
1981: The first IBM personal computer, code-named
"Acorn," is introduced. It uses Microsoft's MS-DOS
operating system. It has an Intel chip, two floppy disks
and an optional color monitor. Sears & Roebuck and
Computerland sell the machines, marking the first time
a computer is available through outside distributors. It
also popularizes the term PC.

1983: Apple's Lisa is the first personal computer with a

GUI. It also features a drop-down menu and icons. It
flops but eventually evolves into the Macintosh. The
Gavilan SC is the first portable computer with the
familiar flip form factor and the first to be marketed as
a "laptop."

1985: Microsoft announces Windows, according to 

Encyclopedia Britannica. This was the company's
response to Apple's GUI. Commodore unveils the
Amiga 1000, which features advanced audio and video
capabilities.
1986: Compaq brings the Deskpro 386 to market. Its 32-bit
architecture provides as speed comparable to mainframes.

1990: Tim Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN, the high-energy

physics laboratory in Geneva, develops HyperText Markup
Language (HTML), giving rise to the World Wide Web.
1993: The Pentium microprocessor advances the use of
graphics and music on PCs.

1994: PCs become gaming machines as "Command &

Conquer," "Alone in the Dark 2," "Theme Park," "Magic
Carpet," "Descent" and "Little Big Adventure" are among the
games to hit the market.
1996: Sergey Brin and Larry Page develop the Google search
engine at Stanford University.
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1997: Microsoft invests $150 million in Apple, which was

struggling at the time, ending Apple's court case against
Microsoft in which it alleged that Microsoft copied the "look
and feel" of its operating system.

1999: The term Wi-Fi becomes part of the computing language

and users begin connecting to the Internet without wires.
2001: Apple unveils the Mac OS X operating system, which
provides protected memory architecture and pre-emptive
multi-tasking, among other benefits. Not to be outdone,
Microsoft rolls out Windows XP, which has a significantly
redesigned GUI.
2003: The first 64-bit processor, AMD's Athlon 64, becomes
available to the consumer market.
2004: Mozilla's Firefox 1.0 challenges Microsoft's Internet
Explorer, the dominant Web browser. Facebook, a social
networking site, launches.
2005: YouTube, a video sharing service, is founded. Google
acquires Android, a Linux-based mobile phone operating
system.
2006: Apple introduces the MacBook Pro, its first Intel-based,
dual-core mobile computer, as well as an Intel-based iMac.
Nintendo's Wii game console hits the market.
2007: The iPhone brings many computer functions to the
smartphone.
2009: Microsoft launches Windows 7, which offers the ability to
pin applications to the taskbar and advances in touch and
handwriting recognition, among other features.
2010: Apple unveils the iPad, changing the way consumers
view media and jumpstarting the dormant tablet computer
segment.
2011: Google releases the Chromebook, a laptop that runs the
Google Chrome OS.
2012: Facebook gains 1 billion users on October 4.
2015: Apple releases the Apple Watch. Microsoft releases
Windows 10.
2016: The first reprogrammable quantum computer was created.
"Until now, there hasn't been any quantum-computing
platform that had the capability to program new algorithms
into their system. They're usually each tailored to attack a
particular algorithm," said study lead author Shantanu
Debnath, a quantum physicist and optical engineer at the
University of Maryland, College Park.
2017: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) is developing a new "Molecular Informatics" program
that uses molecules as computers. "Chemistry offers a rich set
of properties that we may be able to harness for rapid,
scalable information storage and processing," Anne Fischer,
program manager in DARPA's Defense Sciences Office, said in
a statement. "Millions of molecules exist, and each molecule
has a unique three-dimensional atomic structure as well as
variables such as shape, size, or even color. This richness
provides a vast design space for exploring novel and multi-
value ways to encode and process data beyond the 0s and 1s
of current logic-based, digital architectures." [
Computers of the Future May Be Minuscule Molecular Machines