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The History of Computers

  • Charles Babbage invents the Difference Engine

    The difference engine was a mechanical computer that was used to do maths sums instead of using people as they often made mistakes. Nobody really knows exactly when it was made but it was most likely some point during the 1830's
  • Ada Lovelace Writes The World's First Computer Program

    In 1842, Ada Lovelace wrote the first ever computer program. This was extremely rare for this time as very few women ever did things like this and computers weren't really invented at this point in time.
  • Konrad Zuse invents the first programmable computer

    In May 1941, Konrad Zuse created the first programmable computer. h Thanks to his incredible invention, he is often regarded as the inventor of the modern day computer.
  • Alan Turing invents Colossus

    Colossus was used to crack complicated codes that were intercepted from the Germans during the war. As it was used forvery important and top-secret work, very few people knew about it and it wasn't really discovered until the 1970's although some sources say that it first started being used at Bletchley park in 1944.
  • ENIAC is first released to the public.

    In February 1946, ENIAC was first released to the public. ENIAC stood for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. It was the first computer that could be programmed for many different scenarios and it was 1,000 times faster than any other computer. It was capable of doing up to 5,000 calculations every second and it used a combination of cards, lights, switches and plugs as its way of communicating the calculations and answers. It was built by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert.
  • Grace Hopper finds the first ever computer 'bug'.

    After the Harvard Mark II stopped working, Grace Hopper searched the entire system and found a dead moth lodged in one of the valves, causing it to fail. This is why, even today, we blame many computer failures on a computer 'bug'.
  • William Shockley tests a new type of transistor

    William Shockley, Walter Brittain and John Bardeen began the semi conductor revolution when they tested a new point-contact transistor to see if it could be used in computers. The tests were successful and more advanced models of the transistor were created at AT&T Bell Laboratories and soon the transistor replaced almost all vacuum tubes that had been used up until that point.
  • IBM's SSEC is in operation

    IBM's SSEC, which stands for Selective Sequence Elecetronic Calculator, was in operation between 1948 and 1952 in Manhattan, near IBM's company headquarters. It was used to compute scientific data and it even plotted the position of the moon for the Apollo moon landing in 1969.
  • Douglas Engelbart Invents the Mouse

    In 1963, Douglas Engelbart invented the computer mouse. This was a very important invention as computers today wouldn't be the same without it - can you imagine trying to use a computer if it didn't have a mouse?
  • Bill Gates and Paul Allen Create Microsoft

    In 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen created Microsfot toether. Over the years, Microsoft has brought us Microsoft Office, the Microsoft Band, Microsoft Windows and many more types of computer software.
  • Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak Build The First Apple Computer

    In 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak creatd the company Apple Computer which made compuers that you could buy for your house. The fist computer that they made was called the Apple I and it cost HK $5,161. They continued created and adapting computers and soon Apple grew into the company that it is now, giving us Macbooks, iPods, iPhones, iPads, Apple TV, Apple watches and much more.
  • Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn and Donald Davies Invent The Internet

    On 1/1/1983, Vint Cerf and his colleagues created the Internet together and were subsequently awarded many prestigious medals for their hard work and efforts.
  • Tim Berners Lee Invents the World Wide Web

    Using already existing internet technology, Tim Berners Lee created the world wide web. The world wide web (www) allows anyone to publish any file on the internet with its own URL which lets other people access it. We use the world wide web every day to access information, to watch videos, look at pictures, listen to music and much, much more.
  • Larry Page and Sergey Brin Invent Google

    On 4th September 1998, Sergey Brin and Larry Page creted Google. Eric Schmidt joined them in 2001 as the CEO of the company and stayed in that position until 2011.