A Brief History of Computing
- Summary Timeline

© Copyright 1996-2005, Stephen White

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500 B.C. The abacus
1614 Napier discovers logarithms
1623 Schickard's Calculating Clock
1625 Invention of the Slide Rule by William Oughtred
1642 Pascaline - Pascal's adding machine
1668 Sir Samuel Morland's English money adding machine
1671 Leibniz's "Stepped Reckoner"
1775 Earl Stanhope makes a multiplying calculator similar to Leibniz's
1776 Mathieus Hahn also makes a multiplying calculator
1786 J. H. Mueller conceives the principles of the "difference engine"
1801 punch cards used to control an automatic loom
1820 "Arithmometer", the first mass-produced calculator
1822 Charles Babbage's first mechanical computer
1832 Babbage and Clement prototype the difference engine
1834 George Scheutz's small wooden difference engine
1834 Babbage's "Analytical Engine"
1842 Babbage's difference engine project is cancelled.
1843 Scheutz & Scheutz produce a 3rd order difference engine
1847 Babbage improves and simplifies his difference engine.
1848 George Boole devises Boolean Algebra
1853 Scheutzes complete the first full-scale difference engine
1858 First purchases of the full-scale difference engine
1871 Babbage prototypes parts of his Analytical Engine
1878 Ramon Verea invents a fast multiplying machine
1879 Abandonment of the Analytical Engine project.
1885 Compacter multiplying calculator enters mass production
1886 First entirely key operated calculator
1889 The first printing desk calculator
1890 Punched cards used to record census data
1892 More robust key operated calculator
1896 Formation of the Tabulating Machine Company (to become IBM)
1899 "Everything that can be invented has already been invented."
1906 Henry Babbage completes some parts of his father's Analytical Engine
1906 Electronic Valve developed
1911 Merger of companies to form "Computing - Tabulating - Recording Company" (later IBM)
1919 Flip-flop circuit design
1924 - February IBM formed
1931-1932 Binary digital counter
1935 IBM introduce a punch card based multiplier (IBM 601)
1937 Turing's paper on "computable numbers"
1937 Bell Labs. 1-bit binary adder
1938 Paper on implementing symbolic logic using relays
1938 Konrad Zuses' mechanical programmable calculator ("V1")
1939 - January 1 Hewlett-Packard formed
1939 - November First machine to calculate using vacuum tubes
1939 Start of WWII. This spurred many improvements in technology - and led to the development of machines such as the Colossus (see 1943).
1939 Zuse and Schreyer begin work on the "V2" (later "Z2")
1939/1940 Prototype 10-bit adder using vacuum tubes
1940 - January Ball Labs. develop "Complex Number Calculator"
1941 - Summer Simultaneous linear equation solver
1941 - December Zuze's V3 (later Z3)
1943 First Generation Computers (1943-1959)
1943 "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
1943 - January Harvard Mark I
1943 - April Heath Robinson
1943 - September Williams and Stibitz complete the "Relay Interpolator"
1943 - December Colossus
1946 ENIAC
1947 - end Invention of the Transistor
1948 - June 21 Manchester University's "Baby"
1949 - May 6 EDSAC
1949 EDVAC (the first computer to use magnetic tape)
1949 "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
1950 Floppy disk invented
1950 Turing Test
1951 High level language compliler invented by Grace Murray Hopper.
1951 Whirlwind
1951 UNIVAC-1 - the first commercially sucessful electronic computer
1952 EDVAC completed.
1953 Estimate that there are 100 computers in the world.
1953 Magnetic Core Memory developed.
1954 FORTRAN
1956 First conference on Artificial Intelligence
1956 Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm
1957 First Dot Matrix printer marketed by IBM
1957 FORTRAN development finished
1957 "I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."
1958 LISP
1958 - September 12 Integrated Circuit
1959 Second Generation (1959-1964)
1959 COBOL Programming Language
1960 ALGOL Programming Language
1960 Tandy Corp. founded.
1961 APL Programming Language
1964 Third Generation
1964 PL/1 Programming language
1964 Launch of IBM 360
1964 DEC PDP-8 Mini Computer
1965 Moore's law published
1965 Fuzzy Logic designed
1965 BASIC Programming Language
1965 Mouse conceived
1965 First supercoputer, the Control Data CD6600
1967 PASCAL Programming Lanaguage
1968 Intel founded
1968 LOGO Programming Language
1968 "But what ... is it [the microchip] good for?"
1969 ARPANET Started
1969 - April 7 RFC0001
1969 Introductions of RS-232
1970 First RAM chip
1970 Development of UNIX started
1970 Forth Programming langauge
1970 - June Powerful and fast flight data processor for the F14A
1971 - November 15 First microprocessor - the Intel 4004
1971 PASCAL completed
1972 Atari founded
1972 Pong released
1972 Fourth Generation
1972 C Programming language
1972 First handheld scientific calculator
1972 - April 1 Intel 8008 processor
1972 International connections to ARPANET
1973 Prolog Programming Language
1973 Ethernet developed
1974 First parallel computer (CLIP-4)
1974 - April 1 Intel 8080 processor
1974 - December First personal computer (MITS Altair 8800)
1975 BASIC implemented by Bill Gates and Paul Allen
1975 Unix marketed
1975 Formation of Microsoft
1975 IBM 5100
1976 Apple Computer Inc. founded to Market Apple I
1976 First laser printer (IBM 3800)
1976? Intel 8085
1976 Z80 processor from Zilog
1976 6502 microprocessor
1976 Cray 1, the first commercially developed supercomputer
1976 Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange algorithm published
1977 "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
1977 "RSA algorithm announced"
1977 TCP is introduced to replace Arpanet's NCP
1977 - May Apple II computer
1978 - June 8 Intel 8086
1978 Arcade Video game "Space Invaders"
1979 ADA Programming Language
1979 - June 1 Intel 8088
1979 Commodore PET released
1979 Compact Disk
1979 68000 microprocessor
1979 IBM started development of the PC
1980 "DOS addresses only 1 Megabyte of RAM because we cannot imagine any applications needing more."
1980 - October Development of MS-DOS/PC-DOS began
1980 - Early Sinclair ZX80
1981 - April Xerox 8010 ('Star') System, the first WIMP (Windowing) system.
1981 "640k ought to be enough for anybody."
1981 Sinclair ZX81 released.
1981? INTEL 80186/80188
1981 - August 12 IBM Announced the IBM PC.
1981 - August 12 MDA (Mono Display Adapter) introduced with IBM PC
1981 - August 12 MS-DOS 1.0., PC-DOS 1.0.
1981 Pacman was written
1982 BBC Micro introduced
1982 - January Commodore 64 released
1982 - February 1 Intel 80286 released
1982 Compaq's IBM PC compatible Compaq Portable
1982 MIDI standard published
1982 Red Book on the format of Audio CDs
1982 - March MS-DOS 1.25, PC-DOS 1.1
1982 - April Sinclair ZX Spectrum
1982 - May 320K floppy disk drives
1982 - December IBM buy 12% of Intel.
1983 - January 1 TCP/IP Protocol
1983 - January IBM PC gets European launch at Which Computer Show.
1983 - January Apple LISA
1983 Borland Formed.
1983 - Spring IBM XT released
1983 - March MS-DOS 2.0, PC-DOS 2.0
1983 - May MS-DOS 2.01
1983 - October IBM released the PC Junior
1983 - October PC-DOS 2.1 (for PC Jr)
1983 - October MS-DOS 2.11
1984 DNS introduced to the internet
1984 Turbo Pascal introduced by Borland
1984 HP Laserjet released
1984 - January Apple Macintosh released
1984 IBM AT released
1984 - August MS-DOS 3.0/PC-DOS 3.0
1984 - September 512KB version of the Macintosh released
1984 - October Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ released
1984 - End Compaq started developing the IDE interface
1985 - January Postscript introducted by Adobe Systems
1985 Tetris written
1985 CD-ROM
1985 EGA released
1985 - March MS-DOS 3.1/PC-DOC 3.1
1985 - May Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 announced
1985 - July 23 Commodore Amiga announced
1985 - October 17 Intel 80386 released
1985 - October MS-DOS 2.25
1985 - November Microsoft Windows launched
1985 - December MS-DOS 3.2/PC-DOS 3.2
1985 - End EMS (memory standard) introduced
1986 - January Macintosh Plus
1986 - February Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 released
1986 - April Macintosh 512Ke
1986 - September Amstrad PC 1512
1987? Acorn Archimedes
1987 Connection Machine (very parallel supercomputer)
1987 Microsoft Windows 2 released
1987 Fractal Image Compression
1987 - March 2 Macintosh II & SE
1987 - April 2 IBM PS/2 introduced
1987 VGA released
1987 MCGA released
1987 IBM 8514/A (a graphics card that included its own processor)
1987 - April MS-DOS 3.3/PC-DOS 3.3
1987 - April OS/2 launched by Microsoft and IBM
1987 - August AD-LIB soundcard released
1987 - October/November Compaq DOS (v3.31) released to cope with disk partitions >32MB
1987 - End LIM EMS v4.0
1988 First optical chip
1988 XMS (memory standard) introduced.
1988 EISA Bus standard introduced
1988 WORM (Write Once Read Many times) disks
1988 - June 16 Intel 80386 SX
1988 - July/August? MS-DOS 4.0/PC-DOS 4.0
1988 - September IBM PS/2 Model 30/286
1988 - October CAM committee formed
1988 - October Macintosh IIx released
1988 - November MS-DOS 4.01/PC-DOC 4.01
1989 World Wide Web invented by Tim Berners-Lee
1989 CD-I released
1989 - January Macintosh SE/30 released
1989 - April 1 E-IDE standard defined by CAM
1989 - March Macintosh IIcx
1989 - April 10 Intel 80486 released
1989 - September Macintosh IIci
1989 - November Sound Blaster Card released by Creative Labs
1990 VESA formed to introduce the VESA SVGA standard
1990 - March Macintosh IIfx
1990 - May 22 Microsoft Windows 3.0
1990 - October Macintosh Classic released
1990 - November Macintosh LC released
1990 - November MPC (Multimedia PC) Level 1 specification
1990 - November ATA spec. submitted to ANSI
1991 ISA standard introduced
1991 Borland took over Ashton-Take Copr. & its popular Dbase program
1991 - April 22 Intel 80486 SX
1991 - May Introduction of Sound Blaster Pro.
1991 - June MS-DOS 5.0/PC-DOS 5.0
1991 - August Linux is born
1992 "Windows NT addresses 2 Gigabytes of RAM which is more than any application will ever need"
1992 Introduction of CD-I
1992 - April Introduction of Windows 3.1
1992 - May Wolfenstein 3D released by Id Software Inc.
1992 - June Sound Blaster 16 ASP Introduced.
1993 Commercial providers were allowed to sell internet connections to individuals
1993 Doom released by Id Software Inc.
1993 The 7th Guest released by Trilobyte
1993 Novell purchased Digital Research
1993 - March 22 Intel Pentium released
1993 - May MPC Level 2 specification introduced
1993 - July 27 Windows NT 3.1
1993 - December MS-DOS 6.0 & Doublespace
1994 - March 7 Intel Pentium 90 & 100 MHz versions.
1994 - March 14 Linux kernel version 1.0 released
1994 - September PC-DOS 6.3
1994 - September 21 Windows NT 3.5
1994 - October 10 Intel Pentirum 75
1994 Doom II released.
1994 Netscape 1.0
1994 Command & Conquer released.
1995 - March Linux Kernel v1.2.0
1995 - March 27 Intel Pentium 120 MHz
1995 - May 30 Microsoft Windows NT 3.51
1995 - June 1 Intel Pentium 133 MHz
1995 - August 21 [poss. 23] Microsoft Windows 95
1995 - November 1 Pentium Pro released
1995 - December 28 CompuServe blocked access to over 200 sexually explicit sites
1995 - December JavaScript development announced by Netscape.
1996 Quake released
1996 - January Netscape Navigator 2.0 released
1996 - January 4 Intel Pentium 150 & 166 MHz versions
1996 Windows '95 OSR2
1996 - June 9 Linux 2.0 released
1996 - July 31 Windows NT 4.0
1996 - October 6 Intel Pentium 200 released
1997 Tim Berners-Lee awarded the Institute of Physics' 1997 Duddell Medal for inventing the World Wide Web
1997 "Grand Theft Auto", "Quake 2" and "Blade Runner" were all released while Lara Croft returned in "Tomb Raider 2".
1997 - January 8 Intel Pentium MMX released
1997 - May 11 IBM's Deep Blue, the first computer to beat a reigning World Chess Champion, Gary Kasparov, in a full chess match.
1997 - May 7 Intel Pentium II released
1997 - June 2 Intel Pentium MMX 233 released
1997 - August 6 Microsoft buy 100,000 non-voting shares in Apple
1998 - February Intel Pentium II 333 MHz
1998 - April A U.S. court has finally banned the long-running game of buying domain names relating to trademarks and then at selling them for extortionate prices to the companies who own the trademark.
1998 - June 25 Microsoft Windows '98
1999 - Jan 25 Linux Kernel 2.2.0 released
1999 - Feb 22 AMD release K6-III 400MHz
1999 - Aug 31 Apple PowerMac G4 released
1999 - Nov 29 AMD release Athlon 750MHz
2000 - Jan 14 US Government cryptography restrictions relaxed
2000 - Jan 19 Transmeta launch the 'Crusoe' chips
2000 - Feb 17 Official launch of Microsoft Windows 2000
2000 - March 6 AMD Release the Athlon 1GHz.
2000 - March 8 Intel release very limited supplies of the 1GHz Pentium III chip.
2000 - June 20 BT claim to have patented hyperlinks
2000 - Sept 6 RSA Security Inc. released their RSA algorithm into the public domain
2001 - Jan 4 Linux kernel 2.4.0 released.
2001 - March 24 Apple released MacOS X
2001 - October 25 Microsoft released Windows XP
2001 - November 15 Release of the `X' Box - Microsoft's games console
2002 - August 6 Edsger W. Dijkstra died
2003 - April 24 Windows Server 2003
2003 - October 24 MacOS X version 10.3 (Panther) released
2003 - December 17 Linux kernel 2.6.0 released.
2003 - December 31 Sir Tim Berners-Lee




© Copyright 1996-2004, Stephen White My homepage - email:swhite@ox.compsoc.net