-
invax
J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly built the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering between 1943 and 1946. A 1946 patent rights dispute with the university led Eckert and Mauchly to depart the Moore School to form the Electronic Control Company, later renamed Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation (EMCC), based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. That company first built a computer called BINAC (Binary Automatic Com -
apple 1 released
On March 5, 1975 Steve Wozniak attended the first meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club in Gordon French's garage. He was so inspired that he immediately set to work on what would become the Apple I computer. Wozniak calculated that laying out his design would cost $1,000 and parts would cost another $20 per computer; he hoped to recoup his costs if 50 people bought his design for $40 each. His friend Steve Jobs arranged to sell 50 computers to the Byte Shop (a computer store in Mountain View, C -
first home computer
The most popular home computers in the USA up to 1985 were: the TRS-80 (1977), various models of the Apple II family (first introduced in 1977), the Atari 400/800 (1979) along with its follow up models the 800XL and 130XE, and the Commodore VIC-20 (1980) and the Commodore 64 (1982). -
usenet
Newsgroup experiments first occurred in 1979. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis of Duke University came up with the idea as a replacement for a local announcement program, and established a link with nearby University of North Carolina using Bourne shell scripts written by Steve Bellovin. The public release of news was in the form of conventional compiled software, written by Steve Daniel and Truscott. In 1980, Usenet was connected to ARPANET through UC Berkeley which had connections to both Usenet and -
first laptop
In 1981 the Epson HX-20, was announced. The Epson had a LCD screen, a rechargeable battery, and a calculator-size printer in a 1.6 kg (3.5 lb.) chassis. -
the invention of windows
On November 20, 1985, two years after the initial announcement, Microsoft ships Windows 1.0. Now, rather than typing MS‑DOS commands, you just move a mouse to point and click your way through screens, or “windows.” Bill Gates says, “It is unique software designed for the serious PC user.” -
the founding of google
Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California. While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, the two theorized about a better system that analysed the relationships between websites. They called this new technology PageRank; it determined a website's relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of those pag -
the browser wars
A browser war is competition for dominance in the usage share of web browsers. The first browser war was Microsoft's Internet Explorer against Netscape's Navigator during the late 1990s. -
the first iphone
Steve Jobs, then CEO at Apple Inc., conceived an idea of using a multi-touch touchscreen to interact with a computer in a way in which he could type directly onto the display, essentially removing the physical keyboard and mouse, the same as a tablet computer. Jobs recruited a group of Apple engineers to investigate the idea as a side project. When Jobs reviewed the prototype and its user interface, he conceived a second idea of implementing the technology onto a mobile phone. The whole effort w -
facebook reaches 500 million users
Traffic to Facebook increased steadily after 2009. The company announced 500 million users in July 2010 making it the largest online social network in the world at the time. According to the company's data, half of the site's membership use Facebook daily, for an average of 34 minutes, while 150 million users access the site by mobile. A company representative called the milestone a "quiet revolution."