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Johannes Gutenburg invents a machine called the printing press, and now books could be mass-produced. -
Charles Babbage designs the first programmable mechanical computer in 1837. -
Ada Lovelace is considered the first computer programmer, discovered in 1840. -
Melvil Dewey creates the Dewey Decimal system to organize library books and resources. -
Herman Hollerith designs the keypunch machine that would later launch information processing. -
Paul Octet and Henri LaFontaine create a universal document center called the Universal Decimal System to organize and share information around the world. -
Engineer Vannevar Bush built a large machine called a differential analyzer to analyze different equations. -
Alan Turing designs the first electronic digital computer. -
Mobile phone technology appears in the form of car phones, which are the size of a suitcase. -
Computer scientist John McCarthy develops artificial intelligence, which later leads to competing with human-like technology in online games such as chess.
Stanfords John McCarthy -
American inventor George Devol creates the first digitally programmed robot named Unimate.
The First Industrial Robot, Unimate -
Larry Roberts creates the first wide-area computer network after connecting a computer in Massachusetts to a computer in California. He called this idea the ARPANET. -
Ray Tomlinson, a defense department engineer, sends the first email and stamps the @ symbol as the universal electronic locater symbol.
Interview on Ray Tomlinson -
IBM and Hewlett-Packard introduce the first desk sized computers used for research and scientific purposes. -
Engineer Martin Cooper makes the first mobile phone call in New York City.
Interview of Martin Cooper on His First Phone Call -
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak create the first Apple computer in Jobs garage.
The Founding of Apple Computers -
Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen develop an operating system that allows computers to follow their coded instructions and early adopters are now purchasing their own computers. -
The National Science Foundation Network funds five large supercomputing centers to connect to universities and regional networks called NSFNET. -
MERIT, a Michigan network, proposes the idea of commercial internet exploration. -
Swarthmore student Justin Hall posts the first "blog" to links.net. discussing his day-to-day life. -
Amazon is created in 1994 as a specialty service site, with information such as online gaming.
Amazon -
Ebay makes its debut in 1995, being used as a hobbyist site and to elicit inappropriate content.
Ebay -
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 gives US hospitals, classrooms and libraries access to the internet.
The Telecommunications Act -
Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin develop Google and it is made available to the public.
The Birth of Google -
Google revolutionizes web-searching by developing rule-based formulas called algorithms, that sort and organize numerous amounts of information. -
"Itunes", a wide-ranged music library, is released to the public and gives users access to purchase music and videos. -
The birth of Wikipedia is in 2001, gathering large amounts of information in an easily accessible location.
Wikipedia -
Established as a Harvard student website, Mark Zuckerburg creates Facebook and eventually accumulates over 2 billion users.
The Social Network -
Streaming services Netflix and Hulu are introduced, becoming wildly successful in a very short period of time.
The Netflix Effect -
An untraceable digital currency called BITCOIN is created, becoming the most widely accepted currency, but also being used illegally for business.
Bitcoin explained -
Cell phones now feature full keyboards, wireless data plans are widely used, and roughly 75 percent of Americans send over 100 texts a day.