Timeline: History of Computer Programming

Sep 30, 1801

Jaquard Loom

The Jaquard Loom was invented in 1801 by Joseph Marie Jaquard. The loom itself is controlled by punched cards with punched holes. Each different row of hole punches corresponded to a row of textiles.

Dec 10, 1815

First Ever Computer Programmer

Ada Lovelace was born on December 10th, 1815. Her father was George Gordon Byron, the 6th Baron Byron. She theorized the computer would one day be able to compute Bernoulli Numbers.

Sep 30, 1837

Analytical Engine

The Analytical Engine was designed by Charles Babbard. It had an arithmetic logic unit, a control flow in the form of conditional branching and loops. It also had integrated memory. Those components made it the first design for a general purpose computer.

Feb 29, 1860

The Father of Modern Automatic Computation

Herman Hollerith invented a mechanical tabulator based off of punch cards to tabulate statistics from millions of pieces of data. The company he founded in 1896 was called C&O Canal. It is now called IBM.

Dec 9, 1906

COBOL Computer Programming Language

COBOL Enabled computers to have a language closer to english than machine language. She coined the phrase 'bug' and 'debug'. It was called a 'bug' because a moth flew out of the MARK I, and the moth was causing the hardware problems.

Oct 2, 1948

Plankalkül

Konrad Zuse invented Plankalkul between 1943 and 1945. It stands for Formal System of Planning.

Oct 7, 1956

Fred Cohen

Fred Cohen is the man credited for the saying Computer Virus. He developed the term in 1983. It is used to describe what happens when something 'infects' a computer.

Oct 7, 1970

Pascal Programming

Pascal Programming was designed by Nikalus Wirth in 1970. This language was developed to develop structured programming and data structuring.

Oct 2, 1972

The First Computer Game

Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney created the first computer game, which was the computer version of a popular arcade game, (Spacewar) and renamed it Pong.

Oct 7, 1972

C Programming Language

The C Programming Language was developed by Dennis Ritchie. It first appeared in 1972. It has constructs that make machine instructions, and it has been formerly coded in assembly language.