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In France, Joseph Marie Jacquard invents a loom that uses punched wooden cards to automatically weave fabric designs. Early computers would use similar punch cards.
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Herman Hollerith designs a punch card system to calculate the 1880 census, accomplishing the task in just three years and saving the government $5 million. He establishes a company that would ultimately become IBM.
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Alan Turing presents the notion of a universal machine, later called the Turing machine, capable of computing anything that is commutable. The central concept of the modern computer was based on his ideas
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Atanasoff and his graduate student, Clifford Berry, design a computer that can solve 29 equations simultaneously. This marks the first time a computer is able to store information on its main memory.
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Two University of Pennsylvania professors, John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, build the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC). Considered the grandfather of digital computers, it fills a 20-foot by 40-foot room and has 18,000 vacuum tubes.
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Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce unveil the integrated circuit, known as the computer chip. Kilby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for his work
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Alan Shugart leads a team of IBM engineers who invent the "floppy disk," allowing data to be shared among computers.
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Robert Metcalfe, a member of the research staff for Xerox, develops Ethernet for connecting multiple computers and other hardware
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Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak start Apple Computers on April Fool's Day and roll out the Apple I, the first computer with a single-circuit board, according to Stanford University.
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Jobs and Wozniak incorporate Apple and show the Apple II at the first West Coast Computer Faire. It offers color graphics and incorporates an audio cassette drive for storage
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Sergey Brin and Larry Page develop the Google search engine at Stanford University
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The term Wi-Fi becomes part of the computing language and users begin connecting to the Internet without wires
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Apple introduces the MacBook Pro, its first Intel-based, dual-core mobile computer, as well as an Intel-based iMac. Nintendo's Wii game console hits the market.
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Apple unveils the iPad, changing the way consumers view media and jump starting the dormant tablet computer segment.
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Apple releases the Apple Watch. Microsoft releases Windows 10.
