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Complex Number Calculator
Bell Telephone Laboratories completes this calculator, designed by scientist George Stibitz. -
ERA 1101 introduced
One of the first commercially produced computers, the company´s first customer was the US Navy. The 1101, designed by ERA but built by Remington-Rand, was intended for high-speed computing and stored 1 million bits on its magnetic drum, one of the earliest magnetic storage devices and a technology which ERA had done much to perfect in its own laboratories. -
Grimsdale and Webb build early transistorized computer
Working under Tom Kilburn at England’s Manchester University, Richard Grimsdale and Douglas Webb demonstrate a prototype transistorized computer, the "Manchester TC", on November 16, 1953. -
Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) is Demonstrated
The increasing number of users needing access to computers in the early 1960s leads to experiments in timesharing computer systems. Timesharing systems can support many users – sometimes hundreds – by sharing the computer with each user. CTSS was developed by the MIT Computation Center under the direction of Fernando Corbató and was based on a modified IBM 7094 mainframe computer. Programs created for CTSS included RUNOFF, an early text formatting utility, and an early inter-user messaging syste -
CDC 6600 supercomputer introduced
The Control Data Corporation (CDC) 6600 performs up to 3 million instructions per second —three times faster than that of its closest competitor, the IBM 7030 supercomputer. The 6600 retained the distinction of being the fastest computer in the world until surpassed by its successor, the CDC 7600, in 1968. Part of the speed came from the computer´s design, which used 10 small computers, known as peripheral processing units, to offload the workload from the central processor. -
3C DDP-116 introduced
Designed by engineer Gardner Hendrie for Computer Control Corporation (CCC), the DDP-116 is announced at the 1965 Spring Joint Computer Conference. It was the world's first commercial 16-bit minicomputer and 172 systems were sold. The basic computer cost $28,500. -
Birth of modern mobile networks
In 1973, ARPA funds the outfitting of a packet radio research van at SRI to develop standards for a Packet Radio Network (PRNET). As the unmarked van drives through the San Francisco Bay Area, stuffed full of hackers and sometimes uniformed generals, it is pioneering wireless, packet-switched digital networks, including the kind your mobile phone uses today. A related set of experiments test out Voice Over IP (like the later Skype). -
Atari introduces its Model 400 and 800 computers
Shortly after delivery of the Atari VCS game console, Atari designs two microcomputers with game capabilities: the Model 400 and Model 800. The 400 served primarily as a game console, while the 800 was more of a home computer. Both faced strong competition from the Apple II, Commodore PET, and TRS-80 computers. Atari's 8-bit computers were influential in the arts, especially in the emerging DemoScene culture of the 1980s and '90s. -
TIME announces “Machine of the Year”
TIME magazine alters its annual tradition of naming a "Man of the Year," choosing instead to name the personal computer its "Machine of the Year." In introducing the theme, TIME publisher John A. Meyers wrote, "Several human candidates might have represented 1982, but none symbolized the past year more richly, or will be viewed by history as more significant, than a machine: the computer." His magazine, he explained, has chronicled the change in public opinion with regard to computers. A senior -
Compaq introduces the Deskpro 386 system
Compaq beats IBM to the market when it announces the Deskpro 386, the first computer on the market to use Intel´s new 80386 chip, a 32-bit microprocessor with 275,000 transistors on each chip. At 4 million operations per second and 4 kilobytes of memory, the 80386 gave PCs as much speed and power as older mainframes and minicomputers. -
Intel's Touchstone Delta supercomputer system comes online
Reaching 32 gigaflops (32 billion floating point operations per second), Intel’s Touchstone Delta has 512 processors operating independently, arranged in a two-dimensional communications “mesh.” Caltech researchers used this supercomputer prototype for projects such as real-time processing of satellite images, and for simulating molecular models in AIDS research. It would serve as the model for several other significant multi-processor systems that would be among the fastest in the world. -
NSF lifts restrictions on commercial use of the Internet
After the National Science Foundation (NSF) changes its policy, the Internet is for the first time a publicly accessible network with no commercial restrictions. This removes the last major remaining advantage for competing networking and internetworking standards, from OSI to SNA to CompuServe’s own international network. Four years later the NSF will turn over the Internet’s backbone (main high speed lines and nodes) completely to private industry. -
Intel's Pentium microprocessor is released
The Pentium is the fifth generation of the ‘x86’ line of microprocessors from Intel, the basis for the IBM PC and its clones. The Pentium introduced several advances that made programs run faster such as the ability to execute several instructions at the same time and support for graphics and music. -
Y2K bug
During the late 1990s, the impending Year 2000 (Y2K) bug fuels news reports that the onset of the year 2000 will cripple telecommunications, the financial sector and other vital infrastructure. The issue was rooted in the fact that date stamps in most previously written software used only two digits to represent year information. This meant that some computers might not be able to distinguish the year 1900 from the year 2000. Although there were some minor glitches on New Year’s Day in 2000, no -
Windows XP is released
The Windows XP operating system is released. Based on the Windows NT kernel, XP was considered more stable than previous versions of the operating system. XP was widely adopted by industry and persisted much longer than Microsoft planned. For example, in 2014, 95% of the world’s automated teller machines ran XP. -
Mac OS X is released
Mac OS X is released. It was a significant departure from the classic Mac OS as it was based on the Unix-like operating systems FreeBSD, NetBSD and NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP. OS X introduced a more stable and reliable platform and multiple applications could more efficiently be run at the same time. Mac OS X 10.7 (“Lion”) was the first version to support 64-bit Intel processors. -
World of Warcraft comes on-line
After ten years as a series of strategy games, Blizzard Entertainment launches World of Warcraft, a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) version of their popular Warcraft franchise. Centered on the fantasy world of Azeroth, Warcraft allows players to choose an avatar to go “questing.” Players form guilds and raiding parties, as well as form strong social, and even romantic, connections through the game’s built-in chat function. World of Warcraft has been dominant in the MMORPG m -
Dropbox
Dropbox is founded by Arash Ferdowsi and Drew Houston. Dropbox was designed as a cloud-based service used for convenient storage and access to files. Users could upload files via the web to Dropbox’s vast server farms, and could instantly access them on any of their devices or computers that had the Dropbox client installed. The service also included sharing functionalities which allowed access to folders by multiple users. Dropbox’s “freemium” business model allowed limited, basic file manageme -
IBM’s Watson defeats Jeopardy! contestants
In 2010, IBM’s Watson spars against former Jeopardy! Tournament of Champion contestants and finishes with a 71% winning percentage. This was preparation for a 2011 matchup where Watson would defeat two former human Jeopardy! champions. In the televised exhibition match, Watson handily defeated two of the all-time best Jeopardy! players, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, by analyzing natural language questions and content more accurately and faster than its human counterparts. -
FCC issues Net Neutrality decision
Net neutrality, the treatment of all data sent across the internet as equal regardless of user, content, or platform, is one of the founding principles of the internet. Many Internet service providers (ISPs) and other technology companies opposed the idea by claiming it would discourage investment in infrastructure, while consumer advocates and civil rights organizations asserted that net neutrality protects freedom of speech and ensures the widest possible Internet access. The Federal Communica
