Timeline: History of Computers - Yoon Jang

1936

Z1

First programmable computer; Created by Konrad Zuse in his parent's living room in Germany; Considered to be the first electrical binary programmable computer

1937

ABC (Atanasoff-Berry Computer_

First digital computer; Developed by Professor John Vincent Atanasoff and graduate student Cliff Berry; Continued to be developed until 1942 at the Iowa State College which is now the Iowa State University

1943

ENIAC

First functionally digital computer; Invented by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania; Completed in 1946; Occupied about 1,800 square feet, used about 18,000 vacuum tubes, and weighed almost 50 tons

1949

Electronic Controls Company

First computer company; Founded by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly; Later renamed ti EMCC (Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation; Release a series of mainframe computers under the UNIAV name

May 6, 1949

EDSAC

First stored program computer; Ran the first graphical computer game

Apr 7, 1953

701

First PC (IBM compatible) computer; IBM introduced its first electric computer and mass-produced computer

Mar 8, 1955

Whirlwind Machine

First computer with RAM; Made by MIT; First digital computer with magnetic core RAM and real-time graphics

1956

TX-O (Transistorized Experimental Computer)

First transistor computer; Made in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

1960

PDP-1

First minicomputer; Released by Digital Equipment Corporation

1971

Kenback-1

Considered to be the first personal computer; Originally sold for $750; Relied on a series of switches for inputting data and output data

1973

Micral

First commercial non-assembly computer; Used the Intel 8008 processor; Sold for $1,750

1974

Xerox Alto

First workstation; Never sold; Included fully function computer, display, and mouse; Utilized windows, menus, and icons as an interface to its operating system

1975

Altair 8800

First personal computer; Ed Roberts coined the term personal computer when he introduced this computer

1975

IBM 5100

First portable computer; Weighed 55 lbs, had a 5" CRT display, tape drive, 1.9 MHz PALM, and 64KB of RAM

1976

Apple I

First Apple computer; First Apple product; Developed by Steve Wozniak

1981

Osborne I

First truly portable laptop; Developed by Adam Osborne; Weighed 24 lbs, had a 5" display, 64 KB of memory, two 5 and 1/4 inch floppy drives, and a modem

1981

IBM PC (Acorn)

IBM introduced its first personal computer; Codenamed "Acorn"; Had an 8088 processor, 16 KB of memory which was expandable to 256, and utilized MS-DOS