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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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English mathematician Charles Babbage conceives of a steam-driven calculating machine that would be able to compute tables of numbers. The project, funded by the English government, is a failure. More than a century later, however, the world’s first computer was actually built.
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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 computable. 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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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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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.
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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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Microsoft announces Windows, its response to Apple’s GUI. Commodore unveils the Amiga 1000, which features advanced audio and video capabilities.
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The Pentium microprocessor advances the use of graphics and music on PCs.
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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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The first 64-bit processor, AMD’s Athlon 64, becomes available to the consumer market.
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The iPhone brings many computer functions to the smartphone.
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Apple unveils the iPad, changing the way consumers view media and jumpstarting the dormant tablet computer segment.
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Google releases the Chromebook, a laptop that runs the Google Chrome OS.
