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George Stibitz
George Stibitz uses relays for a demonstration adder. This was called the "Model K" because he built it on his kitchen table, this simple demonstration circuit proof of concept for applying Boolean logic to the design of computers. -
Hewlett-Packard
David Packard and Bill Hewlett found their company in Palo Alto, California garage. Their first product the HP 200A Audio Oscillator, rapidly became a popular piece of test equipment for engineers. Walt Disney Pictures ordered 8 of the 200B model to test recording equipment and speakers for the 12 specially equipped theatres that showed the movie "Fantasia" in 1940. -
Bell Telephone Laboratories
In 1939, Bell Telephone Laboratories completes this calculator, designed by George Stibitz. In 1940, Stibitz demonstrated the CNC at an American Mathematical Society conference held at Dartmouth College. Stibitz stunned the group by performing calculations remotely on CNC using a teletype terminal connected to via to New York over special telephone lines. -
Konrad Zuse
The Z3, an early computer built by german Konrad Zuse working in complete isolation from developments elsewhere, uses 2,300 relays, performs floating point binary arithmetic, and has a 22 bit word length. The Z3 was used for aerodynamic calculations but was destroyed in a bombing raid on Berlin in late 1943. Zuse later supervised a reconstruction of the Z3 in the 1960's. -
John Vincent Atanasoff
After successfully demonstrating a proof-of-concept prototype in 1939, Professor John Vincent Atanasoff receives funds to build a full-scale machine at Iowa State College. The machine was designed & built by Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry between 1939 and 1942. The ABC was at the center of a patent dispute related to the invention of the computer, which was resolved in 1973 when it was shown that ENIAC co-designer John Mauchly had seen the ABC shortly after it became functional. -
Bell Labs Relay
The US Army asked Bell Laboratories to design a machine to assist in testing its M-9 gun director, a type of analog computer that aims large guns to their targets. Mathematician George Stibitz recommends using a relay-based calculator for the project. The result was the Relay Interpolator, later called the Bell Labs Model II. The Relay Interpolator used 440 relays, and since it was programmable by paper tape, was used for other applications following the war. -
Tommy Flowers
The Colossus is designed to break the complex Lorenz ciphers used by the Nazis during World War II. A series of pulleys transported continuous rolls of punched paper tape containing possible solutions to a particular code. Colossus reduced the time to break Lorenz messages from weeks to hours. Most historians believe that the use of Colossus machines significantly shortened the war by providing evidence of enemy intentions and beliefs. The machine’s existence was not made public until the 1970s. -
Fredrick Williams, Tom Kilburn & Geoff Toothill
They developed the Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), better known as the Manchester "Baby." The Baby was built to test a new memory technology developed by Williams and Kilburn -- soon known as the Williams Tube – which was the first electronic random access memory for computers. The first program, consisting of seventeen instructions and written by Kilburn, ran on June 21st, 1948. This was the first program to ever run on an electronic stored-program computer. -
CSIRAC
While many early digital computers were based on similar designs, such as the IAS and its copies, others are unique designs, like the CSIRAC. Built in Sydney, Australia by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research for use in its Radio physics Laboratory in Sydney, CSIRAC was designed by British-born Trevor Pearcey, and used unusual 12-hole paper tape. It was transferred to the Department of Physics at the University of Melbourne in 1955 and remained in service until 1964. -
ERA 1101 Introduced
One of the first commercially produced computers, the company´s first customer was the US Navy. The 1101, designed by ERA but built by Remington-Rand, was intended for high-speed computing and stored 1 million bits on its magnetic drum, one of the earliest magnetic storage devices and a technology which ERA had done much to perfect in its own laboratories. Many of the 1101’s basic architectural details were used again in later Remington-Rand computers until the 1960s. -
Ferranti Mark 1
The “first commercially available general-purpose computer” probably goes to Britain’s Ferranti Mark I for its sale of its 1st Mark I computer to Manchester University. The Mark 1 was a refinement of the experimental Manchester “Baby” and Manchester Mark 1 computers, also at Manchester University. -
IAS Computer Operational
. The notion of storing both data and instructions in memory became known as the ‘stored program concept’ to distinguish it from earlier methods of instructing a computer. The IAS computer was designed for scientific calculations and it performed essential work for the US atomic weapons program. Over the years, the basic design of the IAS machine was copied in at 17 places & given similar-sounding name. -
Grimsdale & Webb
Working under Tom Kilburn at England’s Manchester University, Richard Grimsdale and Douglas Webb demonstrate a prototype transistorized computer, the "Manchester TC", on November 16, 1953. The 48-bit machine used 92 point-contact transistors and 550 diodes. -
IBM Magnetic Drum Calculator
IBM establishes the 650 as its first mass-produced computer, with the company selling 450 in just one year. Spinning at 12,500 rpm, the 650´s magnetic data-storage drum allowed much faster access to stored information than other drum-based machines. The Model 650 was also highly popular in universities, where a generation of students first learned programming. -
Electric DEUCE Introduced
A commercial version of Alan Turing's Pilot ACE, called DEUCE—the Digital Electronic Universal Computing Engine -- is used mostly for science and engineering problems and a few commercial applications. Over 30 were completed, including one delivered to Australia. -
Direct Keyboard input to computers
A precursor to today´s normal mode of operation.Typically, computer users of the time fed their programs into a computer using punched cards or paper tape. Doug Ross wrote a memo advocating direct access in February. Ross contended that a Flexowriter connected to an MIT computer could function as a keyboard input device due to its low cost and flexibility. An experiment conducted five months later on the MIT Whirlwind computer confirmed how useful and convenient a keyboard input device could be. -
Digital Equipment corporation founded
Its founders were Ken and Stan Olsen, and Harlan Anderson. Headquartered in Maynard, Massachusetts, Digital Equipment Corporation, took over 8,680 square foot leased space in a nineteenth century mill that once produced blankets and uniforms for soldiers who fought in the Civil War. General Georges Doriot and his pioneering venture capital firm, American Research and Development, invested $70,000 for 70% of DEC’s stock to launch the company in 1957. Its still in use today. -
Model 501
The 501 is built on a 'building block' concept which allows it to be highly flexible for many different uses and could simultaneously control up to 63 tape drives—very useful for large databases of information. For many business users, quick access to this huge storage capability outweighed its relatively slow processing speed. Customers included US military as well as industry. -
DEC PDP-1 Introduced
he typical PDP-1 computer system, which sells for about $120,000, includes a cathode ray tube graphic display, paper tape input/output, needs no air conditioning and requires only one operator; all of which become standards for minicomputers. Its large scope intrigued early hackers at MIT, who wrote the first computerized video game, SpaceWar!, as well as programs to play music. More than 50 PDP-1s were sold. -
IBM 7030 Completed
At the top of the line was the Model 7030, also known as "Stretch." Nine of the computers, which featured dozens of advanced design innovations, were sold, mainly to national laboratories and major scientific users. A special version was developed for the US National Security Agency. The knowledge and technologies developed for the Stretch project played a major role in the design, management, and manufacture of the later IBM System/360--the most successful computer family in IBM history. -
MIT LINC Introduced
The LINC is an early and important example of a ‘personal computer, It was designed by MIT Lincoln Laboratory engineer Wesley Clark. Under the auspices of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant, biomedical research faculty from around the United States came to a workshop at MIT to build their own LINCs, &then bring them back to their home institutions where they would be used. For research, Digital Equipment Corporation supplied the components, and 50 original LINCs were made. -
CDC 66oo supercomputer introduced
The Control Data Corporation (CDC) 6600 performs up to 3 million instructions per second —three times faster than that of its closest competitor, the IBM 7030 supercomputer. The 6600 retained the distinction of being the fastest computer in the world until surpassed by its successor, the CDC 7600, in 1968. Part of the speed came from the computer´s design, which used 10 small computers, known as peripheral processing units, to offload the workload from the central processor. -
3C DDP-116 introduced
Designed by engineer Gardner Hendrie for Computer Control Corporation (CCC), the DDP-116 is announced at the 1965 Spring Joint Computer Conference. It was the world's first commercial 16-bit minicomputer and 172 systems were sold. The basic computer cost $28,500. -
HP introduced the HP 2116A
The 2116A is HP’s first computer. It was developed as a versatile instrument controller for HP's growing family of programmable test and measurement products. It interfaced with a wide number of standard laboratory instruments, allowing customers to computerize their instrument systems. The 2116A also marked HP's first use of integrated circuits in a commercial product. -
Apollo Guidance Computer makes it debut
Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) is the culmination of years of work to reduce the size of the Apollo spacecraft computer from the size of seven refrigerators side-by-side to a compact unit weighing only 70 lbs. and taking up a volume of less than 1 cubic foot. The AGC’s first flight was on Apollo 7. A year later, it steered Apollo 11 to the lunar surface. Astronauts communicated with the computer by punching two-digit codes into the display and keyboard unit (DSKY). -
Amadahl 470
Gene Amdahl, father of the IBM System/360, starts his own company, Amdahl Corporation, to compete with IBM in mainframe computer systems. The 470V/6 was the company’s first product and ran the same software as IBM System/370 computers but cost less and was smaller and faster. -
First Kenbak-1 is sold
ne of the earliest personal computers, the Kenbak-1 is advertised for $750 in Scientific American magazine. Designed by John V. Blankenbaker using standard medium-- and small-scale integrated circuits, the Kenbak-1 relied on switches for input and lights for output from its 256-byte memory. In 1973, after selling only 40 machines, Kenbak Corporation closed its doors. -
IBM SCAMP is developed
IBM’s first personal computer, the system was designed to run the APL programming language in a compact, briefcase-like enclosure which comprised a keyboard, and cassette tape storage. Friedl used the SCAMP prototype to gain approval within IBM to promote and develop IBM’s 5100 family of computers, including the most successful, the 5150, also known as the IBM Personal Computer (PC), introduced in 1981. From concept to finished system, SCAMP took only 6 months to develop. -
8H Computer
The first commercially advertised US computer based on a microprocessor (the Intel 8008,) the Scelbi has 4 KB of internal memory and a cassette tape interface, as well as Teletype and oscilloscope interfaces. Scelbi aimed the 8H, available both in kit form and fully assembled, at scientific, electronic, and biological applications. In 1975, Scelbi introduced the 8B version with 16 KB of memory for the business market. The company sold about 200 machines, losing $500 per unit.
