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Timeline of Computing History 4000-1200 B.C

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T o commemorate the 50th year of modern computing and the Computer Society, the timeline on the following pages traces the evolution of computing and computer technology. Timeline research by Bob Carlson, Angela Burgess, and Christine Miller. Timeline design and production by Larry Bauer. We thank our reviewers: Ted Biggerstaff, George Cybenko, Martin Campbell-Kelly, Alan Davis, Dan O’Leary, Edward Parrish, and Michael Williams. In 2012 the timeline was augmented through 2010 by the Society's History Committee. Janice Hall did the update graphics. Timeline of Computing History 4000-1200 B.C. 3000 B.C. The abacus is invented Inhabitants of in Babylonia. the first known civilization in Sumer keep 250-230 B.C. The Sieve of records of Eratosthenes is used to determine commercial prime numbers. transactions on clay tablets. About 79 A.D. The “Antikythera IBM Archives Device,” when set correctly About 1300 The more familiar according to latitude and day wire-and-bead abacus replaces The University Museum, of Pennsylvania of the week, gives alternating the Chinese calculating rods. 29- and 30-day lunar months. 4000 B.C. — 1300 1612-1614 John Napier uses the printed decimal point, devises 1622 William Oughtred invents the circular slide 1666 In logarithms, and uses numbered sticks, England, or Napiers Bones, for calculating. rule on the basis of Napier’s logarithms. Samuel Morland produces a mechanical 1623 William (Wilhelm) calculator that Schickard designs a can add and “calculating clock” with subtract. a gear-driven carry mechanism to aid in The Computer Museum multiplication of 1642-1643 Blaise Pascal creates a multi-digit numbers. gear-driven adding machine called the “Pascalene,” the first mechanical The Computer Museum adding machine. 1600s 1801 A linked sequence of punched cards controls the weaving of patterns in Joseph-Marie Jacquard’s loom. 1774 Philipp-Matthaus Hahn builds and sells a small number of calculating machines precise to 12 digits. 1777 The third Earl of Stanhope invents a multiplying calculator. IBM Archives 1674 Gottfried Leibniz builds the 1786 J.H. Mueller envisions a “Stepped Reckoner,” a calculator “difference engine” but cannot using a stepped cylindrical gear. get the funds to build it. IBM Archives 1674 — 1801 1820 The Thomas 1822 Charles Babbage Arithmometer, based begins to design and build on Leibniz’ stepped- the Difference Engine. drum principle, is demonstrated to the French Academy of Science. It becomes the first mass-produced calculator and sells for many years. IBM Archives 1811 Luddites destroy machinery that threatens to eliminate jobs. 1811 — 1822 1832 Babbage and 1834-35 Babbage shifts his focus to Joseph Clement designing the Analytical Engine. produce a portion of the Difference Engine. 1838 In January 1829 William Austin Burt Samuel Morse patents an awkward but and Alfred Vail workable typewriter, the demonstrate first writing machine in elements of the America. telegraph system. IBM Archives IBM Archives 1829 — 1838 1842-1843 Augusta 1847-1849 Babbage completes 21 drawings Ada, Countess of for the second version of the Difference Lovelace, translates Engine but does not complete construction. Luigi Menabrea’s pamphlet on the Analytical Engine, adding her own commentary. 1854 George Boole publishes “An Investigation 1844 Samuel Morse of the Laws of sends a telegraph Thought,” describing message from a system for symbolic and logical The Computer Museum Washington to reasoning that will become the basis Baltimore. for computer design. Smithsonian Institution Photo No. 89-22161 1842 — 1854 1876 Alexander 1876-1878 Baron 1858 A Graham Bell Kelvin builds a telegraph invents and harmonic analyzer cable spans patents the and tide predictor. the Atlantic telephone. Ocean for the first time and provides service for a few days. National Inventors Hall of Fame Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 1861 A transcontinental 1882 William S. Burroughs telegraph line connects the leaves his bank clerk’s job Smithsonian Institution Photo No. Atlantic and Pacific coasts. determined to invent an adding machine. Smithsonian Institution 1858 — 1882 1893 The first 1901 The four-function keypunch calculator is appears and invented. changes very little over the next half 1895 Guglielmo century. Marconi transmits a radio signal. The Computer Museum IBM Archives 1889 Herman Hollerith’s Electric Tabulating System outperforms the competition and in 1896 Hollerith establishes the Tabulating the fall is selected for use in the 1890 census. Machine Company. 1889 — 1901 1906 Lee de Forest adds a third valve to 1911 Hollerith’s Tabulating Machines Co. and control current flow to Fleming’s diode to two other companies combine to form C-T-R— create the three-electrode vacuum tube. Calculating, Tabulating, and 1907 Gramophone music Recording Co. constitutes the first regular radio broadcasts from New York. 1904 John A. Fleming patents 1908 British scientist 1911 Dutch the diode Campbell Swinton physicist Kamerlingh vacuum tube, describes an electronic Onnes at Leiden setting the stage scanning method and University discovers for better radio foreshadows use of the superconductivity. communication. cathode-ray tube for IBM Archives Smithsonian Institution Photo No. 351 television. 1904 — 1911 1915 Use of microchips is foreshadowed as physicist Manson Benedicks discovers that the germanium crystal can be used to convert alternating current to direct current. 1919 Eccles and Jordan, US physicists, invent the flip-flop electronic switching IBM Archives circuit critical to high-speed electronic 1912 The Institute counting systems. 1924 T.J. Watson of Radio Engineers, renames CTR to IBM which will eventually and popularizes the merge with other 1920-1921 The word “robot” (derived from “Think” slogan he organizations to the Czech word for compulsory labor) is first coined at National form the IEEE, used by Karel Câpek in his play RUR Cash Register. is established. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). IBM Archives 1912 — 1924 1927 Herbert Hoover’s face is 1934 In Germany, Konrad seen on screen during the first 1930 The Differential Zuse seeks to build a better demonstration of television in Analyzer, devised by calculating machine than the US. Accompanying voice Vannevar Bush and those currently available. transmission uses telephone colleagues at MIT, solves wires. various differential equations. 1928 The quartz crystal clock 1931 Reynold B. Johnson, makes possible unprecedented a high school teacher in time-keeping accuracy. Michigan, devises a way to score multiple-choice tests by Center for the History of Electrical Engineering sensing conductive pencil 1929 Color television signals marks on answer sheets. IBM are successfully transmitted. later buys the technology. 1927 — 1934 1935 IBM introduces not 1937 Howard Aiken submits only the 601 multiplying to IBM a proposal for a punch-card machine but digital calculating machine also an electric typewriter. capable of performing the four fundamental operations 1936 Konrad Zuse of arithmetic and operating realizes that programs in a predetermined sequence. composed of bit combinations can be 1937 IClaude Shannon publishes the principles for an stored, and he files a IBM Archives patent application in electric adder to the base two. Germany for the automatic execution of 1937 George Stibitz IBM Archives calculations, including a develops a binary circuit “combination memory.” based on Boolean algebra. 1935 — 1937 1939 Working from October through November, John Vincent Atanasoff, with help from graduate 1937 Alan student Clifford E. Berry, builds a prototype Turing’s paper electronic-digital “On Computable computer that Numbers” uses binary presents the arithmetic. concept of the Turing machine. 1938 Zuse Iowa State University completes the Z1 HP Company Archives electromechanical 1937 John Vincent Atanasoff binary computer 1938 William Hewlett and spends the winter devising and refines the the principles for an David Packard form design with the Z2. Iowa State University electronic-digital computer. Hewlett-Packard in a garage in Palo Alto, California. 1937 — 1939 1940 Konrad Zuse completes the Z2, 1944 The Harvard Mark I (a.k.a. IBM which uses telephone relays instead Automatic Sequence Controlled of mechanical logical circuits. Calculator [ASCC]), produced by Howard Aiken, is dedicated at Harvard University on August 7, 1944. 1941 Zuse completes the Z3, the first fully functional program-controlled electromechanical digital computer. 1943 OIn December, 1943 On May 31, 1943, Colossus, a British construction begins on the vacuum tube ENIAC at the Moore School computer, becomes Bletchley Park Museum of Electrical Engineering in operational at Bletchley Park through the combined efforts Philadelphia. of Alan Turing, Tommy Flowers, and M.H.A. Newman. It is considered the first all-electronic calculating device. IBM Archives 1940 — 1944 1945 J. Presper Eckert 1945 John von Neumann and John Mauchly sign introduces the concept of a contract to build the a stored program in a EDVAC (Electronic June 30 draft report on Discrete Variable the EDVAC design. Automatic Computer). 1945 Working on a prototype of the Mark II, in the summer Grace Murray Hopper finds 1945 Zuse’s Z4 survives the first computer “bug,” a moth that had World War II and caused a relay failure. helps launch postwar 1945 By spring of development of scientific the year, ENIAC is computers in Germany. IEEE Annals of History Computing up and running. 1945 In July, Vannevar Bush’s As We May Think is published in the Atlantic
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