History of Computer

Difference Engine

Mar 2, 1822

Charles Babbage began to develop the Difference Engine. The Difference Engine was the first automatic computing machine that can calculate several sets of numbers.

Z1

Mar 2, 1936

Konrad Zuse created the Z1, which was the first programmable computer that was functional. The Z1 had a memory of 64 words and a clock speed of 1 Hz.

Turing Machine

Mar 2, 1936

Alan Turing laid the foundations of computing by developing the Turing Machine. The Turing Machine was a device that prints symbols on tape according to some rules, it was considered to be the pioneer of the modern computers we use today.

ABC

Mar 3, 1942

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) was the first electrical digital computer that was automatic. It had the ability to perform all calculations using electronics instead of mechanical switches.

Colossus

Oct 9, 1943

The Colossus, developed by Tommy Flowers, was the earliest electric programmable computer. It was used to help the British army crack Germany messages.

EDSAC

Sep 22, 1949

The EDSAC is considered to be the first computer that is able to run stored programs. The EDSAC ran the first graphical computer game on May 6, 1949.

Whirlwind Machine

Mar 8, 1955

The Whirlwind Machine by MIT was a revolutionary invention that was the first computer with RAM.

The first workstation

Jul 4, 1968

The Xerox Alto is considered to be the first workstation in computer history, it was fully functional and included a display and a mouse. The interface Xerox Alto operated like modern computers as it had windows, menus, as well as icons.

First "portable" computer

Jul 23, 1975

The IBM 5100, released on September 1975, is the first portable computer. The first "portable" computer weighed 55 pounds (that's not really portable) and had a 1.9 MHz processor, 64 KB RAM, and a five inch display.

Osborne I

Jul 23, 1981

Adam Osborne developed the first computer that was truly portable. The Osborne I weighed 24.5 pounds and had a display of 5 inch.

Windows 3.0

May 22, 1990

Microsoft introduced Windows 3.0 at the price of $149.95, it was the first windows that was widely successful.

Windows 95

Aug 24, 1995

WIndows 95 was a significant step in the development of the Windows series, it feautred a number of improvements including the graphical user interface and simplified "plug-n-play". Windows 95 was very successful as it sold a million copies in 4 days.

Windows XP

Aug 24, 2001

As the successor of Windows 3.1, Windows XP became an extremely popular version of Windows. Windows XP features many improvements, such as new GUI, wider hardware support, and higher mulitimedia capacities. It sold more than 400 million copies within the first 5 years, and a total of 1 billion copies were sold by April 2014.

Windows 7

Oct 22, 2009

Windows 7 is the successor of Windows Vista (which was poorly received), its enhancements include Internet Explorer 8, multi-touch support, new Media Centre, higher security, as well as a new "Superbar" that enables the user to pin applications to the taskbar.

Kenbak-1

Mar 3, 2015

The Kenbak-1 is widely recognized as the world's first personal computer, it had a memory of 256 bytes and an instruction cycle of 1 MHz. The device relied on a number of switiches for inputting and outputting data.