Evolution of Computer

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    In 1642, at the age of 19, a French mathematician by the name of Biaise Pascal, invented the Pascaline. the Pascaline is known as the first mechanical and automatic calculator. pascal invented the Pascaline to help make his father's job as a tax accountant easier. PascalineRear.jpgThe machine is sometimes called the La Pascaline or Pascal's machine. The Pascaline never became popular. First of all, the machine broke often and its

  • Liebniz's Calculator

    In 1673, German inventor Gottfried Liebniz perfected the Liebniz Calculator. Liebniz entered a university at fifteen years of age and received his bachelor's degree at seventeen. This machine is sometimes called The Stepped Reckoner. leibnitz_rechner.jpgThe Liebniz was also a calculating machine, but much superior to that of the Pascaline. It could do more than just add and subtract. The Liebniz Calculator could also multiply, divide, and find square roots of numbers. It too was mechanical and w

  • Jacquard's Loom

    In 1801, Jacquard invented the Jacquard loom. It was a weaving machine that was controlled by punched cards. While the loom was being pumped, cards with holes in them were attached together in a pattern through which strings of thread were automatically fed. These cards would feed the right pieces of thread into the loom to make a beautiful cloth.

  • the Difference Engine

    In the early 1820s, an English mathematician by the name charles Babbage, designed a computing machine called the Difference Engine. This machine was to be used in the calculating and printing of simple math tables. In the 1830s, he designed a second computing machine called the Analytical Engine. This machine was to be used in calculating complicated problems by following a set of instructions.

  • Electro-mechanical Machines1890-Herman Hollerith & his Tabulating Machine

    An American inventor by the name of Herman Hollerith wanted to speed up the work involved in taking the government census. In 1890, 50 years after charles Babbage's death, Hollerith invented a machine called the tabulating Machine, using notes that were left by Babbage. Prior to this invention it took nearly eight years to count everyone in the United States and add up all the information about where people lived, their ages, and what their jobs were. The Tabulating Machine used punched cards

  • Konrad Zuse finishes the Z3 Computer

    The Z3, an early computer built by German engineer Konrad Zuse working in complete isolation from developments elsewhere, uses 2,300 relays, performs floating point binary arithmetic, and has a 22-bit word length. The Z3 was used for aerodynamic calculations but was destroyed in a bombing raid on Berlin in late 1943. Zuse later supervised a reconstruction of the Z3 in the 1960s, which is currently on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

  • First Colossus operational at Bletchley Park

    Designed by British engineer Tommy Flowers, the Colossus is designed to break the complex Lorenz ciphers used by the Nazis during World War II. A total of ten Colossi were delivered, each using as many as 2,500 vacuum tubes. A series of pulleys transported continuous rolls of punched paper tape containing possible solutions to a particular code. Colossus reduced the time to break Lorenz messages from weeks to hours. Most historians believe that the use of Colossus machines significantly shortene

  • Public unveiling of ENIAC

    Started in 1943, the ENIAC computing system was built by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania. Because of its electronic, as opposed to electromechanical, technology, it is over 1,000 times faster than any previous computer. ENIAC used plugboards and switches for programming, occupied more than 1,000 square feet, used about 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighed 30 tons. It was believed that ENIAC had done more calculation ov

  • First Computer Program to Run on a Computer

    University of Manchester researchers Frederic Williams, Tom Kilburn, and Geoff Toothill develop the Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), better known as the Manchester Baby. The Baby was built to test a new memory technology developed by Williams and Kilburn -- soon known as the Williams Tube – which was the first electronic random access memory for a computer. The first program, consisting of seventeen instructions and written by Kilburn, ran on June 21st, 1948. This was the first program t

  • EDSAC completed

    The first practical stored-program computer, EDSAC is built at Cambridge University using vacuum tubes and mercury delay lines for memory. The EDSAC project was led by Cambridge professor and director of the Cambridge Computation Laboratory, Maurice Wilkes. Wilkes' ideas grew out of the Moore School lectures he had attended three years earlier. One major advance in programming was Wilkes' use of a library of short programs, called “subroutines,” stored on punched paper tapes and used for perform

  • Plans to build the Simon 1 relay logic machine are published

    The hobbyist magazine Radio Electronics publishes Edmund Berkeley's design for the Simon 1 relay computer from 1950 to 1951. The Simon 1 used relay logic and cost about $600 to build. In his book Giant Brains, Berkeley noted - “We shall now consider how we can design a very simple machine that will think. Let us call it Simon, because of its predecessor, Simple Simon... Simon is so simple and so small in fact that it could be built to fill up less space than a grocery-store box; about four cubic

  • IAS computer operational

    The Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) computer is a multi-year research project conducted under the overall supervision of world-famous mathematician John von Neumann. The notion of storing both data and instructions in memory became known as the ‘stored program concept’ to distinguish it from earlier methods of instructing a computer. The IAS computer was designed for scientific calculations and it performed essential work for the US atomic weapons program. Over the next few years, the basic de

  • The RAND Corporation’s JOHNNIAC runs

    The JOHNNIAC computer is one of 17 computers that followed the basic design of Princeton's INstitute of Advanced Study (IAS) computer. It was named after John von Neumann, a world famous mathematician and computer pioneer of the day. Completed in 1954, JOHNNIAC was used for scientific and engineering calculations. It was also repeatedly expanded and improved throughout its 13-year lifespan. Many innovative programs were created for JOHNNIAC, including the time-sharing system JOSS that allowed ma

  • The Atlas Computer debuts

    A joint project of England’s Manchester University, Ferranti Computers, and Plessey, Atlas comes online nine years after Manchester’s computer lab begins exploring transistor technology. Atlas was the fastest computer in the world at the time and introduced the concept of “virtual memory,” that is, using a disk or drum as an extension of main memory. System control was provided through the Atlas Supervisor, which some consider to be the first true operating system.

  • Xerox PARC Alto introduced

    The Alto is a groundbreaking computer with wide influence on the computer industry. It was based on a graphical user interface using windows, icons, and a mouse, and worked together with other Altos over a local area network. It could also share files and print out documents on an advanced Xerox laser printer. Applications were also highly innovative: a WYSISYG word processor known as “Bravo,” a paint program, a graphics editor, and email for example. Apple’s inspiration for the Lisa and Macinto

  • Cray-1 supercomputer introduced

    The fastest machine of its day, The Cray-1's speed comes partly from its shape, a "C," which reduces the length of wires and thus the time signals need to travel across them. High packaging density of integrated circuits and a novel Freon cooling system also contributed to its speed. Each Cray-1 took a full year to assemble and test and cost about $10 million. Typical applications included US national defense work, including the design and simulation of nuclear weapons, and weather forecasting.

  • Steve Wozniak completes the Apple-1

    Designed by Sunnyvale, California native Steve Wozniak, and marketed by his friend Steve Jobs, the Apple-1 is a single-board computer for hobbyists. With an order for 50 assembled systems from Mountain View, California computer store The Byte Shop in hand, the pair started a new company, naming it Apple Computer, Inc. In all, about 200 of the boards were sold before Apple announced the follow-on Apple II a year later as a ready-to-use computer for consumers, a model which sold in the millions fo

  • Apple II introduced

    Sold complete with a main logic board, switching power supply, keyboard, case, manual, game paddles, and cassette tape containing the game Breakout, the Apple-II finds popularity far beyond the hobbyist community which made up Apple’s user community until then. When connected to a color television set, the Apple II produced brilliant color graphics for the time. Millions of Apple IIs were sold between 1977 and 1993, making it one of the longest-lived lines of personal computers. Apple gave away

  • The Commodore PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) introduced

    The first of several personal computers released in 1977, the PET comes fully assembled with either 4 or 8 KB of memory, a built-in cassette tape drive, and a membrane keyboard. The PET was popular with schools and for use as a home computer. It used a MOS Technologies 6502 microprocessor running at 1 MHz. After the success of the PET, Commodore remained a major player in the personal computer market into the 1990s.

  • IBM introduces its Personal Computer (PC)

    IBM's brand recognition, along with a massive marketing campaign, ignites the fast growth of the personal computer market with the announcement of its own personal computer (PC). The first IBM PC, formally known as the IBM Model 5150, was based on a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 microprocessor and used Microsoft´s MS-DOS operating system. The IBM PC revolutionized business computing by becoming the first PC to gain widespread adoption by industry. The IBM PC was widely copied (“cloned”) and led to the cre

  • Apple introduces the Lisa computer

    Lisa is the first commercial personal computer with a graphical user interface (GUI). It was thus an important milestone in computing as soon Microsoft Windows and the Apple Macintosh would soon adopt the GUI as their user interface, making it the new paradigm for personal computing. The Lisa ran on a Motorola 68000 microprocessor and came equipped with 1 MB of RAM, a 12-inch black-and-white monitor, dual 5.25-inch floppy disk drives and a 5 MB “Profile” hard drive. Lisa itself, and especially i

  • Apple Computer launches the Macintosh

    Apple introduces the Macintosh with a television commercial during the 1984 Super Bowl, which plays on the theme of totalitarianism in George Orwell´s book 1984. The ad featured the destruction of “Big Brother” – a veiled reference to IBM -- through the power of personal computing found in a Macintosh. The Macintosh was the first successful mouse-driven computer with a graphical user interface and was based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor. Its price was $2,500. Applications that came as par

  • IBM releases the first commercial RISC-based workstation

    Reduced instruction set computers (RISC) grow out of the observation that the simplest 20 percent of a computer´s instruction set does 80 percent of the work. The IBM PC-RT had 1 MB of RAM, a 1.2-megabyte floppy disk drive, and a 40 MB hard drive. It performed 2 million instructions per second, but other RISC-based computers worked significantly faster.

  • IBM introduces its Personal System/2 (PS/2) machines

    The first IBM system to include Intel´s 80386 chip, the company ships more than 1 million units by the end of the first year. IBM released a new operating system, OS/2, at the same time, allowing the use of a mouse with IBM PCs for the first time. Many credit the PS/2 for making the 3.5-inch floppy disk drive and video graphics array (VGA) standard for IBM computers. The system was IBM's response to losing control of the PC market with the rise of widespread copying of the original IBM PC design

  • Macintosh Portable is introduced

    Apple had initially included a handle in their Macintosh computers to encourage users to take their Macs on the go, though not until five years after the initial introduction does Apple introduce a true portable computer. The Macintosh Portable was heavy, weighing sixteen pounds, and expensive (US$6,500). Sales were weaker than projected, despite being widely praised by the press for its active matrix display, removable trackball, and high performance. The line was discontinued less than two yea

  • PowerBook series of laptops is introduced

    Apple's Macintosh Portable meets with little success in the marketplace and leads to a complete redesign of Apple's line of portable computers. All three PowerBooks introduced featured a built-in trackball, internal floppy drive, and palm rests, which would eventually become typical of 1990s laptop design. The PowerBook 100 was the entry-level machine, while the PowerBook 140 was more powerful and had a larger memory. The PowerBook 170 was the high-end model, featuring an active matrix display,

  • Apple ships the first Newton

    Apple enters the handheld computer market with the Newton. Dubbed a “Personal Data Assistant” by Apple President John Scully in 1992, the Newton featured many of the features that would define handheld computers in the following decades. The handwriting recognition software was much maligned for inaccuracy. The Newton line never performed as well as hoped and was discontinued in 1998.

  • Intel's Pentium microprocessor is released

    The Pentium is the fifth generation of the ‘x86’ line of microprocessors from Intel, the basis for the IBM PC and its clones. The Pentium introduced several advances that made programs run faster such as the ability to execute several instructions at the same time and support for graphics and music.

  • The iMac, a range of all-in-one Macintosh desktop computers, is launched

    Apple makes a splash with its Bondi Blue iMac, which sells for about $1,300. Customers got a machine with a 233-MHz G3 processor, 4GB hard drive, 32MB of RAM, a CD-ROM drive, and a 15" monitor. The machine was noted for its ease-of-use and included a 'manual' that contained only a few pictures and less than 20 words. As Apple’s first new product under the leadership of a returning Steve Jobs, many consider this the most significant step in Apple's return from near-bankruptcy in the middle 1990s.

  • The Amazon Kindle is released

    Many companies have attempted to release electronic reading systems dating back to the early 1990s. Online retailer Amazon released the Kindle, one of the first to gain a large following among consumers. The first Kindle featured wireless access to content via Amazon.com, along with an SD card slot allowing increased storage. The first release proved so popular there was a long delay in delivering systems on release. Follow-on versions of the Kindle added further audio-video capabilities.

  • The Apple iPhone is released

    Apple launches the iPhone - a combination of web browser, music player and cell phone - which could download new functionality in the form of "apps" (applications) from the online Apple store. The touchscreen enabled smartphone also had built-in GPS navigation, high-definition camera, texting, calendar, voice dictation, and weather reports.

  • The Apple iPad is released

    The iPad combines many of the popular capabilities of the iPhone, such as built-in high-definition camera, access to the iTunes Store, and audio-video capabilities, but with a nine-inch screen and without the phone. Apps, games, and accessories helped spur the popularity of the iPad and led to its adoption in thousands of different applications from movie making, creating art, making music, inventory control and point-of-sale systems, to name but a few.