Computer History Timeline

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Computer History Timeline

Making computers was a result of a need to crunch numbers. The
US census was taking over seven years to tabulate and the government
desired a faster way to get the job done. This resulted in one of the first
computers, which was punch-card based and took up entire rooms. Over
the course of many years, thousands of inventors and mathematicians
bought forth their innovation and creativity, changing the way computers
looked and worked, and changing the impact they had on society. Here
are just a few samples of the many inventors that brought on the radical
change of computers and their impact.

1 1822: Charles Babbage was a mathematician and a computer pioneer.

He designed two classes of steam-driven engines, Difference Engines
and Analytical Engines. Difference engines were strictly calculators and
did nothing but crunch numbers by repeated addition. Unfortunately,
they were limited and could not be used for general arithmetical
calculation. The Analytical Engine, however, was much more than a
calculator and it created new possibilities because it could perform
general-purpose computation, it was digital, fully programmed, and
could solve any calculation set before it. The machine consisted of four
components: the mill, the store, the reader, and the printer. These
components are the essential components of every computer today.
Although none of Babbage's designs became successful during his
lifetime his work has been ranked as one of the most brilliant
intellectual achievements of the 19th century and has been studies
even more in recent decades.
2 1890: In 1881, Herman Hollerith started designing a machine
that would help the US Census tabulate their data more
efficiently. The U.S. Census Bureau had taken eight years to complete
the 1880 census and it feared that the 1890 census would take even
longer. Herman Hollerith stepped forth with a punch-card device,
inspired by the punch-cards conductors used at a train station. It used
electricity that read, counted, and sorted the cards whose holes
represented data the census-takers gathered. It was a success and a
recognized breakthrough. His machines accomplished for the 1890
census in one year what would have originally taken ten years to finish.
In 1896, Herman Hollerith founded the Tabulating Machine Company to
sell his invention. Punch card technology had a large impact on the
history of computers and it was used in computers up until the late
1970s.
3 1937: J.V. Atanasof was a professor of physics and mathematics at
Iowa State University. He built the first computer without gears, cams,
belts or shafts- that is to say, the first digital computer. During the
1920s and 30s there was active discoveries and new theories,
especially in physics. Atanasoff sought to increase the speed and
accuracy of scientific calculations through the development of an
electronic digital computer. His machine would provide more accuracy,
speed, and storage of information, sort of like a more advanced
calculator using electronics as the medium. This effort resulted in the
ABC, which after a while, became super successful.
4 1958: Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce showed the world the integrated
circuit, known as the computer chip. This tiny chip had a huge impact

on the computer industry by theoretically shrinking the size of

computers. Jack Kilby showed a handful of co-workers gathered in TIs
semiconductor lab more than 40 years ago the chip, which was simple:
only a transistor and other components on a slice of germanium. But
even though it was simple, it was revolutionary. It allowed for less
components to be used, it was reliable, did not heat up so quickly, and
fast, unlike the technology used before it.
5 1964: Douglas Engelbart created a prototype of the modern computer,
with a mouse and a graphical user interface (GUI). This changed
the way computers worked, from specialized machines that only a
trained scientist could use, to a more user-friendly approach anyone
can use. "It was nicknamed the mouse because the tail came out the
end," Engelbart revealed about his invention.
6 1971: Alan Shugart lead a team of IBM engineers to invent the
floppy disk, allowing data to be shared amongst different
computers. The first floppy was an 8" plastic disk coated with magnetic
iron oxide; data was written to and read from the disk's surface. The
nickname "floppy" came from its flexibility. The floppy disk was
considered a revolutionary device at the time for its portability which
provided a new and easy physical way of transporting data from one
computer to another.
7 1975: The IBM 5100 became the first commercially available
portable, minicomputer. There were very few other computers
available at the time and nothing even close to the capabilities of the
5100. It was impressive, at 55 pounds including a keyboard, built-in
data storage, and a full-screen display, specifically designed for
professional and scientific problem-solvers, not business users or
hobbyists. Though it was also very expensive , at $20,000.
8 1976: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple Computers on
April Fools Day and roll out the Apple I, the first computer with a
single-circuit board. The first Apple machine made use of a TV as a
display systema great addition since most machines of the time had
no display at all, it could type faster at 60 characters per second, and it
started up easier. It even resembled a car, containing a hood that
encouraged the owners to open up and tinker with the machine.
9 1981: A team of a dozen developers, led by Philip Donald Estridge
created "Acorn", the first IBM personal computer. It had an Intel chip,
two floppy disks and an optional color monitor. Sears & Roebuck and

Computerland sold the machines, marking the first time a computer

was available through outside distributors. Now, everyone could buy
computers, thus popularizing the term PC.

10 1990: Tim Berners-Lee was a researcher at CERN, a high-energy

physics laboratory in Geneva. He developed HyperText Markup
Language (HTML), giving rise to the World Wide Web. HTML had a lifespan of roughly seven years, in which it had evolved from a simple
language with a few tags to a complex system of mark-up, thus giving
the chance for authors to create Web pages including animated images
and sounds.
11 1999: The term Wi-Fi became part of the computing language and
users began connecting to the Internet without wires. A basic
specification for WiFi was created, which allowed for two mega-bites
per second of data transfer. Engineers immediately began to work on
prototype equipment to work with it. In 1999, the release of routers
sparked the beginning of the wide use of WiFi in our homes.

37 PHOTOS

Hedy Lamarr: Inventor of WiFi

So what got a science writer interested in a half-forgotten celebrity? Quite simply,
Hedy's other side - the intellectual side - and had it turned out, it might have been
the blueprint for success far beyond Hollywood.
To the untrained eye the drawing is just a maze of wires and switches. But to
Richard Rhodes, it was genius. What surprised him most, he told Cowan, was
"the sheer inventiveness of the invention."

It was Hedy's idea for a secret communications system - specifically one that
could guide a torpedo using a technology called "frequency hopping" - so that
signal couldn't be intercepted.
"The first question always is, "What? A Hollywood star? What was she doing
inventing some piece of electrical engineering?" said Rhodes.
Her life reads like a Hollywood script: The glamorous movie star by day was, by
night, the lonely immigrant channeling an inner Thomas Edison.
"She set aside one room in her home, had a drafting table installed with the
proper lighting, and the proper tools - had a whole wall in the room of
engineering reference books." That, Rhodes said, was where she "invented."
It was a hobby that remained obscured in the shadow of her celebrity - one she
rarely revealed, even to her own son, Anthony Loder: "She was such a creative
person, I mean, nonstop solution-finding. If you talked about a problem, she had
a solution."
Looking back, Loder - the product of the third of Hedy's six marriages - says his
mother's tinkering may have been an escape.
"She wanted to stop all the Hollywood stuff which she didn't really enjoy," he
said.
Most of Hedy's inventions - including a better Kleenex box and a new traffic
signal - never really went anywhere. But her idea for that radio-controlled
torpedo got a patent.
It was 1940, and German U-boats were wreaking havoc in the Atlantic torpedoing
ships, very often with women and children aboard trying to flee the Nazis something Hedy knew a little about.
Born Hedwig Kiesler to Jewish parents in Austria, Hedy had married a wealthy
arms manufacturer named Fritz Mendl.
She spent many an evening absorbing his musings about top-secret weapons
systems.
But with both the war and the Nazis approaching, Hedy decided to flee her
homeland - and her marriage - and booked passage to Hollywood aboard the
Normandie, a ship she knew was carrying a very famous passenger, movie mogul
Louis B. Meyer.

She was already a name in the industry. Hedy had become infamous for her racy
performance in the foreign film "Ecstasy."
Not only was she nude, but a close-up of Hedy's face "in the precise moment of
rapture" (as one critic tastefully put it) was considered nothing short of
pornography.
But Louis B. Meyer liked what he saw.
"By the end of the voyage, she had arranged with him, a contract of $600 a week,
which would be $3,000 today, with the proviso that she learn English," Rhodes
said. "Which she pretty quickly did."
Her career took off. But the war in Europe was never far from her mind. And a
chance dinner party with a Hollywood composer named George Antheil changed
everything.
Like her, Antheil tinkered with ideas. He was famous for composing an avantgarde symphony using unconventional instruments, not the least of which were
more than a dozen player pianos, all synchronized.
And that gave the two of them an idea: If pianos could be synchronized to hop
from one note to another, why couldn't radio signals - steering a torpedo - hop as
well? Their inventive partnership was born.
"Hedy's idea was if you could make both the transmitter and the receiver
simultaneously jump from frequency to frequency, then someone trying to jam
the signal wouldn't know where it was," said Rhodes.
The thinking at the time by all the experts that looked at it was that it was a viable
idea. "This would have worked," said Rhodes. But when the Navy brass looked at
the invention, "They said, 'What, you want to put a player piano in a torpedo?
That won't work!' So they threw it on the back shelf. The Navy's response really
was, 'You should go raise money for the war. That's what you should be doing
instead of this silly inventing.'"

12 2006: Apple introduced the MacBook Pro, its 15-inch device that had
an all-new thin and light design that amounted to only a mere 0.71
inches and weighing 4.46 pounds. It set a new standard in performance
and portability for pro users. Now, computers were everywhere and
people were starting to change the system, using games, music, and
other features for entertainment.

13 2007: Apple introduced the iPhone, a Smartphone that brings many

computer functions into one small and lightweight, handheld device.
This was a radical change that was based on a large multi-touch
display and new software, letting users control iPhone with just their
fingers. This introduced more and more people to master the computer
functions because of its user friendliness, availability, and new
possibilities.
14 2010: Apple unveiled the iPad, changing the shape and form computer
functions were displayed, and the way consumers view media. The
device was thin, had a powerful processor, and was equipped with
Apples Touch ID fingerprint reader. Touch ID allowed users to buy
items within apps using the Apple Pay payment service, and acted as a
security feature.
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