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Charles Babbage conceives of a steam-driven calculating machine that would be able to compute tables of numbers.
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Herman Hollerith designs a new punch card to calculate the 1880 census.
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The FORTRAN programming language is born
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Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce unveil the integrated circuit, known as the computer chip.
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Radio Shack's initial production run of the TRS-80 was just 3,000. It sold like crazy.
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Word processing becomes a reality as MicroPro International releases WordStar.
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Word processing becomes a reality as MicroPro International releases WordStar.
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Apple’s Lisa is the first personal computer with a GUI. It also features a drop-down menu and icons. It flops but eventually evolves into the Macintosh.
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Microsoft announces Windows, its response to Apple’s GUI. Commodore unveils the Amiga 1000, which features advanced audio and video capabilities.
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Compaq brings the Deskpro 386 to market. It’s 32-bit architecture provides as speed comparable to mainframes.
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The term Wi-Fi becomes part of the computing language and users begin connecting to the Internet without wires.
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Sony releases the PlayStation 2
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Mozilla’s Firefox 1.0 challenges Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, the dominant web browers.
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The iPhone brings many computer functions to the smartphone.
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Alan Shugart leads a team of IBM engineers who invent the “floppy disk,” allowing data to be shared among computers.
