THE EVOLUTION OF COMPUTER- A LOOK BACK


 Today’s technology environment, we’re discussing the benefits of cloud computing, virtualization and the need for IT efficiency. How quickly we have come to where we are now and it’s easy to take the power of the standard computer for granted.
A look back at the computer’s development, however, restores a sense of wonder for the remarkable men and women who blazed a trail from the Industrial Revolution to the Information Age.
Here’s a look back at some of the key developments from decades past.


Image courtesy of Computer History Museum

1940 – The Complex Number Calculator (United States)
In 1937, Bell Lab’s George Stibitz created a relay-based calculator, the Model K (named after the kitchen table on which he built it). Stibitz then led a team that produced the Complex Number Calculator (CNC), capable of performing calculations on complex numbers. In 1940, he appeared at an American Mathematical Society conference at Dartmouth College and performed calculations remotely on the CNC in New York City – the first demonstration of remote access computing.


Image courtesy of Computer History Museum

1941 – The Z3 (Germany)
Unaware of developments in the rest of the world, Konrad Zuse developed the Z3, the first fully automatic, programmable computing device. Using 2300 relays and a 22-bit word length, it’s considered one of the world’s first computers. The original Z3 was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid on Berlin in 1943. Zune supervised construction of a replica in the 1960s, which is on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

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1941 – The Bombe (Great Britain)
The first Bombe is completed, enabling Allied forces to decrypt Nazi communications in World War II. It was named after and inspired by the Polish “Bomba,” which exploited soft spots in the German encryption process. To counter worries that the Germans might address these deficiencies, British computer pioneer Alan Turing designed the Bombe using a technique known as cribbing. Cribbing assumes that a message will contain some text that analysts will be able to guess at. With important contributions from other scientists, the Bombes were crucial to the Allied intelligence gathering processes. In 2009, a successful, 13-year effort to rebuild a working Bombe was rewarded with an Engineering Heritage Award.

Image courtesy of Computer History Museum
1943 – Project Whirlwind (United States)
The Whirlwind computer began in 1943 at MIT as a flight simulator for the US Navy’s bombing crew training. The developers rejected the analog computer prototype because of its inaccuracies, but moved to a digital computer after seeing a demonstration of the ENIAC. While the Navy was no longer interested in the project by the time it finished in 1951, the Air Force was. It led to the Navy’s Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) system. Whirlwind’s technology led indirectly to business computers and minicomputers in the 1960s. It also led to the founding of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) by Ken Olsen, who rescued the original Whirlwind from the scrap heap.

Image courtesy of Computer History Museum
1946 – Electronic Numeric Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) (United States)
Originally funded by the US Army during World War II, ENIAC was originally designed to calculate artillery-firing positions for the US Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory. Instead, it was first used by designers John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert in calculations for the hydrogen bomb program. The ENIAC was 1,000 times faster than contemporary machines — a leap in computing power that has never been duplicated. Upon its public unveiling in 1946, it was dubbed the “Giant Brain.” Today it’s considered the first general-purpose computer.

Image courtesy of Computer History Museum
1948 – Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (United States)
IBM’s SSEC was the first operating computer to use both electronic computation and stored instructions — and was the first computer to run stored programs (although it wasn’t fully electronic). Measuring 25 feet by 40 feet, the SSEC was capable of 50 multiplications per minute. In 1948 it was located on the ground floor of IBM’s main office building in New York City, in full view of the public. It remained there until 1952, when it was taken apart and replaced by an IBM 701 computer. NASA used moon-position tables based on those generated by the SSEC for the Apollo 11 moon landing mission.

Image courtesy of Computer History Museum
1951 – Lyons Electronic Office (Great Britain)
The LEO was the first computer used for commercial business applications, as well as Great Britain’s first commercial computer. It was created by the Lyons Tea Co. in 1951 to address clerical problems with scheduling the daily production and delivery of cakes to Lyons tea shops. In 1956, Lyons began using the LEO to calculate payroll for Ford UK and other companies — one of the first instances of outsourcing. Lyons eventually began building data processing computers, later joining the English Electric Company (EELM) and then International Computers Limited (ICL).

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1958 – Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (United States)
The SAGE was developed by NORAD to track and intercept enemy aircraft from the 1950s to the 1980s. It was the first large-scale computer network communications network, and is still considered one of the most advanced such systems ever developed. It led to innovations in real-time computing, interactive computing, and online systems. Working as a contractor on SAGE, IBM developed the AN/FSQ-7 computer, which was a key factor in its rise in the computer industry.

Image courtesy of Computer History Museum
1971 – Kenbak-1 (United States)
The Kenbak-1 is considered to be the first personal computer (although the Datapoint 2200 may have been invented or sold first, precise dates don’t exist). Invented by John Blankenbaker of the Kenbak Corp., it used off-the-shelf components, had a 256-byte memory, and sold for $750. To program it, users entered pure machine code with switches and buttons and received output through a series of lights. The company folded in 1973 after selling 40 units.

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1974 – XEROX Alto (United States)
Designed at the XEROX Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), the Alto featured a number of firsts. It was the first computer to use the metaphor of a desktop, the first computer to use a GUI, and the first to use a mouse. It featured an email tool (the Laurel), the first WYSIWIG tools (Bravo and Gypsy), and an early paint program (Markup), among other innovations. While it was never sold commercially, XEROX donated a number of them to universities, and numerous features were incorporated into PCs and workstations. It was also a major influence on the Macintosh.

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1981 – Osborne 1 – The First Laptop Computer
Osborne 1 is usually considered to be the first true portable computer. Adam Osborne, an ex-book publisher founded Osborne Computer and produced the Osborne 1 in 1981.  It weighed 24 pounds and cost $1795. The Osborne 1 came with a five-inch screen, modem port, two 5 1/4 floppy drives, a large collection of bundled software programs, and a battery pack. Unfortunately, the short-lived computer was never successful, giving way to developments from Epson, IBM and Radio Shack over the next few years.

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1984 – Macintosh (United States)
Based on Apple’s commercially unsuccessful Lisa (the first personal computer with a GUI), the Macintosh was the first successful computer to use a mouse and a GUI rather than a command-line interface. Introduced by one of the most famous ads in television history (which only aired once – during Super Bowl XVIII), the original Mac sold for $2,500 (as opposed to Lisa’s $1,0000 price tag). The Macintosh 128k’s look and feel were heavily influenced by XEROX PARC’s groundbreaking GUI technology. It featured two applications: MacPaint and MacWrite, which used WYSIWIG word processing. While Steve Jobs led the Macintosh project, he resigned from Apple in 1985 after losing a power struggle with CEO John Sculley.

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1988 – NeXT (United States)
After leaving Apple, Jobs founded NeXT. Introduced in 1988, its first computer was a commercial failure but was hailed for its innovative and influential NeXTSTEP object-oriented OS and development environment. It was also the first personal computer to include a drive for an optical storage disk and voice recognition technology. NeXT released NeXTSTEP as the OpenStep programming environment, developing OPENSTEP as its own Openstep implementation. It also developed WebObjects, one of the first enterprise web application frameworks. Apple bought NeXT in December 1996, using OPENSTEP as the basis for much of the current Mac OS X system.

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1991 – Macintosh PowerBook
In 1991, Apple introduced the original PowerBook, which came in three models: PowerBook 100, PowerBook 140, and PowerBook 170.  The PowerBook used an internal SCSI harddrive and was able to read and write standard MS-DOS 1.44MB floppy disks.  As the first really useful portable Macintosh computers, the PowerBooks were a great success, selling over 100,000 in the first three months alone, and sales in excess of $1 billion in the first year.  In February 2005, Mobile PC magazine named the PowerBook 100 its choice as the “#1 gadget of all time.”

 

  MOREOVER

 

Computers truly came into their own as great inventions in the last two decades of the 20th century. But their history stretches back more than 2500 years to the abacus: a simple calculator made from beads and wires, which is still used in some parts of the world today. The difference between an ancient abacus and a modern computer seems vast, but the principle—making repeated calculations more quickly than the human brain—is exactly the same.

Read on to learn more about the history of computers—or take a look at our article on how computers work.
Photo: One of the world's most powerful computers: NASA's Pleiades ICE supercomputer consists of 112,896 processor cores made from 185 racks of Silicon Graphics (SGI) workstations. Photo by Dominic Hart courtesy of NASA Ames Research Center.

Cogs and Calculators

It is a measure of the brilliance of the abacus, invented in the Middle East circa 500 BC, that it remained the fastest form of calculator until the middle of the 17th century. Then, in 1642, aged only 18, French scientist and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623–1666) invented the first practical mechanical calculator, the Pascaline, to help his tax-collector father do his sums. The machine had a series of interlocking cogs (gear wheels with teeth around their outer edges) that could add and subtract decimal numbers. Several decades later, in 1671, German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) came up with a similar but more advanced machine. Instead of using cogs, it had a "stepped drum" (a cylinder with teeth of increasing length around its edge), an innovation that survived in mechanical calculators for 300 hundred years. The Leibniz machine could do much more than Pascal's: as well as adding and subtracting, it could multiply, divide, and work out square roots. Another pioneering feature was the first memory store or "register."
Apart from developing one of the world's earliest mechanical calculators, Leibniz is remembered for another important contribution to computing: he was the man who invented binary code, a way of representing any decimal number using only the two digits zero and one. Although Leibniz made no use of binary in his own calculator, it set others thinking. In 1854, a little over a century after Leibniz had died, Englishman George Boole (1815–1864) used the idea to invent a new branch of mathematics called Boolean algebra. In modern computers, binary code and Boolean algebra allow computers to make simple decisions by comparing long strings of zeros and ones. But, in the 19th century, these ideas were still far ahead of their time. It would take another 50–100 years for mathematicians and computer scientists to figure out how to use them (find out more in our articles about calculators and logic gates).

Engines of Calculation

Neither the abacus, nor the mechanical calculators constructed by Pascal and Leibniz really qualified as computers. A calculator is a device that makes it quicker and easier for people to do sums—but it needs a human operator. A computer, on the other hand, is a machine that can operate automatically, without any human help, by following a series of stored instructions called a program (a kind of mathematical recipe). Calculators evolved into computers when people devised ways of making entirely automatic, programmable calculators.
The first person to attempt this was a rather obsessive, notoriously grumpy English mathematician named Charles Babbage (1791–1871). Many regard Babbage as the "father of the computer" because his machines had an input (a way of feeding in numbers), a memory (something to store these numbers while complex calculations were taking place), a processor (the number-cruncher that carried out the calculations), and an output (a printing mechanism)—the same basic components shared by all modern computers. During his lifetime, Babbage never completed a single one of the hugely ambitious machines that he tried to build. That was no surprise. Each of his programmable "engines" was designed to use tens of thousands of precision-made gears. It was like a pocket watch scaled up to the size of a steam engine, a Pascal or Leibniz machine magnified a thousand-fold in dimensions, ambition, and complexity. For a time, the British government financed Babbage—to the tune of £17,000, then an enormous sum. But when Babbage pressed the government for more money to build an even more advanced machine, they lost patience and pulled out. Babbage was more fortunate in receiving help from Augusta Ada Byron (1815–1852), Countess of Lovelace, daughter of the poet Lord Byron. An enthusiastic mathematician, she helped to refine Babbage's ideas for making his machine programmable—and this is why she is still, sometimes, referred to as the world's first computer programmer. Little of Babbage's work survived after his death. But when, by chance, his notebooks were rediscovered in the 1930s, computer scientists finally appreciated the brilliance of his ideas. Unfortunately, by then, most of these ideas had already been reinvented by others.
Babbage had intended that his machine would take the drudgery out of repetitive calculations. Originally, he imagined it would be used by the army to compile the tables that helped their gunners to fire cannons more accurately. Toward the end of the 19th century, other inventors were more successful in their effort to construct "engines" of calculation. American statistician Herman Hollerith (1860–1929) built one of the world's first practical calculating machines, which he called a tabulator, to help compile census data. Then, as now, a census was taken each decade but, by the 1880s, the population of the United States had grown so much through immigration that a full-scale analysis of the data by hand was taking seven and a half years. The statisticians soon figured out that, if trends continued, they would run out of time to compile one census before the next one fell due. Fortunately, Hollerith's tabulator was an amazing success: it tallied the entire census in only six weeks and completed the full analysis in just two and a half years. Soon afterward, Hollerith realized his machine had other applications, so he set up the Tabulating Machine Company in 1896 to manufacture it commercially. A few years later, it changed its name to the Computing-Tabulating-Recording (C-T-R) company and then, in 1924, acquired its present name: International Business Machines (IBM).
Photo: Punched cards: Herman Hollerith perfected the way of using punched cards and paper tape to store information and feed it into a machine. Here's a drawing from his 1889 patent Art of Compiling Statistics (US Patent#395,782), showing how a strip of paper (yellow) is punched with different patterns of holes (orange) that correspond to statistics gathered about people in the US census. Picture courtesy of US Patent and Trademark Office.

Bush and the bomb

The history of computing remembers colorful characters like Babbage, but others who played important—if supporting—roles are less well known. At the time when C-T-R was becoming IBM, the world's most powerful calculators were being developed by US government scientist Vannevar Bush (1890–1974). In 1925, Bush made the first of a series of unwieldy contraptions with equally cumbersome names: the New Recording Product Integraph Multiplier. Later, he built a machine called the Differential Analyzer, which used gears, belts, levers, and shafts to represent numbers and carry out calculations in a very physical way, like a gigantic mechanical slide rule. Bush's ultimate calculator was an improved machine named the Rockefeller Differential Analyzer, assembled in 1935 from 320 km (200 miles) of wire and 150 electric motors. Machines like these were known as analog calculators—analog because they stored numbers in a physical form (as so many turns on a wheel or twists of a belt) rather than as digits. Although they could carry out incredibly complex calculations, it took several days of wheel cranking and belt turning before the results finally emerged.

Photo: A Differential Analyzer. The black part in the background is the main part of the machine. The operator sits at a smaller console in the foreground. Picture courtesy of Great Images in NASA. See a larger photo.
Impressive machines like the Differential Analyzer were only one of several outstanding contributions Bush made to 20th-century technology. Another came as the teacher of Claude Shannon (1916–2001), a brilliant mathematician who figured out how electrical circuits could be linked together to process binary code with Boolean algebra (a way of comparing binary numbers using logic) and thus make simple decisions. During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Bush chairman first of the US National Defense Research Committee and then director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). In this capacity, he was in charge of the Manhattan Project, the secret $2-billion initiative that led to the creation of the atomic bomb. One of Bush's final wartime contributions was to sketch out, in 1945, an idea for a memory-storing and sharing device called Memex that would later inspire Tim Berners-Lee to invent the World Wide Web. Few outside the world of computing remember Vannevar Bush today—but what a legacy! As a father of the digital computer, an overseer of the atom bomb, and an inspiration for the Web, Bush played a pivotal role in three of the 20th-century's most far-reaching technologies.

Turing—tested

Many of the pioneers of computing were hands-on experimenters—but by no means all of them. One of the key figures in the history of 20th-century computing, Alan Turing (1912–1954) was a brilliant Cambridge mathematician whose major contributions were to the theory of how computers processed information. In 1936, at the age of just 23, Turing wrote a groundbreaking mathematical paper called "On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem," in which he described a theoretical computer now known as a Turing machine (a simple information processor that works through a series of instructions, reading data, writing results, and then moving on to the next instruction). Turing's ideas were hugely influential in the years that followed and many people regard him as the father of modern computing—the 20th-century's equivalent of Babbage.
Although essentially a theoretician, Turing did get involved with real, practical machinery, unlike many mathematicians of his time. During World War II, he played a pivotal role in the development of code-breaking machinery that, itself, played a key part in Britain's wartime victory; later, he played a lesser role in the creation of several large-scale experimental computers including ACE (Automatic Computing Engine), Colossus, and the Manchester/Ferranti Mark I (described below). Today, Alan Turing is best known for conceiving what's become known as the Turing test, a simple way to find out whether a computer can be considered intelligent by seeing whether it can sustain a plausible conversation with a real human being.

The first modern computers

The World War II years were a crucial period in the history of computing, when powerful gargantuan computers began to appear. Just before the outbreak of the war, in 1938, German engineer Konrad Zuse (1910–1995) constructed his Z1, the world's first programmable binary computer, in his parents' living room. The following year, American physicist John Atanasoff (1903–1995) and his assistant, electrical engineer Clifford Berry (1918–1963), built a more elaborate binary machine that they named the Atanasoff Berry Computer (ABC). It was a great advance—1000 times more accurate than Bush's Differential Analyzer. These were the first machines that used electrical switches to store numbers: when a switch was "off", it stored the number zero; flipped over to its other, "on", position, it stored the number one. Hundreds or thousands of switches could thus store a great many binary digits (although binary is much less efficient in this respect than decimal, since it takes up to eight binary digits to store a three-digit decimal number). These machines were digital computers: unlike analog machines, which stored numbers using the positions of wheels and rods, they stored numbers as digits.
The first large-scale digital computer of this kind appeared in 1944 at Harvard University, built by mathematician Howard Aiken (1900–1973). Sponsored by IBM, it was variously known as the Harvard Mark I or the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC). A giant of a machine, stretching 15m (50ft) in length, it was like a huge mechanical calculator built into a wall. It must have sounded impressive, because it stored and processed numbers using "clickety-clack" electromagnetic relays (electrically operated magnets that automatically switched lines in telephone exchanges)—no fewer than 3304 of them. Impressive they may have been, but relays suffered from several problems: they were large (that's why the Harvard Mark I had to be so big); they needed quite hefty pulses of power to make them switch; and they were slow (it took time for a relay to flip from "off" to "on" or from 0 to 1).

Photo: An analog computer being used in military research in 1949. Picture courtesy of Great Images in NASA. See a larger photo.
Most of the machines developed around this time were intended for military purposes. Like Babbage's never-built mechanical engines, they were designed to calculate artillery firing tables and chew through the other complex chores that were then the lot of military mathematicians. During World War II, the military co-opted thousands of the best scientific minds: recognizing that science would win the war, Vannevar Bush's Office of Scientific Research and Development employed 10,000 scientists from the United States alone. Things were very different in Germany. When Konrad Zuse offered to build his Z2 computer to help the army, they couldn't see the need—and turned him down.
On the Allied side, great minds began to make great breakthroughs. In 1943, a team of mathematicians based at Bletchley Park near London, England (including Alan Turing) built a computer called Colossus to help them crack secret German codes. Colossus was the first fully electronic computer. Instead of relays, it used a better form of switch known as a vacuum tube (also known, especially in Britain, as a valve). The vacuum tube, each one about as big as a person's thumb and glowing red hot like a tiny electric light bulb, had been invented in 1906 by Lee de Forest (1873–1961), who named it the Audion. This breakthrough earned de Forest his nickname as "the father of radio" because their first major use was in radio receivers, where they amplified weak incoming signals so people could hear them more clearly. In computers such as the ABC and Colossus, vacuum tubes found an alternative use as faster and more compact switches.
Just like the codes it was trying to crack, Colossus was top-secret and its existence wasn't confirmed until after the war ended. As far as most people were concerned, vacuum tubes were pioneered by a more visible computer that appeared in 1946: the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator (ENIAC). The ENIAC's inventors, two scientists from the University of Pennsylvania, John Mauchly (1907–1980) and J. Presper Eckert (1919–1995), were originally inspired by Bush's Differential Analyzer; years later Eckert recalled that ENIAC was the "descendant of Dr Bush's machine." But the machine they constructed was far more ambitious. It contained nearly 18,000 vacuum tubes (nine times more than Colossus), was around 24 m (80 ft) long, and weighed almost 30 tons. ENIAC is generally recognized as the world's first fully electronic, general-purpose, digital computer. Colossus might have qualified for this title too, but it was designed purely for one job (code-breaking); since it couldn't store a program, it couldn't easily be reprogrammed to do other things.
ENIAC was just the beginning. Its two inventors formed the Eckert Mauchly Computer Corporation in the late 1940s. Working with a brilliant Hungarian mathematician, John von Neumann (1903–1957), who was based at Princeton University, they then designed a better machine called EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer). In a key piece of work, von Neumann helped to define how the machine stored and processed its programs, laying the foundations for how all modern computers operate. After EDVAC, Eckert and Mauchly developed UNIVAC 1 (UNIVersal Automatic Computer) in 1951. They were helped in this task by a young, largely unknown American mathematician and Naval reserve named Grace Murray Hopper (1906–1992), who had originally been employed by Howard Aiken on the Harvard Mark I. Like Herman Hollerith's tabulator over 50 years before, UNIVAC 1 was used for processing data from the US census. It was then manufactured for other users—and became the world's first large-scale commercial computer.
Machines like Colossus, the ENIAC, and the Harvard Mark I compete for significance and recognition in the minds of computer historians. Which one was truly the first great modern computer? All of them and none: these—and several other important machines—evolved our idea of the modern electronic computer during the key period between the late 1930s and the early 1950s. Among those other machines were pioneering computers put together by English academics, notably the Manchester/Ferranti Mark I, built at Manchester University by Frederic Williams (1911–1977) and Thomas Kilburn (1921–2001), and the EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), built by Maurice Wilkes (1913–2010) at Cambridge University.

The microelectronic revolution

Vacuum tubes were a considerable advance on relay switches, but machines like the ENIAC were notoriously unreliable. The modern term for a problem that holds up a computer program is a "bug." Popular legend has it that this word entered the vocabulary of computer programmers sometime in the 1950s when moths, attracted by the glowing lights of vacuum tubes, flew inside machines like the ENIAC, caused a short circuit, and brought work to a juddering halt. But there were other problems with vacuum tubes too. They consumed enormous amounts of power: the ENIAC used about 2000 times as much electricity as a modern laptop. And they took up huge amounts of space. Military needs were driving the development of machines like the ENIAC, but the sheer size of vacuum tubes had now become a real problem. ABC had used 300 vacuum tubes, Colossus had 2000, and the ENIAC had 18,000. The ENIAC's designers had boasted that its calculating speed was "at least 500 times as great as that of any other existing computing machine." But developing computers that were an order of magnitude more powerful still would have needed hundreds of thousands or even millions of vacuum tubes—which would have been far too costly, unwieldy, and unreliable. So a new technology was urgently required.

Photo: A typical transistor on an electronic circuit board.
The solution appeared in 1947 thanks to three physicists working at Bell Telephone Laboratories (Bell Labs). John Bardeen (1908–1991), Walter Brattain (1902–1987), and William Shockley (1910–1989) were then helping Bell to develop new technology for the American public telephone system, so the electrical signals that carried phone calls could be amplified more easily and carried further. Shockley, who was leading the team, believed he could use semiconductors (materials such as germanium and silicon that allow electricity to flow through them only when they've been treated in special ways) to make a better form of amplifier than the vacuum tube. When his early experiments failed, he set Bardeen and Brattain to work on the task for him. Eventually, in December 1947, they created a new form of amplifier that became known as the point-contact transistor. Bell Labs credited Bardeen and Brattain with the transistor and awarded them a patent. This enraged Shockley and prompted him to invent an even better design, the junction transistor, which has formed the basis of most transistors ever since.
Like vacuum tubes, transistors could be used as amplifiers or as switches. But they had several major advantages. They were a fraction the size of vacuum tubes (typically about as big as a pea), used no power at all unless they were in operation, and were virtually 100 percent reliable. The transistor was one of the most important breakthroughs in the history of computing and it earned its inventors the world's greatest science prize, the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics. By that time, however, the three men had already gone their separate ways. John Bardeen had begun pioneering research into superconductivity, which would earn him a second Nobel Prize in 1972. Walter Brattain moved to another part of Bell Labs.
William Shockley decided to stick with the transistor, eventually forming his own corporation to develop it further. His decision would have extraordinary consequences for the computer industry. With a small amount of capital, Shockley set about hiring the best brains he could find in American universities, including young electrical engineer Robert Noyce (1927–1990) and research chemist Gordon Moore (1929–). It wasn't long before Shockley's idiosyncratic and bullying management style upset his workers. In 1956, eight of them—including Noyce and Moore—left Shockley Transistor to found a company of their own, Fairchild Semiconductor, just down the road. Thus began the growth of "Silicon Valley," the part of California centered on Palo Alto, where many of the world's leading computer and electronics companies have been based ever since.
It was in Fairchild's California building that the next breakthrough occurred—although, somewhat curiously, it also happened at exactly the same time in the Dallas laboratories of Texas Instruments. In Dallas, a young engineer from Kansas named Jack Kilby (1923–2005) was considering how to improve the transistor. Although transistors were a great advance on vacuum tubes, one key problem remained. Machines that used thousands of transistors still had to be hand wired to connect all these components together. That process was laborious, costly, and error prone. Wouldn't it be better, Kilby reflected, if many transistors could be made in a single package? This prompted him to invent the "monolithic" integrated circuit (IC), a collection of transistors and other components that could be manufactured all at once, in a block, on the surface of a semiconductor. Kilby's invention was another step forward, but it also had a drawback: the components in his integrated circuit still had to be connected by hand. While Kilby was making his breakthrough in Dallas, unknown to him, Robert Noyce was perfecting almost exactly the same idea at Fairchild in California. Noyce went one better, however: he found a way to include the connections between components in an integrated circuit, thus automating the entire process.

Photo: An integrated circuit seen from the inside. Photo by courtesy of NASA Glenn Research Center (NASA-GRC).
Integrated circuits, as much as transistors, helped to shrink computers during the 1960s. In 1943, IBM boss Thomas Watson had reputedly quipped: "I think there is a world market for about five computers." Just two decades later, the company and its competitors had installed around 25,000 large computer systems across the United States. As the 1960s wore on, integrated circuits became increasingly sophisticated and compact. Soon, engineers were speaking of large-scale integration (LSI), in which hundreds of components could be crammed onto a single chip, and then very large-scale integrated (VLSI), when the same chip could contain thousands of components.
The logical conclusion of all this miniaturization was that, someday, someone would be able to squeeze an entire computer onto a chip. In 1968, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore had left Fairchild to establish a new company of their own. With integration very much in their minds, they called it Integrated Electronics or Intel for short. Originally they had planned to make memory chips, but when the company landed an order to make chips for a range of pocket calculators, history headed in a different direction. One of their engineers, Marcian Edward (Ted) Hoff (1937–), realized that instead of making a range of specialist chips for a range of calculators, he could make one chip that could be programmed to work in them all. Thus was born the general-purpose, single chip computer or microprocessor—and that brought about the next phase of the computer revolution.

Personal computers

By 1974, Intel had launched a popular microprocessor known as the 8080 and computer hobbyists were soon building home computers around it. The first was the MITS Altair 8800, built by Ed Roberts. With its front panel covered in red LED lights and toggle switches, it was a far cry from modern PCs and laptops. Even so, it sold by the thousand and earned Roberts a fortune. The Altair inspired a Californian electronics wizard name Steve Wozniak (1950–) to develop a computer of his own. "Woz" is often described as the hacker's "hacker"—a technically brilliant and highly creative engineer who pushed the boundaries of computing largely for his own amusement. In the mid-1970s, he was working at the Hewlett-Packard computer company in California, and spending his free time tinkering away as a member of the Homebrew Computer Club in the Bay Area.
After seeing the Altair, Woz used a 6502 microprocessor (made by an Intel rival, Mos Technology) to build a better home computer of his own: the Apple I. When he showed off his machine to his colleagues at the club, they all wanted one too. One of his friends, Steve Jobs (1955–2011), persuaded Woz that they should go into business making the machine. Woz agreed so, famously, they set up Apple Computer Corporation in a garage belonging to Jobs' parents. After selling 175 of the Apple I for the devilish price of $666.66, Woz built a much better machine called the Apple ][ (pronounced "Apple Two"). While the Altair 8800 looked like something out of a science lab, and the Apple I was little more than a bare circuit board, the Apple ][ took its inspiration from such things as Sony televisions and stereos: it had a neat and friendly looking cream plastic case. Launched in April 1977, it was the world's first easy-to-use home "microcomputer." Soon home users, schools, and small businesses were buying the machine in their tens of thousands—at $1298 a time. Two things turned the Apple ][ into a really credible machine for small firms: a disk drive unit, launched in 1978, which made it easy to store data; and a spreadsheet program called VisiCalc, which gave Apple users the ability to analyze that data. In just two and a half years, Apple sold around 50,000 of the machine, quickly accelerating out of Jobs' garage to become one of the world's biggest companies. Dozens of other microcomputers were launched around this time, including the TRS-80 from Radio Shack (Tandy in the UK) and the Commodore PET.

Photos: Microcomputers—the first PCs. Left: The Apple ][; Right: The Sinclair ZX81, a build-it-yourself microcomputer that became hugely popular in the UK when it was launched in 1981. Both of these machines live in glass cases at Think Tank, the science museum in Birmingham, England.
Apple's success selling to businesses came as a great shock to IBM and the other big companies that dominated the computer industry. It didn't take a VisiCalc spreadsheet to figure out that, if the trend continued, upstarts like Apple would undermine IBM's immensely lucrative business market selling "Big Blue" computers. In 1980, IBM finally realized it had to do something and launched a highly streamlined project to save its business. One year later, it released the IBM Personal Computer (PC), based on an Intel 8080 microprocessor, which rapidly reversed the company's fortunes and stole the market back from Apple.
The PC was successful essentially for one reason. All the dozens of microcomputers that had been launched in the 1970s—including the Apple ][—were incompatible. All used different hardware and worked in different ways. Most were programmed using a simple, English-like language called BASIC, but each one used its own flavor of BASIC, which was tied closely to the machine's hardware design. As a result, programs written for one machine would generally not run on another one without a great deal of conversion. Companies who wrote software professionally typically wrote it just for one machine and, consequently, there was no software industry to speak of.
In 1976, Gary Kildall (1942–1994), a teacher and computer scientist, and one of the founders of the Homebrew Computer Club, had figured out a solution to this problem. Kildall wrote an operating system (a computer's fundamental control software) called CP/M that acted as an intermediary between the user's programs and the machine's hardware. With a stroke of genius, Kildall realized that all he had to do was rewrite CP/M so it worked on each different machine. Then all those machines could run identical user programs—without any modification at all—inside CP/M. That would make all the different microcomputers compatible at a stroke. By the early 1980s, Kildall had become a multimillionaire through the success of his invention: the first personal computer operating system. Naturally, when IBM was developing its personal computer, it approached him hoping to put CP/M on its own machine. Legend has it that Kildall was out flying his personal plane when IBM called, so missed out on one of the world's greatest deals. But the truth seems to have been that IBM wanted to buy CP/M outright for just $200,000, while Kildall recognized his product was worth millions more and refused to sell. Instead, IBM turned to a young programmer named Bill Gates (1955–). His then tiny company, Microsoft, rapidly put together an operating system called DOS, based on a product called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), which they acquired from Seattle Computer Products. Some believe Microsoft and IBM cheated Kildall out of his place in computer history; Kildall himself accused them of copying his ideas. Others think Gates was simply the shrewder businessman. Either way, the IBM PC, powered by Microsoft's operating system, was a runaway success.
Yet IBM's victory was short-lived. Cannily, Bill Gates had sold IBM the rights to one flavor of DOS (PC-DOS) and retained the rights to a very similar version (MS-DOS) for his own use. When other computer manufacturers, notably Compaq and Dell, starting making IBM-compatible (or "cloned") hardware, they too came to Gates for the software. IBM charged a premium for machines that carried its badge, but consumers soon realized that PCs were commodities: they contained almost identical components—an Intel microprocessor, for example—no matter whose name they had on the case. As IBM lost market share, the ultimate victors were Microsoft and Intel, who were soon supplying the software and hardware for almost every PC on the planet. Apple, IBM, and Kildall made a great deal of money—but all failed to capitalize decisively on their early success.

Photo: Personal computers threatened companies making large "mainframes" like this one. Picture courtesy of Great Images in NASA. See a larger photo.

The user revolution

Fortunately for Apple, it had another great idea. One of the Apple II's strongest suits was its sheer "user-friendliness." For Steve Jobs, developing truly easy-to-use computers became a personal mission in the early 1980s. What truly inspired him was a visit to PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), a cutting-edge computer laboratory then run as a division of the Xerox Corporation. Xerox had started developing computers in the early 1970s, believing they would make paper (and the highly lucrative photocopiers Xerox made) obsolete. One of PARC's research projects was an advanced $40,000 computer called the Xerox Alto. Unlike most microcomputers launched in the 1970s, which were programmed by typing in text commands, the Alto had a desktop-like screen with little picture icons that could be moved around with a mouse: it was the very first graphical user interface (GUI, pronounced "gooey")—an idea conceived by Alan Kay (1940–) and now used in virtually every modern computer. The Alto borrowed some of its ideas, including the mouse, from 1960s computer pioneer Douglas Engelbart (1925–2013).
Back at Apple, Jobs launched his own version of the Alto project to develop an easy-to-use computer called PITS (Person In The Street). This machine became the Apple Lisa, launched in January 1983—the first widely available computer with a GUI desktop. With a retail price of $10,000, over three times the cost of an IBM PC, the Lisa was a commercial flop. But it paved the way for a better, cheaper machine called the Macintosh that Jobs unveiled a year later, in January 1984. With its memorable launch ad for the Macintosh inspired by George Orwell's novel 1984, and directed by Ridley Scott (director of the dystopic movie Blade Runner), Apple took a swipe at IBM's monopoly, criticizing what it portrayed as the firm's domineering—even totalitarian—approach: Big Blue was really Big Brother. Apple's ad promised a very different vision: "On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984'." The Macintosh was a critical success and helped to invent the new field of desktop publishing in the mid-1980s, yet it never came close to challenging IBM's position.
Ironically, Jobs' easy-to-use machine also helped Microsoft to dislodge IBM as the world's leading force in computing. When Bill Gates saw how the Macintosh worked, with its easy-to-use picture-icon desktop, he launched Windows, an upgraded version of his MS-DOS software. Apple saw this as blatant plagiarism and filed a $5.5 billion copyright lawsuit in 1988. Four years later, the case collapsed with Microsoft effectively securing the right to use the Macintosh "look and feel" in all present and future versions of Windows. Microsoft's Windows 95 system, launched three years later, had an easy-to-use, Macintosh-like desktop and MS-DOS running behind the scenes.

From nets to the Internet

Photo: The IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory: one of the world's most powerful computers. Picture courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory published on Flickr in 2009 under a Creative Commons Licence.
Standardized PCs running standardized software brought a big benefit for businesses: computers could be linked together into networks to share information. At Xerox PARC in 1973, electrical engineer Bob Metcalfe (1946–) developed a new way of linking computers "through the ether" (empty space) that he called Ethernet. A few years later, Metcalfe left Xerox to form his own company, 3Com, to help companies realize "Metcalfe's Law": computers become useful the more closely connected they are to other people's computers. As more and more companies explored the power of local area networks (LANs), so, as the 1980s progressed, it became clear that there were great benefits to be gained by connecting computers over even greater distances—into so-called wide area networks (WANs).
Today, the best known WAN is the Internet—a global network of individual computers and LANs that links up hundreds of millions of people. The history of the Internet is another story, but it began in the 1960s when four American universities launched a project to connect their computer systems together to make the first WAN. Later, with funding for the Department of Defense, that network became a bigger project called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). In the mid-1980s, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) launched its own WAN called NSFNET. The convergence of all these networks produced what we now call the Internet later in the 1980s. Shortly afterward, the power of networking gave British computer programmer Tim Berners-Lee (1955–) his big idea: to combine the power of computer networks with the information-sharing idea Vannevar Bush had proposed in 1945. Thus, was born the World Wide Web—an easy way of sharing information over a computer network. It's Tim Berners-Lee's invention that brings you this potted history of computing today!

 

 

 

Computer History - B.C. - A.D. 1000

Year	Event
50,000 B.C.	The first evidence of counting is dated back around 50,000 B.C.
30,000 B.C.	Paleolithic peoples in Europe record numbers by notching tallies on bones, ivory, and stone.
4000 B.C.	Metals begin being created and used.
3500 B.C.	The first evidence of writing is dated back to around 3,500 B.C.
3400 B.C.	Egyptians develop a symbol for the number 10, making counting larger numbers easier.
3300 B.C.	The Bronze Age begins.
3000 B.C.	Hieroglyphic numerals are first used in Egypt.
2600 B.C.	Chinese introduce the abacus.
1350 B.C.	Chinese use the first decimal.
1350 B.C.	Iron begins being developed.
100 B.C.	The Antikythera mechanism is believed to be first created.
300 B.C.	Mathematician Euclid releases Euclid's Elements, 13 books that summarize all mathematical knowledge of the Greeks.
300 B.C.	The Salamis Tablet, Roman Calculi, and hand-abacus, much like today's abacus.
260 B.C.	The Maya develop base-20 system of mathematics, which introduce zero.
1000 A.D.	A churchman by the name of Gerbert d'Aurillac, who later becomes Pope Sylvester II, introduces the abacus and Hindu-Arabic math to Europe.

 

1232	Ramon Llull is born c. 1232.
1315	Ramon Llull passes away c. 1315 (Age:83)
1440	Johannes Gutenberg completes his development of the Gutenberg press, the first printing press.
1452	Leonardo da Vinci is born April 15, 1452.
1492	Leonardo da Vinci makes drawing of 13-digit cog-wheeled adder.

	1500 Leonardo da Vinci invents the mechanical calculator. 1502 Peter Henlein, a craftsman from Nuremberg Germany, creates the first watch. 1519 Leonardo da Vinci passes away May 2, 1519 (Age:67) 1550 John Napier is born in 1550. 1561 Francis Bacon is born January 22, 1561. 1561 Henry Briggs is born in February 1561. 1571 Johannes Kepler is born December 27, 1571. 1581 Edmund Gunter is born in 1581. 1592 Wilhelm Schickard is born April 22, 1592. 1596 René Descartes is born March 31, 1596.
	1600 William Gilbert coins the term electricity from the Greek word elecktra. 1600 The Microsoft Windows Epoch time is set to start January 1, 1601. 1605 Francis Bacon devices the Baconian Cipher, a cipher that used A's and B's to encode messages. 1613 The word "computer" was first recorded as being used in 1613 and was originally used to describe a person who performed calculations or computations. The definition of a computer remained the same until the end of the 19th century when it began referring to a machine that performed calculations. 1613 Claude Perrault is born September 25, 1613. 1614 John Napier illustrates and puts forward the idea of Logarithms. 1617 John Napier introduced a system called "Napiers Bones," made from horn, bone or ivory the device allowed the capability of multiplying by adding numbers and dividing by subtracting. 1617 Tito Burattini is born March 8, 1617. 1617 John Napier passes away April 4, 1617 (Age: 66-67) 1621 The circular slide rule is invented by William Oughtred. 1623 Blaise Pascal is born June 19, 1623. 1623 The first known workable mechanical calculating machine is invented by Germanys Wilhelm Schickard. The machine is based on the idea of Napier's Bones, mentioned earlier. 1625 Samuel Morland is born in 1625 1626 Francis Bacon passes away April 9, 1626 (Age: 65) 1626 Edmund Gunter passes away December 10, 1626 (Age: 45) 1630 Henry Briggs passes away January 26, 1630 (Age: 68) 1630 Johannes Kepler passes away November 15, 1630 (Age: 58) 1632 William Oughtred of Cambridge combines two Gunter rules to make a device that resembles today's slide rule. 1935 Robert Hooke is born July 28, 1635. 1635 Wilhelm Schickard passes away October 24, 1635 (Age: 43) 1642 Frances Blaise Pascal invents a machine, called the Pascaline, that can add, subtract, and carry between digits. 1642 Isaac Newton is born December 25, 1642. 1646 Gottfried Leibniz is born July 1, 1646. 1650 René Descartes passes away February 11, 1650 (Age: 53) 1662 Blaise Pascal passes away August 19, 1662 (Age: 39) 1671 Gottfried Leibniz introduces the Step Reckoner, a device that can multiply, divide, and evaluate square roots. 1679 Gottfried Leibniz demonstrates binary arithmetic, a discovery that shows every number can be represented by 0 and 1 only. 1681 Tito Livio Burattini passes away November 17, 1681 (Age: 64) 1688 Claude Perrault passes away in 1688 (Age: 75) 1695 Samuel Morland passes away December 30, 1695 (Age: 70)
	1703 Robert Hooke passes away March 3, 1703 (Age: 67) 1706 Benjamin Franklin is born January 17, 1706. 1721 Pierre Jaquet-Droz is born in 1721. 1724 Gabriel Fahrenheit proposes the Fahrenheit standard. 1725 An early form of punch cards begin to be used in textile looms. 1726 Isaac Newton passes away March 20, 1726 (Age: 84) 1732 Richard Arkwright is born December 23, 1732. 1736 Johann Bishcoff is born February 20, 1736. 1739 Philipp Hahn is born November 25, 1739. 1743 Samuel Hopkins is born December 9, 1743. 1745 Alessandro Volta is born February 18, 1745. 1752 On June 10, 1752 Benjamin Franklin flies a kite that collects a charge after being struck by lightning. 1752 Joseph Jacquard is born July 7, 1752. 1753 Charles Stanhope is born August 3, 1753. 1765 Jacob Auch is born February 22, 1765. 1765 Joseph Niépce is born March 7, 1765. 1768 Jean Fourier is born March 21, 1768. 1774 The first telegraph is built. 1777 Thomas Fowler is born in 1977. 1777 Johann Gauss is born April 30, 1777. 1779 Joseph Clement is born June 13, 1779. 1783 William Sturgeon is born May 22, 1783. 1785 Charles Thomas is born May 5, 1785. 1785 Georg Scheutz is born September 23, 1785. 1787 Semen Korsakov is born January 14, 1787. 1789 Georg Ohm is born March 16, 1789. 1790 Benjamin Franklin passes away April 17, 1790 (Age: 83) 1790 Philipp Hahn passes away May 2, 1790 (Age: 51) 1790 Samuel Hopkins receives the first United States patent July 31, 1790. 1791 Samuel Morse is born April 27, 1791. 1791 Michael Faraday is born September 22, 1791. 1791 Charles Babbage is born December 26, 1791. 1792 Claude Chappe invents a semaphore line, a method of communicating over long distances. 1792 Richard Arkwright passes away August 3, 1792 (Age: 59) 1797 Joseph Henry is born May 17, 1797.
	1804 Frances Joseph-Marie Jacquard completes his fully automated loom that is programmed by punched cards. 1809 An early but crude telegraph type device is invented in 1809 by Samuel Soemmering. 1810 Hayyim Slonimski is born in 1810. 1811 Alexander Bain is born in 1811. 1811 Johann Bischoff passes away April 14, 1811 (Age:75) 1814 Izrael Staffel is born in 1814. 1815 Giovanni Caselli is born April 25, 1815. 1815 George Boole is born November 2, 1815. 1815 Ada Lovelace is born December 15, 1815. 1816 Werner Siemens is born December 13, 1816. 1816 Charles Stanhope passes away December 15, 1816 (Age: 63) 1817 Édouard-Léon Martinville is born April 25, 1817. 1818 Samuel Hopkins passes away in 1818. 1819 Christopher Sholes is born February 14, 1819. 1820 Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar creates the "Arithometer", the first reliable, useful, and commercially successful calculating machine. The calculator could not only add but also subtract, multiply, and divide. 1821 Pafnuty Chebyshev is born May 16, 1821. 1822 In the early 1822 Charles Babbage purposed and begins developing the Difference Engine. 1823 Baron Jons Jackob Berzelius silicon (Si), which today is the basic component of IC's. 1825 The earliest known surviving photograph is taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1825 of a view of a courtyard from his window. 1827 Alessandro Volta passes away March 5, 1827 (Age: 82) 1827 Georg Simon Ohm introduces Ohm's law in the book Die galvanische Kette, mathematisch bearbeitet. 1828 Harrison Dyar becomes the first person in the United States to invent a Telegraph type device. 1830 Samuel Soule is born January 25, 1830. 1830 Edweard Muybridge is born April 9, 1830. 1830 Jean Fourier passes away May 16, 1830 (Age: 62) 1831 Joseph Henry of Princeton invents the first working telegraph. 1832 Semen Korsakov uses punch cards for the first time to store and search for information. 1832 On October 21, 1832 Pavel Schilling becomes the first to transmit signals between two telegraphs in different rooms of his apartment. 1833 Joseph Niépce passes away July 5, 1833 (Age: 68) 1834 The Committee now known as the ITU is founded May 17, 1865. 1834 Joseph Jacquard passes away August 7, 1834 (Age: 82) 1835 Elisha Gray is born August 2, 1835. 1835 William Jevons is born September 1, 1835. 1836 Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail begin developing a code (later called Morse code) that used different numbers to represent the letters of the English alphabet and the ten digits. 1837 Charles Babbage first purposed the Analytical Engine, which was the first computer to use punch cards as memory and a way to program the computer. 1838 Fredrik Idestam is born October 28, 1838. 1841 Edmund Barbour is born in 1841. 1842 Jacob Auch passes away March 20, 1842 (Age: 77) 1843 Thomas Fowler passes away March 31, 1843 (Age: 66) 1844 Joseph Clement passes away February 28, 1844 (Age: 65) 1844 Samuel Morse dispatches the first telegraphic message over a line from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore on May 24, 1844. The now famous message was: "What hath God wrought" 1845 In 1845, Izrael Staffel demonstrated the Staffel's calculator at the industrial exhibition in Warsaw. 1845 Wilhelm Rontgen is born March 27, 1845. 1845 Willgodt Odhner is born August 10, 1845. 1845 Jean-Maurice-Emile Baudot is born September 11, 1845. 1847 Thomas Edison is born February 11, 1847. 1847 Alexander Graham Bell is born March 3, 1847. 1847 Siemens is founded on October 12, 1847. 1849 John Ambrose Fleming is born November 29, 1849. 1849 George Grant is born December 21, 1849. 1850 Charles Flint is born January 24, 1850. 1850 Karl Braun is born June 6, 1850. 1850 William Sturgeon passes away December 4, 1850 (Age: 67) 1851 Western Union was founded. 1851 Emile Berliner is born May 20, 1851. 1852 Ada Lovelace passes away November 27, 1852 (Age: 36) 1853 Semen Korsakov passes away December 1, 1853 (Age: 65) 1854 Augustus DeMorgan and George Boole formalize a set of logical operations now known as DeMorgan transformations. 1854 George Fairchild is born May 6 , 1854. 1854 Georg Ohm passes away July 6, 1854 (Age: 65) 1854 George Eastman is born July 12, 1854. 1855 The Crane Company is founded. 1855 Johann Gauss passes away February 23, 1855 (Age: 77) 1856 Nikola Tesla is born July 10, 1856. 1857 Heinrich Hertz is born February 22, 1857. 1857 The phonautograph (phonograph) is patented March 25, 1857 by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. The device was capable of transcribing sound to a medium. 1858 Otto Steiger is born in 1858. 1858 The OpenVMS Epoch Time is set to start November 17, 1858. 1858 Jagadish Bose is born November 30, 1858. 1859 The Elevator is patented on August 9, 1959. 1860 Herman Hollerith is born February 29, 1860. 1861 The first known permanent color photograph is taken of a Tartan Ribbon by the photographer Thomas Sutton. To achieve a color image he took a photo of the ribbon three times, each time with a different color, a method developed by James Clerk Maxwell. 1861 The first transcontinental telegraph line began operation October 24, 1861. 1862 David Hilbert is born January 23, 1862. 1862 Vilhelm Bjerknes is born March 14, 1862. 1862 Dorr Felt is born March 18, 1862. 1862 Philibert D'Ocagne is born March 26, 1862. 1864 George Boole passes away December 8, 1864 (Age: 49) 1865 Nokia is originally founded by Fredrik Idestam as a wood pulp company. 1866 The first successful Trans-Atlantic cable is laid from Ireland to Newfoundland. 1867 Michael Faraday passes away August 25, 1867 (Age: 75) 1868 Christopher Sholes is issued a patent on July 14, 1868 for a typewriter utilizing the QWERTY layout keyboard still used today. 1968 Paul Otlet is born August 23, 1868. 1870 Mitsubishi is founded. 1870 Charles Thomas passes away March 12, 1870 (Age: 84) 1871 Hubert Booth is born July 4, 1871. 1871 Charles Babbage passes away October 18, 1871 (Age: 79) 1872 Samuel Morse passes away April 2, 1872 (Age: 80) 1873 Georg Scheutz passes away May 22, 1873 (Age: 88) 1873 Lee Forest is born August 26, 1873. 1873 William Coolidge is born October 23, 1873. 1874 Thomas Watson is born February 17, 1874. 1874 Guglielmo Marconi is born April 25, 1874. 1875 Tanaka Seizo-sho is established in Japan and later merges with another company called shibaura Seisaku-sho to form Tokyo Shibarura Denki. Later this company's name is shortened to the company that we know today, Toshiba. 1875 Samuel Soule passes away July 12, 1875 (Age: 45) 1875 William Eccles is born August 23, 1875. 1875 The company American Telephone and Telegraph Company that later became AT&T is founded. 1876 Scottish-Canadian-American Alexander Graham Bell is often credited as inventing the telephone makes the first call March 10, 1876. 1876 Ericsson is founded. 1877 Alexander Bain passes away January 2, 1877 (Age: 65) 1877 The world's first long-distance telephone line is connected between French Corral California with French Lake, 58 miles away. 1877 The microphone is invented in the United States by Emile Berliner. 1877 Thomas Edison invents and announces on November 21, 1877 the first phonograph capable of recording and replaying sounds. 1878 Eadweard Muybridge's "The Horse In Motion" becomes the first motion picture. 1878 Joseph Henry passes away May 13, 1878 (Age: 80) 1878 Arthur Scherbius is born October 20, 1878. 1879 Albert Einstein is born March 14, 1879. 1879 Édouard-Léon Martinville passes away April 26, 1879 (Age: 62) 1879 Thomas Edison demos incandescent electric light bulb that lasts 13 1/2 hours October 21, 1879. 1879 James Jacob Ritty patents the world's first cash register November 4, 1879. 1879 President Rutherford B. Hayes becomes the first president with a phone in the White House and gets the phone number "1." 1880 Thomas Edison receives patent #223,898 for the Electric Lamp January 27, 1880. 1880 ASME is founded. 1880 Albert Hull is born April 19, 1880. 1880 James Bryce is born September 5, 1880. 1881 Emanuel Goldberg is born on August 31, 1881. 1882 William Jevons passes away August 13, 1882 (Age: 46) 1882 Thomas Edison is award patent # 252,442 January 17, 1882 for the carbon microphone used in telephones. 1882 The first commercial electric power station becomes operational on September 4, 1882. 1882 Fredrik Bull is born December 25, 1882. 1883 Edith Clarke is born February 10, 1883. 1883 American Thomas Edison discovers the Edison effect, where an electric current flows through a vacuum. 1883 Percy Ludgate is born August 2, 1883. 1884 Izrael Staffel passes away in 1884. 1885 American Telegraph and Telephone company (AT&T) is incorporated March 3,1885. 1886 Heinrich Rudolf Hertz proves that electricity is transmitted at the speed of light. 1886 James Rand is born November 18, 1886. 1887 Yamaha is founded October 12, 1887. 1888 Clair Lake is born in 1888. 1888 National Geographic Society is established on January 27, 1888. 1888 Nikola Tesla patents the rotating field motor May 1, 1888 and later sells the rights to George Westinghouse. This invention helps create and transmit AC power and today is still a method for generating and distributing AC power. 1888 William S. Burroughs patents a printing adding machine. 1888 John Baird is born August 14, 1888. 1888 Thomas Edison files for a patent for the Optical Phonograph (film camera) on October 17, 1888. 1888 Eastman Kodak is founded. 1888 John Loud gets patent for the ballpoint pen October 30, 1888. 1888 Friedrich Reintzer discovers liquid crystal. 1889 Herman Hollerith first describes the tabulating machine in his doctoral thesis. 1889 Nintendo is founded. 1890 Henry Philips is born in 1890. 1890 Christopher Sholes passes away February 17, 1890 (Age: 71) 1891 Phillips is founded. 1892 Werner Siemens passes away December 6, 1892 (Age: 75) 1893 On May 1, 1893 Nikola Tesla helps power the worlds first fair powered by AC electricity in Chicago. 1893 Leslie Comrie is born August 15, 1893. 1894 Heinrich Hertz passes away January 1, 1894 (Age: 36) 1894 August Dvorak is born May 5, 1894. 1894 Norbert Weiner is born November 26, 1894. 1894 Pafnuty Chebyshev passes away December 8, 1894 (Age:73) 1895 Nortel Networks is founded. 1895 Wilhelm Röntgen discovers X-rays November 8, 1895. 1896 The Niagara Falls begins generating power from Nikola Tesla AC power generators starting the electric age in America. 1896 Herman Hollerith starts the Tabulating Machine Company, the company later becomes the well-known computer company IBM (International Business Machines). 1897 Gertrude Blanch is born. 1897 Emil Post is born February 11, 1897. 1897 German scientist Karl Ferdinand Braun invents the Cathode-Ray Oscilloscope. 1897 Thomas Edison patents the Kinetoscope, a motion picture viewer on August 31, 1897. 1898 Alcatel is founded. 1898 Russell Ohl is born in January 1898. 1898 Nikola Tesla invents the remote control November 8, 1898. 1890 Vannevar Bush is born March 11, 1890. 1890 Herman Hollerith developed a method for machines to record and store information onto punch cards to be used for the US census. He later formed the company we know as IBM today. 1891 Giovanni Caselli passes away June 8, 1891. 1894 Paul Galvin is born June 27, 1895. 1897 Maxwell Newman is born February 7, 1897. 1899 Gustav Tauschek is born April 29, 1899. 1899 Nippon Electric Company is renamed to NEC Corporation July 17, 1899. 1899 AT&T acquires assets of American Bell, and becomes the parent company of Bell System. 1899 Sprint is founded. 1899 Sedlbauer is founded. 1899 On September 13, 1899 Henry Bliss becomes the first North American pedestrian to be killed by an automobile. 1899 William D. Middlebrook patents the paper clip on November 9, 1899.
	1900 Howard H. Aiken is born March 8, 1900. 1900 Nikola Tesla develops frequency hopping, now known as spread spectrum. 1900 Haskell Curry is born September 12, 1900. 1901 Allen DuMont is born January 29, 1901. 1901 The first radio message is sent across the Atlantic Ocean in Morse code. 1901 Arthur Samuel is born in 1901. 1901 Elisha Gray passes away on January 21, 1901 (age 66) 1901 Hubert Cecil Booth receives a patent for the first powered vacuum cleaner August 30, 1901. 1901 Enrico Fermi is born September 29, 1901. 1901 Rudolf Hell is born December 19, 1901. 1902 The first issue of Popular Mechanics is published January 11, 1902. 1902 Walter Brattain is born February 10, 1902. 1902 Louis Couffignal is born March 16, 1902. 1902 3M is founded. 1902 Wallace Eckert is born June 19, 1902. 1902 Mina Rees is born August 2, 1902. 1902 The French silent film "A Trip to the Moon" is first released and is considered to be the first science fiction film. 1902 Laszlo Kozma is born November 28, 1902. 1903 Jean-Maurice-Emile Baudot passes away March 28, 1903 (Age: 58) 1903 Alonzo Church is born June 14, 1903. 1903 Nikola Tesla patents electrical logic circuits called "gates" or "switches". 1903 Wilbur and Orville Wright both take the first flight December 17, 1903. 1903 John von Neumann is born December 28, 1903. 1903 John Vincent Atanasoff is born October 4, 1903. 1904 The Apple Mac OS Epoch time is set tot start January 1, 1904. 1904 Samuel Caldwell is born January 15, 1904. 1904 George Stibitz is born April 20, 1904. 1904 Edweard Muybridge passes away May 8, 1904 (Age:74) 1904 Hayyim Slonimski passes away May 15, 1904 (Age:94) 1904 John Ambrose Fleming experiments with Edison's diode vacuum tubes and creates the first commercial diode vacuum tube. 1904 Lear Romec is founded. 1905 Derrick Lehmer is born February 23, 1905. 1905 Laszlo Kalmar is born March 27, 1905. 1905 Willgodt Odhner passes away September 15, 1905 (Age: 60) 1905 Thomas Flowers is born December 22, 1905. 1906 The IEC is founded in London England. 1906 Arnold I. Dumey is born in 1906. 1906 Chester Carlson is born February 8, 1906. 1906 Kurt Godel is born April 28, 1906. 1906 Reynold Johnson is born July 16, 1906. 1906 Xerox is founded. 1906 Philo Farnsworth is born August 19, 1906. 1906 Grace Hopper is born December 9, 1906. 1907 Paul Eisler is born in 1907. 1907 Lee De Frost files patent #879,532 on January 29, 1907 for the vacuum tube triode. This is later used as an electronic switch in the first electronic computer. 1907 Gordon Brown is born August 30, 1907. 1907 John Mauchly is born August 30, 1907. 1907 IBM files for its first U.S. patent, #998,631 October 11, 1907. 1908 John Bardeen is born May 23, 1908. 1908 Olivetti is founded on October 29, 1908. 1908 The film "A Visit To The Seaside" becomes the first film commercially produced in natural color in December of 1908. 1909 Ralph Palmer is born in 1909. 1909 Stephen Kleene is born January 5, 1909. 1909 Edmund Berkeley is born February 22, 1909. 1909 Geoffrey Dummer is born February 25, 1909. 1909 Harry Goode is born June 30, 1909. 1909 Antoni Kilinski is born October 20, 1909. 1909 The Bryant Chucking Grinder Co. is founded in 1909 by William Leroy Bryant. 1910 William Shockley is born February 13, 1910. 1910 Konrad Zuse is born June 22, 1910. 1910 Hitachi is founded. 1910 William Higinbotham is born October 25, 1910. 1910 Henry Babbage, Charles Babbage's youngest son completes a portion of the Analytical Engine and was able to perform basic calculations. 1911 Major H.A. "Jimmie" Erickson takes the first photos from a plane on January 10, 1911. 1911 Alexey Andreevich Lyapunov is born in 1911. 1911 Cuthbert Hurd is born April 5, 1911. 1911 The company now known as IBM is founded June 16, 1911 in the state of New York. IBM was originally known as the Computing - Tabulating - Recording Company (C-T-R), a consolidation of the Computing Scale Company, and The International Time Recording Company. 1911 Frederic Williams is born June 26, 1911. 1911 Louis Ridenour is born June 27, 1911. 1911 William Norris is born July 14, 1911. 1911 IBM is granted its first patent #998,631 July 25, 1911. 1911 Jan Rajchman is born August 10, 1911. 1911 Allen Coombs is born October 23, 1911. 1912 Helmut Hoelzer is born February 27, 1912. 1912 Steven Coons is born March 7, 1912. 1912 Alan Turing is born June 23, 1912. 1912 Helmut Schreyer is born July 4, 1912. 1912 David Packard is born September 7, 1912. 1912 G. N. Lewis begins work on the lithium battery. 1912 Oliver Standingford is born October 9, 1912. 1913 Julian Bigelow is born in 1913. 1913 Stephen Dunwell is born April 3, 1913. 1913 William Hewlett is born May 20, 1913. 1913 Maurice Wilkes is born June 26, 1913. 1913 Herman Goldstine is born September 13, 1913. 1913 Robert Adler is born December 4, 1913. 1914 Bernard Kardon is born January 8, 1914. 1914 Thomas Watson, Jr. is born January 14, 1914. 1914 I. Bernard Cohen is born March 1, 1914. 1914 Paul Rand is born August 15, 1914. 1914 Cyril Cleverdon is born September 9, 1914. 1914 George Dantzig is born November 8, 1914. 1915 Joseph Licklider is born March 11, 1915. 1915 Richard Hamming is born February 11, 1915. 1915 The first telephone call is made across the continent. 1915 Borje Langefors is born May 21, 1915. 1915 Nicholas Metropolis is born June 11, 1915. 1915 John Tukey is born June 16, 1915. 1915 Arthur Walter Burks is born October 13, 1915. 1916 Harry Huskey is born January 19, 1916. 1916 Fredrik Idestam passes away April 8, 1916 (Age: 78) 1916 Claude Shannon is born April 30, 1916. 1916 Herbert Simon is born June 15, 1916. 1916 Morgan Sparks is born July 6, 1916. 1916 Petro Vlahos is born August 20, 1916. 1916 The Curtiss Wright company is founded. 1916 Christopher Strachey is born November 16, 1916. 1917 Nikon is founded. 1917 Ralph Meagher is born in 1917. 1917 Ralph Slutz is born in 1917. 1917 Winifred Asprey is born April 8, 1917. 1917 George Grant passes away August 16, 1917 (Age: 68) 1917 Hugh Ross is born August 31, 1917. 1917 On September 9, 1917 one of the earliest records of OMG (Oh! My God!) is used by British Admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher when writing to Winston Churchill in a 1917 correspondence. 1917 Robert Fano is born November 11, 1917. 1917 Arthur C. Clark is born December 16, 1917. 1918 ANSI, otherwise known as the American National Standards Institute, is formed. 1918 Wen Chow is born in 1918. 1918 Tatung is founded. 1918 John Pasta is born in 1918. 1918 Richard Canning is born in 1918. 1918 Alexander L'vovich Brudno is born January 10, 1918. 1918 Andrew Booth is born February 11, 1918. 1918 Arthur Scherbius files for a patent of the Enigma machine February 23, 1918. 1918 Panasonic is founded March 18, 1918. 1918 William Eccles and F.W. Jordan build the world's first flip-flop. 1918 Clifford Berry is born April 19, 1918. 1918 Karl Braun passes away April 20, 1918 (Age: 67) 1918 Bashir Rameyev is born May 1, 1918. 1918 Richard Feynman is born May 11, 1918. 1918 Kurt Lehovec is born June 12, 1918. 1918 Jay Forrester is born July 14, 1918. 1918 Sidney Harman is born August 4, 1918. 1918 Herbert Grosch is born September 13, 1918. 1918 Hermann Zapf is born November 8, 1918. 1918 Klaus Samelson is born December 21, 1918. 1919 Stanley Frankel is born in 1919. 1919 Nathan Rochester is born January 14, 1919. 1919 Russel Ackoff is born February 12, 1919. 1919 Trevor Pearcey is born March 5, 1919. 1919 Andrew F. Kay is born March 22, 1919. 1919 John Adam Presper "Pres" Eckert, Jr. is born April 9, 1919. 1919 Harlan Mills is born May 14, 1919. 1919 Jeffrey Chu is born July 14, 1919. 1919 John Pinkerton is born August 2, 1919. 1919 James Wilkinson is born September 27, 1919. 1919 Olympus is established on October 12, 1919 by Takeshi Yamashita. 1920 Niels Bech is born in 1920. 1920 Heinz Zemanek is born January 1, 1920. 1920 Isaac Asimov is born January 2, 1920. 1920 An Wang is born February 7, 1920. 1920 Bob Bemer is born February 8, 1920. 1920 James Pomerene is born June 22, 1920. 1920 First radio broadcasting begins in United States, Pittsburgh, PA. 1920 Kenneth Iverson is born December 17, 1920. 1921 Robert Prim is born in 1921. 1921 Lotfali Zadeh is born February 4, 1921. 1921 Kathleen Antonelli is born February 12, 1921. 1921 Alexander (Sandy) Shafto Douglas is born May 21, 1921. 1921 Robert Everett is born June 26, 1921. 1921 Forrest Parry is born July 4, 1921. 1921 John Bennet is born July 31, 1921. 1921 Czech playwright Karel Capek coins the term "robot" in the 1921 play RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots). 1921 The first Radio Shack store is opened. 1921 Gerald Estrin is born September 9, 1921. 1922 MPAA is established. 1922 Charles Hamblin is born in 1922. 1922 Georgy Adelson-Velsky is born January 8, 1922. 1922 Saul Rosen is born February 8, 1922. 1922 Ralph Baer is born March 8, 1922. 1922 Alan Perlis is born April 1, 1922. 1922 Keith Uncapher is born April 1, 1922. 1922 Alexander Graham Bell passes away August 2, 1922 (Age: 75) 1921 Tom Kilburn is born August 11, 1921. 1922 Wayne Green is born September 3, 1922 1922 Percy Ludgate passes away October 16, 1922 (Age: 38) 1922 Werner Buchholz is born October 24, 1922 1922 Gene Amdahl is born November 16, 1922. 1923 Otto Steiger passes away in 1923. 1923 Corrado Böhm is born in 1923. 1923 Joseph Weizenbaum is born January 8, 1923. 1923 Wilhelm Rontgen passes away February 10, 1923. 1923 Herman Lukoff is born May 2, 1923. 1923 Eugene Kleiner is born May 12, 1923. 1923 Edgar Codd is born August 23, 1923. 1923 Jack St. Clair Kilby, Nobel Prize winner and inventor of the Integrated Circuit, handheld calculator, and thermal printer is born November 8, 1923. 1923 Donald Michie is born November 11, 1923. 1923 Peter Elias is born November 23, 1923. 1924 The Computing - Tabulating - Recording (C-T-R) company is renamed to IBM on February 14, 1924. 1924 David Evans is born February 24, 1924. 1924 Donald Shell is born March 1, 1924. 1924 Enid Mumford is born March 6, 1924. 1924 George Pake is born April 1, 1924. 1924 Evelyn Granville is born May 1, 1924. 1924 Donald Davies is born June 7, 1924. 1924 CATV and cable broadcasting begins being used in some European cities. 1924 Friedrich Bauer is born June 10, 1924. 1924 Gerrot Blaauw is born July 17, 1924. 1924 Max Palevsky is born July 24, 1924. 1924 Leo Fantl is born August 8, 1924. 1924 Georgii Lopato is born August 23, 1924. 1924 Jean Hoerni is born September 26, 1924. 1924 Paul DeMaine is born October 11, 1924. 1924 John Backus is born December 3, 1924. 1924 Charles Bachman is born December 11, 1924. 1924 Jean Bartik is born December 27, 1924. 1924 George Fairchild passes away on December 31, 1924 (Age: 71) 1925 Edmund Barbour passes away in 1925 (Age: 84) 1925 John Opel is born January 5, 1925. 1925 Douglas Engelbart is born January 30, 1925. 1925 Nikolay Brusentsov was born February 7, 1925. 1925 Robert Barton is born February 13, 1925. 1925 Heinz Nixdor is born April 9, 1925. 1925 Mark Pinsker is born April 24, 1925. 1925 John Cocke is born May 30, 1925. 1925 Fredrik Bull passes away June 7, 1925 (Age: 43) 1925 David Huffman is born August 9, 1925. 1925 Seymour Cray is born September 28, 1925. 1926 Ken Olsen is born February 20, 1926. 1926 Stanley Gill is born March 26, 1926. 1926 Packard Bell is originally founded. 1926 Paul Baran is born April 29, 1926. 1926 Oliver Selfridge is born May 10, 1926. 1926 John Kemeny is born May 31, 1926. 1926 John Diebold is born June 8, 1926. 1926 Fernando Corbató is born July 1, 1926. 1926 Carl Petri is born July 12, 1926. 1926 The first patent for the semiconductor transistor is created. 1926 Arthur Rock is born August 19, 1926. 1926 Kristen Nygaard is born August 27, 1926. 1926 Andrew Bobeck is born October 1, 1926. 1926 Willem Poel is born December 2, 1926. 1927 Wesley Clark is born in 1927. 1927 David Wheeler is born February 9, 1927. 1927 Gerard Salton is born March 8, 1927. 1927 Allen Newell is born March 19, 1927. 1927 Dudley Buck is born April 25, 1927. 1927 Glen Culler is born July 7, 1927. 1927 Theodore Maiman is born July 11, 1927. 1927 Marvin Minsky is born August 9, 1927. 1927 Bob Evans is born August 19, 1927. 1927 John McCarthy is born September 4, 1927. 1927 Philo Taylor Farnsworth becomes the first person to successfully transmit a TV signal on September 7, 1927. 1927 Robert Noyce is born December 12, 1927. 1928 Jean Sammet is born in 1928. 1928 Thomas Kurtz is born February 22, 1928. 1928 Seymour Papert is born February 29, 1928. 1928 John Nash is born June 13, 1928. 1928 Juris Hartmanis is born July 5, 1928. 1928 The Galvin Manufacturing corporation begins on September 25, 1928, the company will later be known as Motorola. 1928 Bernard Galler is born October 3, 1928. 1928 Peter Naur is born October 25, 1928. 1928 Noam Chomsky is born December 7, 1928 1928 Joe Ossanna is born December 10, 1928 1928 Jack Tramiel is born December 13, 1928 1928 Martin Cooper is born December 26, 1928. 1929 Harlan Anderson is born in 1929. 1929 Robert Lansdown is born January 2, 1929. 1929 Gordon Moore is born January 3, 1929. 1929 Edwin Turney is born March 26, 1929 1929 Arthur Scherbius passes away May 13, 1929 (Age: 51) 1929 Emile Berliner passes away August 3, 1929 (Age: 78) 1929 Herman Hollerith passes away November 17, 1929 (Age: 69). 1929 Douglas Ross is born December 21, 1929. 1930 Einar Stefferud is born January 11, 1930. 1930 Geophysical Service Incorporated is founded. The company will later become Texas Instruments. 1930 Martin Goetz is born April 22, 1930. 1930 Edsger Dijkstra is born May 11, 1930. 1930 Peter Landin is born June 5, 1930. 1930 Henry Perot is born June 27, 1930. 1930 Daniel McCracken is born July 23, 1930. 1930 Galvin Manufacturing Corporation Auto radios begin to be sold as an accessory for the automobile. Paul Galvin coins the name Motorola for the company's new products, linking the ideas of motion and radio. 1930 Dorr Felt passes away August 7, 1930 (Age: 68) 1930 Alan F. Shugart is born September 27, 1930. 1930 Citizen is founded. 1931 James Russell is born in 1931. 1931 Valentin Turchin is born in 1931. 1931 Fletcher Jones is born January 22, 1931. 1931 Eiichi Goto is born January 26, 1931. 1931 Anthony (Tony) Edgar Sale is born January 30, 1931. 1931 Elizabeth Feinler is born March 2, 1931. 1931 Andrei Ershov is born April 19, 1931. 1931 Frederick Brooks is born April 19, 1931. 1931 Nobuo Mii is born July 4, 1931. 1931 Morris Chang is born July 10, 1931. 1931 Michael Rabin is born September 1, 1931. 1931 Ole-Johan Dahl is born October 12, 1931. 1931 Thomas Edison passes away October 18, 1931 (Age: 84) 1931 Jacob Ziv is born November 27, 1931. 1932 Robert Taylor is born in 1932. 1932 Douglas Mcllroy is born in 1932. 1932 William Millard is born in 1932. 1932 Gene Golub is born February 29, 1932 1932 George Eastman passes away March 14, 1932 (Age:77) 1932 Norman Abramson was born April 1, 1932. 1932 Solomon Golomb is born May 30, 1932. 1932 Jay Glenn Miner is born May 31, 1932. 1932 Frances Allen is born August 4, 1932. 1932 Gustav Tauschek develops drum memory. 1932 ROM-Type storage media is introduced. 1932 Robert H. Dennard is born September 5, 1932. 1932 Dana Scott is born October 11, 1932. 1932 Jorma Rissanen is born October 20, 1932. 1933 Canon is established. 1933 Gerald Weinberg is born October 27, 1933. 1933 Stephanie Shirley is born September 16, 1933. 1933 Boris Babayan is born December 20, 1933. 1934 Ronald Stamper is born in 1934. 1934 Seymour Rubinstein is born in 1934. 1934 Edward Fredkin is born January 1, 1934. 1934 Donald Bitzer is born January 1, 1934. 1934 Charles Hoare is born January 11, 1934 1934 Robin Milner is born January 13, 1934. 1934 Niklaus Wirth is born February 15, 1934. 1934 Charles Flint passes away February 26, 1934. 1934 Ronald Wayne is born May 7, 1934. 1934 Ralph Griswold is born May 19, 1934 1934 Robert Moog is born May 23, 1934. 1934 Leonard Kleinrock is born June 13, 1934. 1934 Gordon Bell is born August 19, 1934. 1934 The FCC is established. 1934 The US Communication Act goes into place. 1934 Max Hopper is born November 4, 1934. 1934 Carl Sagan is born November 9, 1934. 1935 Vladimir Levenshtein is born in 1935. 1935 Barry Boehm is born in 1935. 1935 The Polygraph machine aka lie detector is used for the first time. 1932 Richard Karp is born January 3, 1935. 1935 Roger Needham is born February 9, 1935. 1935 Charles Molnar is born March 14, 1935. 1935 Jack Wolf is born March 14, 1935. 1935 Joshua Lederberg is born May 23, 1935. 1935 Fujitsu is established June 20, 1935. 1935 Karen Jones is born August 26, 1935. 1935 TDK is founded on December 7, 1935. 1936 Edward Feigenbaum is born January 20, 1936. 1936 Germany's Konrad Zuse creates the Z1, one of the first binary digital computers and a machine that could be controlled through a punch tape. 1936 While working on a radio, Paul Eisler invents the Printed Circuit Board (PCB). 1936 Abraham Lempel is born February 10, 1936. 1936 Dvorak receives a patent for the Dvorak keyboard May 12, 1936. 1936 Robert Floyd is born June 8, 1936. 1936 Richard Stearns is born July 5, 1936. 1936 Henry F. Phillips receives patent for the Phillips screw and screwdriver July 7, 1936. 1936 Leon Chua is born June 28, 1936 1936 Andrew Grove is born September 2, 1936. 1936 Jerry Sanders is born September 12, 1936. 1936 James Burke is born December 22, 1936. 1936 Alan Turing develops the Turing Machine. 1937 Larry Roberts is born in 1937. 1937 Charles Peddle is born in 1937. 1937 Steve Russell is born in 1937. 1937 Igor Aleksander is born in 1937 1937 Harold Lawson is born in 1937. 1937 Iowa State College's John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry begin work on creating the binary-based ABC (Atanasoff-Berry Computer). Considered by most to be the first electronic digital computer. 1937 Dabbala Reddy is born June 13, 1937. 1937 Seiko Instruments is founded. 1937 Ted Nelson is born June 17, 1937. 1937 Philip Estridge is born June 23, 1937. 1937 Polaroid is founded. 1937 Guglielmo Marconi passes away July 20, 1937 (Age: 63) 1937 Alec Reeves develops PCM. 1937 Patrick McGovern is born August 11, 1937. 1937 Marcian Hoff is born October 28, 1937. 1937 Jagadish Bose passes away November 23, 1937 (Age:78) 1938 Dana Ulery is born in 1938. 1938 David Lee is born in 1938. 1938 Charles Moore is born in 1938. 1938 Gary Starkweather is born in 1938. 1938 Philibert D'Ocagne passes away in 1938. 1938 Molex is founded. 1938 Donald Knuth is born January 10, 1938. 1938 Vivitar is founded. 1938 Lynn Conway is born January 10, 1938. 1938 Samsung is founded. 1938 Ronald Schafer is born February 17, 1938. 1938 Manuel Blum is born April 26, 1938. 1938 Ivan Sutherland is born May 16, 1938. 1938 Thomas Cover is born August 7, 1938. 1938 The company now known as Hewlett Packard creates its first product the HP 200A. 1938 Chester Carlson produces first electrophotographic image October 22, 1938, which later becomes the Xerox machine. 1938 Orson Welles' and Houseman broadcast H.G. Welles War of the Worlds on the airways October 30th as a Halloween spoof. 1938 Per Hansen is born November 13, 1938. 1938 BBC creates the first science fiction television program. 1938 Stewart Brand is born December 14, 1938. 1938 Bob Kahn is born December 23, 1938. 1939 Hewlett Packard is founded by William Hewlett and David Packard. The name is decided on the flip of a coin toss and the company is officially founded January 1, 1939. 1939 Paul Cress is born in 1939. 1939 Adam Osborne is born March 6, 1939. 1939 Dov Frohman is born March 28, 1939. 1939 John Scully is born April 6, 1939. 1939 Rudolf Bayer is born May 7, 1939. 1939 Anatoliy O. Morozov is born May 9, 1939. 1939 Peter Grunberg is born May 18, 1939. 1939 George Stibitz completes the Complex Number Calculator capable of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing complex numbers. This device provides a foundation for digital computers. 1939 The first Radio Shack catalog is published. 1939 Cleve Moler is born August 17, 1939. 1939 Craig Barrett is born August 29, 1939. 1939 Charles Geschke is born September 11, 1939. 1939 John Hopcroft is born October 7, 1939. 1939 Neil Sloane is born October 10, 1939. 1939 Iowa State College's John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry create a prototype of the binary-based ABC (Atanasoff-Berry Computer). 1939 The companies Tanaka Seisakusho and Hakunetsusha merge to become the new company we now know as Toshiba.

 

1939	Barbara Liskov is born November 7, 1939.
1939	Stephen Cook is born December 14, 1939.

 

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