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Invention of the Difference Engine
Although never actually built, Charles Babbage conceptualized the Difference Engine, which was able to tabulate plynominal functions. -
Discovery of the "edison effect" in vacuum tubes
Edison patented the vacuum tube, although not fully understanding how and why it was able to hold and transmit an electric current. Vaccum tubes were used extensivley in WWII, until they were later replaced by transistors. -
The Transistor
John Bardeen and Walter Brattain worked on the first transistor, a mechanism able to amplify and switch electronic signals & power. Today, transistor play a fundamental role in all computers. -
FORTRAN
John Backus, at IBM, developed "FORTRAN", the first programming language. It was especially suited for numeric computations and scientific computing. Today, FORTRAN (and its successors) is one of the most popular programming languages in high-performance computing. -
The Integrated Circuit
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce produce the first example of an integrated circuit in 1958. The integrated circuit can hold billions of transistors, and is very compact. It is used in virtually all electronic equipment today. -
SpaceWar!
Steve Rusell created the first "real" video game (after "Tennis for Two") in 1962. It involved two players attemting to destroy each other in opposing spaceships. -
The first "mouse"
Douglas Engelbart completed the first mouse in 1963. It used a trackball, originally invented as post-WWII radar-tracking technology. The mouse is the most common device used to navigate the various interfaces on today's PC's. -
Intel 1103 DRAM
In 1970, Intel released the 1103 DRAM ( Dynamic Random Acess Memory) as a semiconducting memory chip. RAM serves as the first form of storage in a PC, allowing data to quickly be stored and accessed from anywhere on the drive. -
Ethernet
Robert Metcalfe & Xerox developed the Ethernet (and componets), one of several competing local area network (LAN) technologies. It allowed several users on different computers to share and exchange information via a plug in cable. -
Scelbi & Mark-8 Altair & IBM 5100 Computers
First commercial computers released to the public. -
WordStar
Seymour Rubenstein and Rob Barnaby release WordStar, the first word processing software. -
Microsoft Windows
Windows, introduced by Microsoft, was a series of graphical interface operating systems released in 1985. The operating system quickly overtook Apple's MacIntosh OS, becoming one of the most prominet operating environments on the PC -
Python
Developed by Guido Von Russom, Python is a genral-purpose programming language used mainly for high-level programming. It emphasizes code readability. -
Java
Java, developed by Oracle, was able to be run on on different platforms without needing to be recompiled. -
DDR SDRAM
The DDR SDRAM interface makes higher transfer rates possible by more strict control of the timing of the electrical data and clock signals. It is eventually superseded by DDR2 SDRAM and DDR3 SDRAM, respectively.
