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Difference Engine
Charles Babbage designed the first computer, starting in 1823. Though not completed until 1990 (?), his Difference Engine worked. Ada King, Countess of Lovelace and daughter of Lord Byron, wrote programs for the Difference Engine, thus becoming the world's first programmer. -
Colossus
Colossus was the world's first electronic, digital, computer that was at all programmable. The Colossus computers were used by British codebreakers during World War II to help in the Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. Without them, the Allies would have been deprived of the very valuable intelligence that was obtained from reading the vast quantity of encrypted high-level German Army messages. Colossus used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) to perform Boolean operations and calculations. -
ENIAC
Originally announced on February 14, 1946, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), was the first general-purpose electronic computer. Hailed by The New York Times as "an amazing machine which applies electronic speeds for the first time to mathematical tasks hitherto too difficult and cumbersome for solution," the ENIAC was a revolutionary piece of machinery in its day. It was constructed and operated here at The Moore School of Electrical Engineering, now part of the School of -
Univac
UNIVAC is the name of a line of electronic digital stored-program computers starting with the products of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation. Later the name was applied to a division of the Remington Rand company and successor organizations. The descendants of the UNIVAC line continue today as products of the Unisys company. UNIVAC is an acronym for UNIVersal Automatic Computer. -
Intel
Intel was founded in Mountain View, California in 1968 by Gordon E. Moore (of "Moore's Law" fame, a chemist and physicist), Robert Noyce (a physicist and co-inventor of the integrated circuit), and Arthur Rock (investor and venture capitalist). Moore and Noyce came from Fairchild Semiconductor and were Intel's first two employees. -
Apple II
The Apple II series (trademarked with square brackets as "Apple ][") is a set of 8-bit home computers, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products,[1] designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and introduced in 1977 with the original Apple II. -
SOL
Processor Technology company designed and sold a full line of boards for the S-100 computers. In 1977 they designed the SOL Computer which used most of their circuit boards. The SOL had a video terminal built-in, only requiring a video monitor. In a very attractive case with walnut wood sides, the SOL became a very popular computer that influenced the design of future computers. Pro. Tech did not provide a low cost floppy disk system so users turned to North Star for their disk storage. -
IBM
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981. It was created by a team of engineers and designers under the direction of Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida. -
Virus
The first externally released virus is thought to be 'Elk Cloner', written by Rich Skrenta. It infected Apple DOS 3.3 computers, and spread via floppy disk. -
WWW
A graduate of Oxford University, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, in 1989. He wrote the first web client and server in 1990. His specifications of URIs, HTTP and HTML were refined as Web technology spread.
