Timeline of Computer History
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Timeline of Computer History By Year By Category Search AI & Robotics (55) Computers (145) Graphics & Games (48) Memory & Storage (61) Networking & The Popular Culture (50) Software & Languages (60)(60) Plankalkül (Plan Calculus) 1945 The Mathematical Theory of Communication 1948 Konrad Zuse Konrad Zuse begins work on Plankalkül (Plan Calculus), the Claude Shannon first algorithmic programming language, with the goal of creating the theoretical preconditions for the solution of general problems. Seven years earlier, Zuse had developed and built the world´s first binary digital computer, the Z1. He American mathematician Claude Shannon writes The completed the first fully functional program-controlled Mathematical Theory of Communication, laying the electromechanical digital computer, the Z3, in 1941. Only the groundwork for understanding the theoretical limits of Z4 — the most sophisticated of his creations — survived communication between people and machines. As part o World War II. work Shannon identified the bit as a fundamental unit of information and, coincidentally, the basic unit of computa Grace Hopper completes A-0 1952 John Backus completes Speedcode 1953 IBM 701, the Defense Calculator John Backus completes Speedcode for IBM´s first large-s scientific computer, the IBM 701. Although using Speedc demanded a significant amount of scarce memory, it grea reduced the time required to write a program. In 1957, Ba became project leader of the IBM FORTRAN project, whi Grace Hopper became the most popular scientific programming languag history and is still in use today. Mathematician Grace Hopper completes A-0, a program that allows a computer user to use English-like words instead of numbers to give the computer instructions. It possessed several features of a modern-day compiler and was written for the UNIVAC I computer, the first commercial business computer system in the United States. FORTRAN 1957 SRI designs ERMA 1959 Fortran manual for the IBM 704 An IBM team led by John Backus develops FORTRAN, a powerful scientific computing language that uses English statements. Some programmers were skeptical that FORTRAN could be as efficient as hand coding, but that sentiment disappeared when FORTRAN proved it could generate efficient code. Over the ensuing decades, FORTRAN became the most often used language for scientific and technical computing. FORTRAN is still in us today. MATH-MATIC ERMA, the first machine to use Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) SRI International designs ERMA (Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting), for Bank of America. At the time, COBOLaccounts were posted(Common manually, a methodBusiness- that would quickly be outstripped by the growth in check writing after World War 1960 OrientedII. The ERMA project Language) digitized checking by creating a computer-readable font. A special scanner read account numbers preprinted on checks using magnetic ink character recognition. In just one hour, ERMA could process the number of accounts that would have taken a well-trained banker nearly 17 workdays to complete. Participants in COBOL's 25th Anniversary Celebration at The Computer Univac Math-Matic promotional brochure Museum on May 16, 1985, surround the COBOL Tombstone, a gift in 1960 from Howard Bromberg (far right) to the COBOL Committee.” Sperry Rand releases a commercial compiler for its UNIV computer. Developed by programmer Grace Hopper as a A team drawn from several computer manufacturers and the refinement of her earlier innovation, the A-0 compiler, the Pentagon develop COBOL—an acronym for Common Business-Oriented Language. Many of its specifications version was called MATH-MATIC. Earlier work on the A-0 borrow heavily from the earlier FLOW-MATIC language. A-2 compilers led to the development of the first English- Designed for business use, early COBOL efforts aimed for language business data processing compiler, B-0 (FLOW easy readability of computer programs and as much machine MATIC), also completed in 1957. independence as possible. Designers hoped a COBOL program would run on any computer for which a compiler existed with only minimal modifications. Howard Bromberg, an impatient member of the committee in charge of creating COBOL, had this tombstone made out of fear that the language had no future. However, COBOL survives to this day. A study in 1997 estimated that over 200 billion lines of COBOL code was still in existence, accounting for 80% of all business software code. Compatible Time-Sharing 1961 System (CTSS) is Demonstrate Kenneth Iverson writes A 1962 Programming Language Fernando Corbató with MIT's IBM 7090 MIT Museum The increasing number of users needing access to comp in the early 1960s leads to experiments in timesharing computer systems. Timesharing systems can support ma users – sometimes hundreds – by sharing the computer w each user. CTSS was developed by the MIT Computation Center under the direction of Fernando Corbató and was based on a modified IBM 7090, then later 7094, mainfram computer. Programs created for CTSS included RUNOFF early text formatting utility, and an early inter-user messa system that presaged email. CTSS operated until 1973. Kenneth Iverson, the developer of APL Kenneth Iverson’s book A Programming Language details a ASCII 1963 form of mathematical notation that he had developed in the late 1950s while an assistant professor at Harvard University. IBM hired Iverson and it was there that APL evolved into a practical programming language. APL was widely used in scientific, financial, and especially actuarial applications. Powerful functions and operators in APL are expressed with special characters, resulting in very concise programs. Table of ASCII codes IBM introduces SABRE 1964 ASCII — American Standard Code for Information Interchange — permits machines from different manufact to exchange data. The ASCII code consisted of 128 uniq strings of ones and zeros. Each sequence represented a letter of the English alphabet, an Arabic numeral, an assortment of punctuation marks and symbols, or a funct such as a carriage return. ASCII can only represent up to symbols, and for this reason many other languages are b supported by Unicode, which has the ability to represent 100,000 symbols. SABRE promotional button IBM introduces the SABRE reservation system for American Ivan Sutherland publishes Airlines. First tested in 1960, the system took over American’s reservations four years later. Running on dual IBM 7090 Sketchpad mainframes, SABRE was inspired by IBM’s work on the SAGE air-defense system. SABRE, which became a separate travel-services company in 2000, owns the Travelocity website. Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny create BASIC Ivan Sutherland using Sketchpad Ivan Sutherland publishes Sketchpad, an interactive, rea computer drawing system, as his MIT doctoral thesis. Us light pen and Sketchpad, a designer could draw and manipulate geometric figures on a computer screen. Blossoming into the best known of the early drawing applications, Sketchpad influenced a generation of desig and drafting programs. Although used mostly for enginee drawings, it had some artistic applications, including a fam drawing of Nefertiti that could be animated to a limited ex Student working with BASIC on a time-sharing system Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny create BASIC (Beginner’s Simula is written by Kristen All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), an easy-to-learn 1965 programming language, for their students at Dartmouth Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl College who had no prior programming experience. Its use spread widely to schools all over the world. Over a decade later, most early personal computers were shipped with a version of BASIC embedded in their system, which opened up programming to an entirely new audience. Seymour Papert designs LOGO 1967 Bjørn Myhrhaug, Sigurd Kubosch, Kristen Nygaaard, and Ole-Johan Dahl discussing Simula. Simula, an object-oriented language, is written by Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl at the Norwegian Computin Center. Based largely on the Algol 60 programming langu Simula grouped data and instructions into blocks called objects, each representing one facet of a system intende simulation. In addition to simulation, Simula also has applications in computer graphics, process control, scien data processing and other fields. "GO TO considered harmful" 1968 letter is published Seymour Papert with LOGO 'turtle' Edsger Dijkstra Seymour Papert designs 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 Edsger Dijkstra´s "GO TO considered harmful" letter is display monitor. published in Communications of the ACM, fires the first s in the structured programming wars. He called for abolish Papert emphasized creative exploration over memorization of the unrestricted GOTO statements used in higher-level facts: "People give lip service to learning to learn, but if you languages, and argued that they complicated programmi look at curriculum in schools, most of it is about dates, The ACM considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently fractions, and science facts; very little of it is about learning. I harmful that it established a policy of no longer printing like to think of learning as an expertise that every one of us articles taking such an assertive position against a coding Kennethcan acquire." Thompson and Dennis practice. 1969 Ritchie develop UNIX CICS is released UNIX license plate AT&T Bell Labs programmers