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Charles Babbage was an English mathematician, who had the idea of a steam-driven calculating machine that would be able to compute tables of numbers. However, this project funded by the English government, was a failure.
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John Ambrose Fleming invents the first vacuum tube device, which he called an oscillation valve. It consisted of two electrodes, a cathode and an anode, placed on either end of an encapsulated glass tube.
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Alan Turing presents the idea of a universal machine, later called the Turing machine, capable of computing anything that is computable. The computer w have today was based off of this idea.
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Konrad Zuse invents the first programmable computer, built in his parent's living room. It is considered to be the first electromechanical binary programmable computer and the first functional modern computer.
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John Vincent Atanasoff created the first electronic digital computer. Its development continued until 1942 at the Iowa State College (now Iowa State University). The ABC was an electrical computer that used more than 300 vacuum tubes for digital computation.
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William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain of Bell Laboratories invent the transistor. They discovered how to make an electric switch with solid materials and no need for a vacuum.
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Grace Hopper develops the first computer language, which eventually becomes known as COBOL. Son of IBM CEO Thomas Johnson Watson Sr., Thomas Johnson Watson Jr., conceives the IBM 701 EDPM to help the United Nations keep track of Korea during the war.
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John McCarthy invents the first use of artificial intelligence. McCarthy coined the term “AI” in 1955 in connection with a proposed summer workshop at Dartmouth College, which many of the world's leading thinkers in computing attended.
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Doug Engelbart invents the computer mouse in his research lab at Stanford Research Institute. The basic idea for the mouse first came to him in 1961 while sitting in a conference session on computer graphics.
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Ted Hoff invents the microprocessor, "A microprocessor is a central processing unit (CPU) on a single integrated circuit chip that contains millions of tiny components including transistors, resistors, and diodes."
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Created by Tim Berners-Lee, and Robert Cailliau, the World Wide Web is considered the first web browser.
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Steve Jobs creates the first iPhone, a touchscreen mobile phone with an iPod, camera and Web-browsing capabilities, among other features.
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I believe the Turing Machine is the most important invention, in terms of computing. It paved the way for more invention, such at the first digital computer, and first programmable computer. The iPhone could have never been invented without the bases of an invention, computing anything that is computable.
