Junaisa U.

Nader

HISTORY OF

COMPUTER

1801 Joseph Marie Jacquard, a

French merchant and
inventor invents a loom that
uses punched wooden cards
to automatically weave
fabric designs.

English mathematician
Charles Babbage conceives
of a steam-driven
1821
calculating machine that
would be able to compute
tables of numbers

1848 Ada Lovelace, an English

mathematician and the
daughter of poet Lord
Byron, writes the world's
first computer program.

1853
Swedish inventor Per
Georg Scheutz and his son
Edvard design the world's
first printing calculator.

1890 Herman Hollerith designs a

punch-card system to help
calculate the 1890 U.S.
Census.

Alan Turing, a British scientist

and mathematician, presents
the principle of a universal
machine, later called the Turing
machine, in a paper called "On
Computable Numbers..."
1936
according to Chris Bernhardt's
book "Turing's Vision(opens in
new tab)"

John Vincent Atanasoff, a

1937
professor of physics and
mathematics at Iowa State
University, submits a grant
proposal to build the first
electric- only computer, without
using gears, cams, belts or shaft

David Packard and Bill

Hewlett found the Hewlett
Packard Company in Palo
1939
Alto, California.
 German inventor and
engineer Konrad Zuse
completes his Z3 machine,
the world's earliest digital
computer, according to
Gerard O'Regan's book "A
1941
Brief History of
Computing(opens in new
tab)" (Springer, 2021).

Two professors at the

1945
University of Pennsylvania,
John Mauchly and J.
Presper Eckert, design and
build the Electronic
Numerical Integrator and
Calculator (ENIAC).

William Shockley, John

Bardeen and Walter
Brattain of Bell
1947
Laboratories invent the
transistor.

Grace Hopper develops the first

computer language, which

1953 eventually becomes known as

COBOL, which stands for COmmon,
Business-Oriented Language
according to the National Museum
of American History(opens in new
tab).

1954
John Backus and his team of
programmers at IBM publish a paper
describing their newly created
FORTRAN programming language, an
acronym for FORmula TRANslation,
according to MIT(opens in new tab).

1958 Jack Kilby and Robert

Noyce unveil the integrated
circuit, known as the
computer chip. Kilby is later
awarded the Nobel Prize in
Physics for his work.

Douglas Engelbart reveals a

prototype of the modern
computer at the Fall Joint
1968
Computer Conference, San
Francisco.

1970 The newly formed Intel

unveils the Intel 1103, the
first Dynamic Access
Memory (DRAM) chip.

A team of IBM engineers led

by Alan Shugart invents the
"floppy disk," enabling data
1971
to be shared among
different computers.
 Robert Metcalfe, a

1973
member of the research
staff for Xerox, develops
Ethernet for connecting
multiple computers and
other hardware

The Commodore Personal Electronic

1977 Transactor (PET), is released onto

the home computer market,
featuring an MOS Technology 8-bit
6502 microprocessor, which
controls the screen, keyboard and
cassette player.

VisiCalc, the first

computerized spreadsheet
program is introduced..
1978

MicroPro International,
founded by software

1979 engineer Seymour

Rubenstein, releases
WordStar, the world's first
commercially successful
word processor.

The Apple Lisa, standing for

"Local Integrated Software
Architecture" but also the name
of Steve Jobs' daughter,
1983
according to the National
Museum of American History
(NMAH), is the first personal
computer to feature a GUI.

Tim Berners-Lee, a British

1989 researcher at the European

Organization for Nuclear
Research (CERN(opens in new
tab)), submits his proposal(opens
in new tab) for what would
become the World Wide Web

Sergey Brin and Larry Page

develop the Google search
engine at Stanford
1996
University.

1997 Microsoft invests $150

million in Apple, which at the
time is struggling
financially.

Wi-Fi, the abbreviated term

for "wireless fidelity" is
developed, initially covering
1999
a distance of up to 300 feet
(91 meters) Wired
reported(opens in new tab).
 Mac OS X, later renamed

2001
OS X then simply macOS, is
released by Apple as the
successor to its standard
Mac Operating System.

2004
The Mozilla Corporation launches
Mozilla Firefox 1.0. The Web
browser is one of the first major
challenges to Internet Explorer,
owned by Microsoft.

Google buys Android, a

Linux-based mobile phone
operating system
2005
Microsoft launches Windows 7 on
July 22. The new operating system
features the ability to pin

2009 applications to the taskbar,

scatter windows away by shaking
another window, easy-to-access
jumplists, easier previews of tiles
and more, TechRadar
reported(opens in new tab).

Google releases the

Chromebook, which runs on
2011
Google Chrome OS.

The first reprogrammable

2016 quantum computer was created.

"Until now, there hasn't been any
quantum- computing platform
that had the capability to
program new algorithms into
their system.

The Defense Advanced

Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) is developing a new
2017
"Molecular Informatics"
program that uses
molecules as computers.

Williamson, T. (2021, December 1). History of

computers: A brief timeline. livescience.com.
https://www.livescience.com/20718- computer-
history.html .