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Computer Timeline
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Charles Babbage thought of the Difference Engine
The Difference Engine is a mechanical calculator first purposed and developed by Charles Babbage in 1822 that was capable of computing several sets of numbers and making a hard copies of the results. -
Henry Babbage creates the Analytical Engine
In 1910 Henry Babbage, Charles Babbage's youngest son was able to complete a portion of this machine and was able to perform basic calculations. It was created mostly for basic flow control, punch cards, and integrated memory and is the first general-purpose computer concept. -
The Turing Machine was Thought of
A turing machine is a machine proposed by the Alan Turing in 1936 that became the foundation for theories about computing and computers. The machine was a device that printed symbols on paper tape in a manner that emulated a person following a series of logical instructions. -
Z1 was Created
In Germany's Konrad Zuse in his parents living room in 1936 to 1938 and is considered to be the first electro-mechanical binary programmable (modern) computer and really the first functional computer. -
Aranasoff and Berry create the ABC
Short for Atanasoff-Berry Computer, the ABC started being developed by Professor John Vincent Atanasoff and graduate student Cliff Berry in 1937 and continued to be developed until 1942 at the Iowa State College (now Iowa State University). The ABC was an electrical computer that used vacuum tubes for digital computation including binary math and Boolean logic and had no CPU. -
Colossus was made by Tommy Flowers
The Colossus was created to help the British code breakers read encrypted German messages. -
ENIAC was finished
The ENIAC was invented by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania and began construction in 1943 and was not completed until 1946. It occupied about 1,800 square feet and used about 18,000 vacuum tubes, weighing almost 50 tons. -
EDSAC was Created
The early British computer known as the EDSAC is considered to be the first stored program electronic computer. The computer performed its first calculation on May 6, 1949 and was the computer that ran the first graphical computer game, nicknamed "Baby". -
UNIVAC 1101 Came to America
First delivered to the United States Government in 1950, the UNIVAC 1101 or ERA 1101 is considered to be the first computer that was capable of storing and running a program from memory. -
IBM 701
On April 7, 1953 IBM publicly introduced the 701, its first electric computer and first mass produced computer. Later IBM introduced its first personal computer called the IBM PC in 1981. The computer was code named and still sometimes referred to as the Acorn and had a 8088 processor, 16 KB of memory, which was expandable to 256 and utilizing MS-DOS. -
PDP-1
In 1960, Digital Equipment Corporation released its first of many PDP computers the PDP-1. -
First Mass-Marketed Desktop
In 1968, Hewlett Packard began marketing the first mass-marketed PC and the first desktop computer, the HP 9100A. -
First Workstation
Although it was never sold, the first workstation is considered to be the Xerox Alto, introduced in 1974. The computer was revolutionary for its time and included a fully functional computer, display, and mouse. The computer operated like many computers today utilizing windows, menus and icons as an interface to its operating system. -
The First Personal Computer
In 1975, Ed Roberts coined the term "personal computer" when he introduced the Altair 8800. Although the first personal computer is considered by many to be the KENBAK-1, which was first introduced for $750 in 1971. The computer relied on a series of switches for inputting data and output data by turning on and off a series of lights. -
The First Laptop or Portable Computer
The IBM 5100 is the first portable computer, which was released on September 1975. The computer weighed 55 pounds and had a five inch CRT display, tape drive, 1.9MHz PALM processor, and 64KB of RAM. In the picture is an ad of the IBM 5100 taken from a November 1975 issue of Scientific America. -
Difference Engine made
In June 1991 the London Science Museum completed the Difference Engine No 2 for the bicentennial year of Babbage's birth
