Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
1939
Hewlett-Packard fundada.
1940
A calculadora do nmero complexo (CNC) concluda.
1941
Konrad Zuse termina o computador Z3.
1942
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) is
completed.
1943
Project Whirlwind begins.
1944
Harvard Mark-1 is completed.
The first Colossus is operational at Bletchley Park.
1945
John von Neumann wrote "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC"
On September 9th, Grace Hopper recorded the first actual
computer "bug"
Software &
Languages
Konrad Zuse comeou a trabalhar no Plankalkul (plano de clculo),
a primeira lngua programao algortmica, com o objectivo de
criar as pr-condies tericas para a formulao de
problemas de carcter geral. Sete anos antes, Zuse tinha
desenvolvido e construdo o worlds primeiro binrio
computador digital, o Z1. Ele completou o primeiro totalmente
funcional programa controlado eletromecnico computador
digital, o Z3, em 1941. S o Z4 a mais sofisticada das suas
criaes sobreviveu a segunda guerra mundial.
1946
In February, the public got its first glimpse of the ENIAC
An inspiring summer school on computing at the University of
Pennsylvanias Moore School of Electrical Engineering
stimulated construction of stored-program computers at
universities and research institutions.
1947
The Williams tube won the race for a practical randomaccess memory.
On December 23, William Shockley, Walter Brattain, and
John Bardeen successfully tested this point-contact
transistor, setting off the semiconductor revolution.
Companies
Computador pioneiros
Presper Eckert e John
Mauchly fundaram a EckertMauchly computador Corp.
para construir mquinas
com base em sua
experincia com o ENIAC e
o EDVAC. A nica mquina,
a companhia construda foi
o BINAC. Antes de
completar o UNIVAC, a
empresa tornou-se uma
diviso da Remington Rand.
1948
Calculadora eletrnica da seqncia IBMs seletivo
computado dados cientficos em exposio pblica perto
da companys sede de Manhattan. Norbert Wiener
publicou "Ciberntica", uma grande influncia na
posterior investigao em inteligncia artificial.
1949
Maurice Wilkes montou o EDSAC, o primeiro computador de
programa armazenado prtico. O Manchester Mark I
computador funcionava como um sistema completo usando
tubo de Williams para a memria.
1950
Engenharia Research Associates de Minneapolis, construdo na ERA
de 1101, o primeiro produzido comercialmente o computador. O
National Bureau of Standards construdo o SEAC (Standards Eastern
Automatic Computer) em Washington, como um laboratrio para
testes de componentes e sistemas para a criao de padres de
computador.
1951
MIT Whirlwind
Englands first commercial computer, the Lyons
Electronic Office, solved clerical problems.
UNIVAC I
The UNIVAC I delivered to the U.S. Census Bureau was the first commercial
computer to attract widespread public attention. Although manufactured by
Remington Rand, the machine often was mistakenly referred to as the "IBM
UNIVAC." Remington Rand eventually sold 46 machines at more than $1 million each
F.O.B. factory $750,000 plus $185,000 for a high speed printer.
Speed:
1952
Heinz Nixdorf founded Nixdorf Computer Corp. in Germany.
John von Neumanns IAS computer became operational at the
Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, N.J.
On election night, November 4, CBS News borrowed a UNIVAC to
make a scientific prediction of the outcome of the race for the
presidency between Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson.
1953
At MIT, Jay Forrester installed magnetic core memory on the
Whirlwind computer.
IBM shipped its first electronic computer, the 701.
1954
A silicon-based junction transistor
The IBM 650 magnetic drum calculator established itself as the
first mass-produced computer.
1955
Components
1956
Burroughs buys Electrodata.
MIT researchers built the TX-0, the first general-purpose,
programmable computer built with transistors.
1957
A group of engineers led by Ken Olsen left MITs Lincoln Laboratory
founded a company based on the new transistor technology.
In Minneapolis, the original Engineering Research Associates group
led by Bill Norris left Sperry Rand to form a new company, Control
Data Corp., which soon released its model 1604 computer.
1958
Jack Kilby created the first integrated circuit at Texas .
SAGE Semi-Automatic Ground Environment linked hundreds of
radar stations in the United States and Canada in the first large-scale
computer communications network.
1959
APT ashtray
1960
Software &
Languages
1961
RTL integrated circuit
1962
Software &
Languages
IBM 1311 Disk Storage Drive is announced. Announced on October 11, 1962,
the IBM 1311 was the first disk drive IBM made with a removable disk pack.
Each pack weighed about ten pounds, held six disks, and had a capacity of 2
million characters. The disks would rotate at 1,500 RPM and were accessed
by a hydraulic actuator with one head per disk. [storage] The 1311 offered
some of the advantages of both tapes and disks.
1963
Tandy Radio Shack is founded.
Tandy Radio Shack (TRS) was
formed by the 1963 merger of
Tandy Leather Company and
Radio Shack. TRS began by
selling a variety of electronic
products, mainly to hobbyists.
The TRS-80 Model I computer,
introduced in 1977, was a
major step in introducing home
computers to the public. Like
the Commodore PET and the
Apple II, which were introduced
within months of the TRS-80,
the computer came assembled
and ready to run.
ASCII American
Standard Code for
Information
Interchange
1964
CDCs 6600 supercomputer, designed
by Seymour Cray, performed up to 3
million instructions per second a
processing speed three times faster
than that of its closest competitor, the
IBM Stretch. The 6600 retained the
distinction of being the fastest computer
in the world until surpassed by its
successor, the CDC 7600, in 1968.
Networking
Online transaction
processing made its
debut in IBMs
SABRE reservation
system, set up for
American Airlines.
Using telephone
lines, SABRE linked
2,000 terminals in 65
cities to a pair of IBM
7090 computers,
delivering data on any
flight in less than
three seconds.
1965
Robots & Artificial
Intelligence
Commodore Business Machines (CBM) is
founded. Its founder Jack Tramiel emigrated to
the US after WWII where he began repairing
typewriters. In 1965, he moved to Toronto and
established Commodore International which
also began making mechanical and electronic
calculators. In 1977, Commodore released the
Commodore PET computer; in 1981 the VIC20; and, in 1982, the Commodore 64. CBM
purchased competitor Amiga Corporation in
1984. Despite being the largest single supplier
of computers in the world at one time, by 1984
internal disputes and market pressures led to
financial problems. The company declared
bankruptcy in 1994.
1966
The Department of Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency contracted with
the University of Illinois to build a large
parallel processing computer, the ILLIAC
IV, which did not operate until 1972 at
NASAs Ames Research Center.
Acoustically
coupled
modem
Networking
1967
MOS semiconductor
Seymour Papert
Seymour Papert designed LOGO as a computer
language for children. Initially a drawing program, LOGO
controlled the actions of a mechanical "turtle," which
traced its path with pen on paper. Electronic turtles made
their designs on a video display monitor.
1968
Evans & Sutherland is formed. In 1968,
David Evans and Ivan Sutherland, both
professors of computer science, founded a
company to develop a special graphics
computer known as a frame buffer. This
device was a special high-speed memory
used for capturing video.
Apollo Guidance
Computer
Software & Languages
Edsger Dijkstras "GO TO
considered harmful" letter,
published in
Communications of the
ACM, fired the first salvo
in the structured
programming wars. The
ACM considered the
resulting acrimony
sufficiently harmful that it
The Apollo Guidance Computer made its
established a policy of no
debut orbiting the Earth on Apollo 7. A
longer printing articles
year later, it steered Apollo 11 to the lunar
taking such an assertive
position against a coding
surface. Astronauts communicated with
practice.
the computer by punching two-digit codes
and the appropriate syntactic category
into the display and keyboard unit.
Tentacle Arm
Marvin Minsky developed the Tentacle Arm, which moved like
an octopus. It had twelve joints designed to reach around
obstacles. A PDP-6 computer controlled the arm, powered by
hydraulic fluids. Mounted on a wall, it could lift the weight of a
person.
1969
Software &
Languages
AT&T Bell Laboratories programmers Kenneth Thompson
and Dennis Ritchie developed the UNIX operating system on
a spare DEC minicomputer. UNIX combined many of the
timesharing and file management features offered by Multics,
from which it took its name. (Multics, a projects of the mid1960s, represented the first effort at creating a multi-user,
multi-tasking operating system.) The UNIX operating system
quickly secured a wide following, particularly among
engineers and scientists.
1970
Xerox opens Palo Alto Research Center
(PARC). In 1970, Xerox Corporation hired Dr.
George Pake to lead a new research center in
Palo Alto, California. PARC attracted some of
the United States top computer scientists,
and produced many groundbreaking
inventions that transformed computingmost
notably the personal computer graphical user
interface, Ethernet, the laser printer, and
object-oriented programming. Xerox was
unable to market the inventions from PARC
but others did, including Steve Jobs (Apple),
Bob Metcalfe (3Com), as well as Charles
Geschke and John Warnock
Networking
Citizens and
Southern
National Bank in
Valdosta, Ga.,
installed the
countrys first
automatic teller
machine.
Networking
Computer-to-computer
communication
expanded when the
Department of
Defense established
four nodes on the
ARPANET
1971
Components
The first advertisement for a
microprocessor, the Intel
4004, appeared in Electronic
News. Developed for
Busicom, a Japanese
calculator maker, the 4004
had 2250 transistors and
could perform up to 90,000
operations per second in fourbit chunks. Federico Faggin
led the design and Ted Hoff
led the architecture.
Companies
&
Computers
The Kenbak-1, the first personal
computer, advertised for $750 in
Scientific American. Designed by
John V. Blankenbaker using
standard medium-scale and smallscale integrated circuits, the
Kenbak-1 relied on switches for
input and lights for output from its
256-byte memory. In 1973, after
selling only 40 machines, Kenbak
Corp. closed its doors.
RCA sells its computer division.
Networking An
&IBM team, originally led by David Noble,
invented the 8-inch floppy diskette. It was
Storage
initially designed for use in loading microcode
into the controller for the "Merlin" (IBM 3330)
disk pack file. It quickly won widespread
acceptance as a program and data-storage
medium. Unlike hard drives, a user could
easily transfer a floppy in its protective jacket
from one drive to another.
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 "@" sign for use in email, sent his message over a military
network called ARPANET. When asked to
describe the contents of the first email,
Tomlinson said it was something like
"QWERTYUIOP"
1972
Graphics
& Games
SuperPaint is
completed.
SuperPaint was the first
digital computer drawing
system to use a frame buffer
a special high-speed
memoryand the ancestor of
all modern paint programs. It
could create sophisticated
animations, in up to 16.7
million colors, had adjustable
paintbrushes, video
magnification, and used a
graphics tablet for drawing. It
was designed by Richard
Shoup and others at the
Xerox Palo Alto Research
Center (PARC). Its designers
won a technical Academy
Award in 1998 for their
invention.
Networking
Wozniaks "blue box", Steve
Wozniak built his "blue box" a
tone generator to make free
phone calls. Wozniak sold the
boxes in dormitories at the
University of California Berkeley
where he studied as an
undergraduate. "The early boxes
had a safety feature a reed
switch inside the housing
operated by a magnet taped onto
the outside of the box," Wozniak
remembered. "If apprehended,
you removed the magnet,
whereupon it would generate offfrequency tones and be
inoperable ... and you tell the
police: Its just a music box."
1973
Networking
1974
Computers
Researchers at the Xerox Palo Alto
Research Center designed the Alto
the first work station with a builtin mouse for input. The Alto stored
several files simultaneously in
windows, offered menus and icons,
and could link to a local area
network. Although Xerox never sold
the Alto commercially, it gave a
number of them to universities.
Engineers later incorporated its
features into work stations and
personal computers.
1975
Computers
Tandem computers tailored its Tandem16, the first fault-tolerant computer, for
online transaction processing. The
banking industry rushed to adopt the
machine, built to run during repair or
expansion.
Networking
1976
Components
Intel and Zilog introduced new
microprocessors. Five
times faster than its
predecessor, the 8008, the
Intel 8080 could address
four times as many bytes
for a total of 64 kilobytes.
The Zilog Z-80 could run
any program written for the
8080 and included twice as
many built-in machine
instructions.
Computers
Steve Wozniak designed the
Apple I, a single-board
computer.
Project started:1972
Project completed:1976
Speed:166 million
floating-point
operations per
second
Size:58 cubic feet
Weight:5,300 lbs.
Technology:Integrated circuit
Clock rate:83 million cycles
per second
Word length:64-bit words
Instruction set:128 instructions
Networking
The Queen of England
sends first her e-mail.
Elizabeth II, Queen of
the United Kingdom,
sends out an e-mail on
March 26 from the Royal
Signals and Radar
Establishment (RSRE)
in Malvern as a part of a
demonstration of
networking technology.
1977
The Apple II became an instant success
when released in 1977 with its printed
circuit motherboard, switching power
supply, keyboard, case assembly, manual,
game paddles, A/C powercord, and
cassette tape with the computer game
"Breakout." When hooked up to a color
television set, the Apple II produced
brilliant color graphics.
The Commodore PET (Personal
Electronic Transactor) the
first of several personal
computers released in 1977
came fully assembled and was
straightforward to operate, with
either 4 or 8 kilobytes of
memory, two built-in cassette
drives, and a membrane
"chiclet" keyboard.
TRS-80
In the first month after its release, Tandy Radio Shacks first desktop computer
the TRS-80 sold 10,000 units, well more than the companys projected
sales of 3,000 units for one year. Priced at $599.95, the machine included a
Z80 based microprocessor, a video display, 4 kilobytes of memory, BASIC,
cassette storage, and easy-to-understand manuals that assumed no prior
knowledge on the part of the consumer.
Graphics &
Games
1978
The VAX 11/780 from
Digital Equipment Corp.
featured the ability to
address up to 4.3
gigabytes of virtual
memory, providing
hundreds of times the
capacity of most
minicomputers.
Robots &
Artificial
Intelligence
1979
1980
1981
IBM introduced its PC, igniting a fast
growth of the personal computer market.
The first PC ran on a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088
microprocessor and used Microsofts MSDOS operating system.
Software &
Languages
1982
Computers
The Cray XMP, first produced
in this year, almost doubled
the operating speed of
competing machines with a
parallel processing system
that ran at 420 million
floating-point operations
per second, or megaflops.
Arranging two Crays to
work together on different
parts of the same problem
achieved the faster speed.
Defense and scientific
research institutes also
heavily used Crays.
1983
Companies
Computers
Apple introduced
its Lisa. The first
personal computer
with a graphical
user interface, its
development was
central in the
move to such
systems for
personal
computers.
Networking
Original
Bernoulli Box
The Bernoulli Box is released. Using a special cartridge-based system that used
hard disk technology, the Bernoulli Box was a type of removable storage that
allowed people to move large files between computers when few alternatives (such
as a network) existed. Allowing for many times the amount of storage afforded by a
regular floppy disk, the cartridges came in capacities ranging from 5MB to 230MB.
1984
Storage
1985
Networking
The modern Internet gained support when the National
Science foundation formed the NSFNET, linking five
supercomputer centers at Princeton University, Pittsburgh,
University of California at San Diego, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, and Cornell University. Soon, several
regional networks developed; eventually, the government
reassigned pieces of the ARPANET to the NSFNET. The NSF
allowed commercial use of the Internet for the first time in
1991, and in 1995, it decommissioned the backbone, leaving
the Internet a self-supporting industry.
The NSFNET initially transferred data at 56 kilobits per
second, an improvement on the overloaded ARPANET. Traffic
continued to increase, though, and in 1987, ARPA awarded
Merit Network Inc., IBM, and MCI a contract to expand the
Internet by providing access points around the country to a
network with a bandwidth of 1.5 megabits per second. In
1992, the network upgraded to T-3 lines, which transmit
information at about 45 megabits per second.
Software &
Languages
Aldus announced its PageMaker program
for use on Macintosh computers, launching
an interest in desktop publishing. Two years
later, Aldus released a version for IBMs and
IBM-compatible computers. Developed by
Paul Brainerd, who founded Aldus Corp.,
PageMaker allowed users to combine
graphics and text easily enough to make
desktop publishing practical.
1986
Components
David Miller of AT&T Bell Labs patented the optical transistor, a component
central to digital optical computing. Called Self-ElectroOptic-Effect Device, or
SEED, the transistor involved a light-sensitive switch built with layers of gallium
arsenide and gallium aluminum arsenide. Beams of light triggered electronic
events that caused the light either to be transmitted or absorbed, thus turning the
switch on or off.
Within a decade, research on the optical transistor led to successful work on the
first all-optical processor and the first general-purpose all-optical computer. Bell
Labs researchers first demonstrated the processor there in 1990. A computer
using the SEED also contained lasers, lenses, and fast light switches, but it still
required programming by a separate, non-optical computer. In 1993, researchers
at the University of Colorado unveiled the first all-optical computer capable of
being programmed and of manipulating instructions internally.
Computers
Components
1987
Computers
1988
Components
Compaq and other PC-clone
makers developed enhanced
industry standard architecture
better than microchannel and
retained compatibility with
existing machines. EISA used a
32-bit bus, or a means by which
two devices can communicate.
The advanced data-handling
features of the EISA made it an
improvement over the 16-bit
bus of industry standard
architecture. IBMs competitors
developed the EISA as a way to
avoid paying a fee to IBM for its
MCA bus.
Computers
Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, who
left Apple to form his own
company, unveiled the NeXT.
Networking
Robert Morris worm flooded
the ARPANET. Then-23-yearold Morris, the son of a
computer security expert for
the National Security Agency,
sent a nondestructive worm
through the Internet, causing
problems for about 6,000 of
the 60,000 hosts linked to the
network. A researcher at
Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory in California
discovered the worm. "
1989
1990
Graphics & Games
Networking
The World Wide Web was born when Tim Berners-Lee, a
researcher at CERN, the high-energy physics laboratory in
Geneva, developed HyperText Markup Language. HTML,
as it is commonly known, allowed the Internet to expand
into the World Wide Web, using specifications he
developed such as URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and
HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol). A browser, such as
Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer, follows links and
sends a query to a server, allowing a user to view a site.
Berners-Lee based the World Wide Web on Enquire, a
hypertext system he had developed for himself, with the
aim of allowing people to work together by combining their
knowledge in a global web of hypertext documents. With
this idea in mind, Berners-Lee designed the first World
Wide Web server and browser available to the general
public in 1991. Berners-Lee founded the W3 Consortium,
which coordinates World Wide Web development.
Software &
Languages
Microsoft shipped Windows 3.0 on May 22. Compatible with DOS programs, the
first successful version of Windows finally offered good enough performance to
satisfy PC users. For the new version, Microsoft revamped the interface and
created a design that allowed PCs to support large graphical applications for the
first time. It also allowed multiple programs to run simultaneously on its Intel
80386 microprocessor.
Microsoft released Windows amid a $10 million publicity blitz. In addition to
making sure consumers knew about the product, Microsoft lined up a number of
other applications ahead of time that ran under Windows 3.0, including versions
of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. As a result, PCs moved toward the userfriendly concepts of the Macintosh, making IBM and IBM-compatible computers
more popular.
1991
Designed by Finnish university
student Linus Torvalds, Linux
was released to several
Usenet newsgroups on
September 17th, 1991. Almost
immediately, enthusiasts
began developing and
improving Linux, such as
adding support for peripherals
and improving its stability. In
February 1992, Linux became
free software or (as its
developers preferred to say
after 1998) open source. Linux
typically incorporated elements
of the GNU operating system
and became widely used.
1992
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
opens. Director James Camerons
sequel to his 1984 hit The
Terminator, featured groundbreaking special effects done by
Industrial Light & Magic. Made for a
record $100 million, it was the most
expensive movie ever made at the
time. Most of this cost was due to
the expense of computer-generated
special effects (such as image
morphing) throughout the film.
Terminator 2 is one of many films
that critique civilizations frequent
blind trust in technology.
1993
The Pentium microprocessor is
released. The Pentium was the
fifth generation of the x86 line
of microprocessors from Intel,
the basis for the IBM PC and its
clones. The Pentium introduced
several advances that made
programs run faster such as the
ability to execute several
instructions at the same time
and support for graphics and
music.
Networking
1994
Resource =
http://www.computerhistory.org