1944- Harvard Mark-1 completed

1948- IBM SSEC

1953- Core memory first used

1939- Hewlett Packard founded

Hewlett-Packard is
founded. David Packard
and Bill Hewlett found
Hewlett-Packard in a
Palo Alto, California
garage.
Their first product was
the HP 200A Audio
Oscillator, which rapidly
becomes a popular
piece of test equipment
for engineers.
Walt Disney ordered
eight of the 200B
model to use as sound
effects generators for
the 1940
movie"Fantasia".

Conceived by Harvard
professor Howard Aiken,
and designed and built
by IBM, theHarvard
Mark-1was a roomsized, relay-based
calculator.
The machine had a fiftyfoot long camshaft that
synchronized the
machines thousands of
component parts.
The Mark-1 was used to
produce mathematical
tables but was soon
superseded by stored
program computers.

IBMs Selective
Sequence Electronic
Calculator computed
scientific data in public
display near the
companys Manhattan
headquarters.
Before its
decommissioning in
1952, the SSEC
produced the moonposition tables used for
plotting the course of
the1969 Apollo flight to
the moon.

1945- EDVAC programming

At MIT, Jay Forrester

installedmagnetic
core memoryon
theWhirlwind
computer.
Core memory made
computers more
reliable, faster, and
easier to make.
Such a system of
storage remained
popular until the
development of
semiconductors in
the 1970s.

1943- Project Whirlwind

1950- First commerical computer

Project Whirlwind begins.

During World War II, the
U.S. Navy approached the
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology(MIT)about
building a flight simulator
to train bomber crews.
The team first built a large
analog computer, but
found it inaccurate and
inflexible. After designers
saw a demonstration of
the ENIAC computer, they
decided on building a
digital computer.

John von Neumann

wrote"First Draft of a
report on the EDVAC"in
which he outlined the
architecture of a storedprogram computer.
Electronic storage of
programming information
and data eliminated the
need for the more clumsy
methods of programming,
such as punched paper
tape a concept that has
characterized mainstream
computer development
since 1945.

Engineering Research
Associates of built theERA
1101, the first
commercially produced
computer; the companys
first customer was the
U.S. Navy. It held 1 million
bits on its magnetic drum,
the earliest magnetic
storage devices.
Drums registered
information as magnetic
pulses in tracks around a
metal cylinder. Read/write
heads both recorded and
recovered the data.
Drums eventually stored
as many as 4,000 words
and retrieved any one of
them in as little as fivethousandths of a second.

TheIBM 650magnetic
drum calculator
established itself as the
first mass-produced
computer, with the
company selling 450 in
one year.
Spinning at 12,500 rpm,
the 650s magnetic
data-storage drum
allowed much faster
access to stored
material than drum
memory machines.

1957- FORTRAN coding

1964- First networked computers

1969- First computer controlle

re memory first used

1967- LOGO invented

A new
language,FORTRAN
(short for FORmula
TRANslator),
enabled a computer
to perform a
repetitive task from
a single set of
instructions by using
loops.
The first commercial
FORTRAN program
ran at
Westinghouse,
producing a missing
comma diagnostic. A
successful attempt
followed.

IBM announced
theSystem/360, a
family of six
mutually compatible
computers and 40
peripherals that
could work together.
The initial
investment of $5
billion was quickly
returned as orders
for the system
climbed to 1,000 per
month within two
years.

Seymour Papert
designedLOGOas a
computer language for
children. Initially a
drawing program, LOGO
controlled the actions of
amechanical "turtle",
which traced its path
with pen on paper.
Electronic turtles made
their designs on a video
display monitor.

Victor Scheinmans
Stanford Arm made a
breakthrough as the
firstelectrically
powered, computercontrolled robot arm.
By 1974, the Stanford
Arm could assemble a
Ford Model T water
pump, guiding itself
with optical and
contact sensors.
Scheinman went on to
design the PUMA
series of industrial
robots for Unimation,
robots used for
automobile assembly
and other industrial
tasks.

1964- BASIC programming language

1969- First UNIX operating sys

1954- First mass - produced computer

Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny createdBASIC,
an easy-to-learn programming language, for
their students at Dartmouth College.
BASIC was the forerunner for the advanced
programming languages in use today.

1962- First interactive computer game

TheIBM 650magnetic
drum calculator
established itself as the
first mass-produced
computer, with the
company selling 450 in
one year.
Spinning at 12,500 rpm,
the 650s magnetic
data-storage drum
allowed much faster
access to stored
material than drum
memory machines.

MIT students Slug Russell, Shag Graetz, and Alan Kotok

wroteSpaceWar!, considered the first interactive
computer game.
First played atMITonDECs PDP-1, the large-scope
display featured interactive, shootem-up graphics that
inspired future video games.
Dueling players fired at each others spaceships and
used early versions of joysticks to manipulate away
from the central gravitational force of a sun as well as
from the enemy ship

UNIXcombined many
of the timesharing and
file management
features offered by
Multics, from which it
took its name.
Multics, a project of the
mid1960s, represented
the first effort at
creating amulti-user,
multi-tasking operating
system

1972- First modern video game

1980- First hard disk drive (HDD)

1976- Apple are born

969- First computer controlled robot

Victor Scheinmans
Stanford Arm made a
breakthrough as the
firstelectrically
powered, computercontrolled robot arm.
By 1974, the Stanford
Arm could assemble a
Ford Model T water
pump, guiding itself
with optical and
contact sensors.
Scheinman went on to
design the PUMA
series of industrial
robots for Unimation,
robots used for
automobile assembly
and other industrial
tasks.

969- First UNIX operating system

Pongis released.
Nolan Bushnell hired
young engineerAl
Alcornto design a car
driving game, but
when it became
apparent that this was
too ambitious for the
time, he had Alcorn to
design a version of
ping-pong instead.
The game was tested
in bars in Grass Valley
and Sunnyvale,
California where it
proved very popular.
Pong would
revolutionize the
arcade industry and
launch the modern
video game era.

Steve
Wozniakdesigned
theApple I, a singleboard computer. With
specifications in hand
and an order for 100
machines at $500
each from the Byte
Shop, he andSteve
Jobsgot their start in
business.
About 200 of the
machines sold before
the company
announced the Apple
II as a complete
computer.

Seagate Technology
created the first hard disk
drive for microcomputers,
theST506. The disk held5
megabytes of data, five
times as much as a
standard floppy disk, and
fit in the space of a floppy
disk drive.
The hard disk drive itself
is a rigid metallic platter
coated on both sides with
a thin layer of magnetic
material that stores digital
data.
Seagate quickly drew such
big-name customers as
Apple Computer and IBM.
Within a few years, it had
sold 4 million units.

1977- Home gaming is born

1971- First email sent

UNIXcombined many
of the timesharing and
file management
features offered by
Multics, from which it
took its name.
Multics, a project of the
mid1960s, represented
the first effort at
creating amulti-user,
multi-tasking operating
system

The first e-mail is sent.

Ray Tomlinson of the
research firm Bolt,
Beranek and Newman
sent the first e-mail when
he was supposed to be
working on a different
project.
Tomlinson, who is credited
with being the one to
decide on the"@" signfor
use in e-mail, sent his
message over a military
network called ARPANET.
When asked to describe
the contents of the first
email, Tomlinson said it
wassomething like
"QWERTYUIOP"

1975- Microsoft are born

In 1975,Bill GatesandPaul
Allenform a partnership
calledMicrosoft.
Like most start-ups,
Microsoft begins small, but
has a massive vision - a
computer on every desktop
and in every home.
During the coming years,
Microsoft begins to change
the ways we work.
Microsoft is now one of the
biggest companies in the
world.

Atari released
theAtari Video
Computer System
(VCS)- later renamed
the Atari 2600.
TheVCSwas the first
widely successful
video game system,
selling more than
twenty million units
throughout the
1980s.
The VCS used the 8bit MOS 6507
microprocessor and
was designed to be
connected to a home
television set. When
the last of Ataris
game consoles were
made in 1990, more
than 900 game titles
had been released.

980- First hard disk drive (HDD)

Seagate Technology
created the first hard disk
drive for microcomputers,
theST506. The disk held5
megabytes of data, five
times as much as a
standard floppy disk, and
fit in the space of a floppy
disk drive.
The hard disk drive itself
is a rigid metallic platter
coated on both sides with
a thin layer of magnetic
material that stores digital
data.
Seagate quickly drew such
big-name customers as
Apple Computer and IBM.
Within a few years, it had
sold 4 million units.

1982- Commodore 64 released

Commodore introduces
theCommodore 64.
TheC64, as it was better
known, sold for $595, came
with 64KB of RAM and
featured impressive graphics.
Thousands of software titles
were released over the
lifespan of the C64.
By the time the C64 was
discontinued in 1993, it had
sold more than22 million
unitsand is recognized by
the 2006 Guinness Book of
World Records as the
greatest selling single
computer model of all time.

ming is born

1981- MS-DOS released

TheMS-DOS (Microsoft
Disk Operating
System)basic software for
the newly released IBM
PC, established a long
partnership between IBM
and Microsoft, which Bill
Gates and Paul Allen had
founded only six years
earlier.