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George Stibitz develops a Complex Number Calculator
George Stibitz developed a full-scale calculator for complex arithmetic and it was important because it laid a foundation for digital computers. -
Period: to
Computers
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The Harvard Mark 1 Computer is made
Howard Aiken & Grace Hopper develop a big computer for World War 2, it could carry out addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and reference to previous results. It had special subroutines for logarithms and trigonometric functions and used 23 decimal place numbers. It was important because it expanded understanding of computers. -
John Backus & IBM FORTRAN Computer Programming Language is made
It was the first succesful high level programming language -
Steve Russell & MIT Spacewar Computer Game
This was the first computer game invented and it was important because computer games are a huge business nowadays and this laid the foundation for others -
The first computer mouse is invented
Douglas Engelbart invents and patents the first computer mouse (nicknamed the mouse because the tail came out the end). It's was important because it made it easier to use computers -
Scelbi & Mark-8 Altair & IBM 5100 Computers
The first consumer computer is released this is important because it made computers available to the public -
Microsoft MS-DOS Computer Operating System is released
Microsoft MS-DOS was important because it was the best operating system that had been released -
Apple Macintosh Computer
Apple releases a more affordable home computer with a GUI. It was important to the history of computers because it meant that even more of the public would get computers -
The first smartphone is released
The IBM simon is released it had a touch screen and although it looks primitive today compared to the Droid and Iphone it was important because it laid the foundation for other smartphones. -
Many important websites and programs are released
Java, Amazon, Ebay and Hotmail are all released, these are important because they made computers even more useful to people and made the need for computers grow
