Timeline of Computer History

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Bell Laboratories scientist 1937 George Stibitz uses relays for a Hewlett-Packard is founded demonstration adder

1939

Hewlett and Packard in their garage workshop

“Model K” Adder

David Packard and Bill Hewlett found their company in a Alto, California garage. Their first product, the HP 200A A Called the “Model K” Adder because he built it on his Oscillator, rapidly became a popular piece of test equipm “Kitchen” table, this simple demonstration circuit provides for engineers. Walt Disney Pictures ordered eight of the 2 proof of concept for applying Boolean logic to the design of model to test recording equipment and speaker systems computers, resulting in construction of the relay-based Model the 12 specially equipped theatres that showed the movie I Complex Calculator in 1939. That same year in Germany, “Fantasia” in 1940. engineer Konrad Zuse built his Z2 computer, also using telephone company relays.

The Complex Number Calculat 1940 Konrad Zuse finishes the Z3 (CNC) is completed Computer 1941

The Zuse Z3 Computer

The Z3, an early computer built by German engineer Konrad Zuse working in complete isolation from developments elsewhere, uses 2,300 relays, performs floating point binary arithmetic, and has a 22-bit word length. The Z3 was used for aerodynamic calculations but was destroyed in a bombing raid on Berlin in late 1943. Zuse later supervised a reconstruction of the Z3 in the 1960s, which is currently on Operator at Complex Number Calculator (CNC) display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

In 1939, Bell Telephone Laboratories completes this calculator, designed by scientist George Stibitz. In 1940, The first Bombe is completed Stibitz demonstrated the CNC at an American Mathemat Society conference held at Dartmouth College. Stibitz stunned the group by performing calculations remotely on CNC (located in New York City) using a Teletype termina connected via to New York over special telephone lines. T is likely the first example of remote access computing.

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer 1942 Bombe replica, Bletchley Park, UK (ABC) is completed

Built as an electro-mechanical means of decrypting Nazi ENIGMA-based military communications during World War II, the British Bombe is conceived of by computer pioneer Alan Turing and Harold Keen of the British Tabulating Machine Company. Hundreds of allied bombes were built in order to determine the daily rotor start positions of Enigma cipher machines, which in turn allowed the Allies to decrypt German messages. The basic idea for bombes came from Polish code-breaker Marian Rejewski's 1938 "Bomba."

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer

After successfully demonstrating a proof-of-concept proto in 1939, Professor John Vincent Atanasoff receives funds Bell Labs Relay Interpolator is build a full-scale machine at Iowa State College (now 1943 University). The machine was designed and built by Atan completed and graduate student Clifford Berry between 1939 and 19 The ABC was at the center of a patent dispute related to invention of the computer, which was resolved in 1973 w was shown that ENIAC co-designer John Mauchly had se the ABC shortly after it became functional.

The legal result was a landmark: Atanasoff was declared originator of several basic computer ideas, but the compu as a concept was declared un-patentable and thus freely open to all. A full-scale working replica of the ABC was completed in 1997, proving that the ABC machine functio as Atanasoff had claimed. The replica is currently on disp at the Computer History Museum.

First Colossus operational at 1944 Bletchley Park

George Stibitz circa 1940

The US Army asked Bell Laboratories to design a machine to assist in testing its M-9 gun director, a type of analog The Colossus at work at Bletchley Park computer that aims large guns to their targets. Mathematician George Stibitz recommends using a relay-based calculator for the project. The result was the Relay Interpolator, later called the Bell Labs Model II. The Relay Interpolator used 440 Designed by British engineer Tommy Flowers, the Coloss relays, and since it was programmable by paper tape, was designed to break the complex Lorenz ciphers used by th used for other applications following the war. Nazis during World War II. A total of ten Colossi were delivered, each using as many as 2,500 vacuum tubes. A series of pulleys transported continuous rolls of punched paper tape containing possible solutions to a particular co Colossus reduced the time to break Lorenz messages fro weeks to hours. Most historians believe that the use of Curt Herzstark designs Curta Colossus machines significantly shortened the war by providing evidence of enemy intentions and beliefs. The calculator machine’s existence was not made public until the 1970s

Harvard Mark 1 is completed Curta Model 1 calculator

Curt Herzstark was an Austrian engineer who worked in his family’s manufacturing business until he was arrested by the Nazis in 1943. While imprisoned at Buchenwald concentration camp for the rest of World War II, he refines his pre-war design of a calculator featuring a modified version of Leibniz’s

“stepped drum” design. After the war, Herzstark’s Curta made Harvard Mark 1 is completed history as the smallest all-mechanical, four-function calculator ever built.

Conceived by Harvard physics professor Howard Aiken, designed and built by IBM, the Harvard Mark 1 is a room sized, relay-based calculator. The machine had a fifty-foo long camshaft running the length of machine that Johnsynchronized von the machine’Neumanns thousands writes of component Firs par Moore School lectures take place 1945 and used 3,500 relays. The Mark 1 produced mathematic Draft of a Report on the EDVAtables but was soon superseded by electronic stored-pro computers.

1946

The Moore School Building at the University of Pennsylvania

An inspiring summer school on computing at the University of Pennsylvania´s Moore School of Electrical Engineering stimulates construction of stored-program computers at universities and research institutions in the US, France, the UK, and Germany. Among the lecturers were early computer designers like John von Neumann, Howard Aiken, J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, as well as mathematicians including Derrick Lehmer, George Stibitz, and Douglas Hartree. Students included future computing pioneers such as John von Neumann Maurice Wilkes, Claude Shannon, David Rees, and Jay Forrester. This free, public set of lectures inspired the EDSAC, BINAC, and, later, IAS machine clones like the In a widely circulated paper, mathematician John von AVIDAC. Neumann outlines the architecture of a stored-program computer, including electronic storage of programming information and data -- which eliminates the need for mo clumsy methods of programming such as plugboards, Project Whirlwind begins punched cards and paper. Hungarian-born von Neumann demonstrated prodigious expertise in hydrodynamics, ballistics, meteorology, game theory, statistics, and the us mechanical devices for computation. After the war, he concentrated on the development of Princeton´s Institute Advanced Studies computer. First Computer Program to Ru 1948 on a Computer

Kilburn (left) and Williams in front of 'Baby' Whirlwind installation at MIT

University of Manchester researchers Frederic Williams, During World War II, the US Navy approaches the Kilburn, and Geoff Toothill develop the Small-Scale Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) about building a Experimental Machine (SSEM), better known as the flight simulator to train bomber crews. Under the leadership of Manchester "Baby." The Baby was built to test a new me MIT's Gordon Brown and Jay Forrester, the team first built a technology developed by Williams and Kilburn -- soon kn small analog simulator, but found it inaccurate and inflexible. as the Williams Tube – which was the first high-speed News of the groundbreaking electronic ENIAC computer that electronic random access memory for computers. Their fi same year inspired the group to change course and attempt a program, consisting of seventeen instructions and written digital solution, whereby flight variables could be rapidly Kilburn, ran on June 21st, 1948. This was the first progra programmed in software. Completed in 1951, Whirlwind history to run on a digital, electronic, stored-program remains one of the most important computer projects in the computer. history of computing. Foremost among its developments was Forrester’s perfection of magnetic core memory, which became the dominant form of high-speed random access memory for computers until the mid-1970s. SSEC goes on display

Public unveiling of ENIAC

ENIAC

Started in 1943, the ENIAC computing system was built by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert at the Moore School of IBM Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) Electrical Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania. Because of its electronic, as opposed to electromechanical, technology, it is over 1,000 times faster than any previous computer. ENIAC used panel-to-panel wiring and switches for The Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) programming, occupied more than 1,000 square feet, used project, led by IBM engineer Wallace Eckert, uses both re about 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighed 30 tons. It was and vacuum tubes to process scientific data at the rate o believed that ENIAC had done more calculation over the ten 14 x 14 digit multiplications per second. Before its years it was in operation than all of humanity had until that decommissioning in 1952, the SSEC produced the moon time. position tables used in early planning of the 1969 Apollo CSIRAC runs first program moon landing. These tables were later confirmed by usin 1949 more modern computers for the actual flights. The SSEC one of the last of the generation of 'super calculators' to b built using electromechanical technology.

CSIRAC ERA 1101 introduced 1950

While many early digital computers were based on similar designs, such as the IAS and its copies, others are unique designs, like the CSIRAC. Built in Sydney, Australia by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research for use in its Radio physics Laboratory in Sydney, CSIRAC was designed by British-born Trevor Pearcey, and used unusual 12-hole paper tape. It was transferred to the Department of Physics at the University of Melbourne in 1955 and remained in service until 1964.

EDSAC completed

ERA 1101

One of the first commercially produced computers, the company´s first customer was the US Navy. The 1101, designed by ERA but built by Remington-Rand, was inten for high-speed computing and stored 1 million bits on its magnetic drum, one of the earliest magnetic storage dev and a technology which ERA had done much to perfect in own laboratories. Many of the 1101’s basic architectural details were used again in later Remington-Rand comput until the 1960s.

EDSAC NPL Pilot ACE completed

The first practical stored-program computer to provide a regular computing service, EDSAC is built at Cambridge University using vacuum tubes and mercury delay lines for memory. The EDSAC project was led by Cambridge professor and director of the Cambridge Computation Laboratory, Maurice Wilkes. Wilkes' ideas grew out of the Moore School lectures he had attended three years earlier. One major advance in programming was Wilkes' use of a library of short programs, called “subroutines,” stored on punched paper tapes and used for performing common repetitive calculations within a lager program.

MADDIDA developed

Pilot ACE

Based on ideas from Alan Turing, Britain´s Pilot ACE computer is constructed at the National Physical Laborat "We are trying to build a machine to do all kinds of differe things simply by programming rather than by the addition extra apparatus," Turing said at a symposium on large-sc digital calculating machinery in 1947 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The design packed 800 vacuum tubes in relatively compact 12 square feet. MADDIDA (Magnetic Drum Digital Differential Analyzer) prototype

MADDIDA is a digital drum-based differential analyzer. This Plans to build the Simon 1 rela type of computer is useful in performing many of the mathematical equations scientists and engineers encounter in logic machine are published their work. It was originally created for a nuclear missile design project in 1949 by a team led by Fred Steele. It used 53 vacuum tubes and hundreds of germanium diodes, with a magnetic drum for memory. Tracks on the drum did the mathematical integration. MADDIDA was flown across the country for a demonstration to John von Neumann, who was impressed. Northrop was initially reluctant to make MADDIDA a commercial product, but by the end of 1952, six had sold.

Manchester Mark I completed

Manchester Mark I

Simon featured on the November 1950 Scientific American cover

Built by a team led by engineers Frederick Williams and Tom Kilburn, the Mark I serves as the prototype for Ferranti’s first The hobbyist magazine Radio Electronics publishes Edm computer – the Ferranti Mark 1. The Manchester Mark I used Berkeley's design for the Simon 1 relay computer from 19 more than 1,300 vacuum tubes and occupied an area the size to 1951. The Simon 1 used relay logic and cost about $6 of a medium room. Its “Williams-Kilburn tube” memory system build. In his book Giant Brains, Berkeley noted - “We sha was later adopted by several other early computer systems now consider how we can design a very simple machine around the world. will think. Let us call it Simon, because of its predecessor Simple Simon... Simon is so simple and so small in fact t could be built to fill up less space than a grocery-store bo about four cubic feet.”

SEAC and SWAC completed Ferranti Mark I sold 1951

Ferranti Mark 1

The Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) is among the first stored program computers completed in t The title of “first commercially available general-purpose United States. It was built in Washington DC as a test-be computer” probably goes to Britain’s Ferranti Mark I for its evaluating components and systems as well as for setting sale of its first Mark I computer to Manchester University. The computer standards. It was also one of the first computer Mark 1 was a refinement of the experimental Manchester use all-diode logic, a technology more reliable than vacuu “Baby” and Manchester Mark 1 computers, also at tubes. The world's first scanned image was made on SEA Manchester University. A British government contract spurred by engineer Russell Kirsch in 1957. its initial development but a change in government led to loss of funding and the second and only other Mark I was sold at a major loss to the University of Toronto, where it was re- The NBS also built the Standards Western Automatic christened FERUT. Computer (SWAC) at the Institute for Numerical Analysis the UCLA campus. Rather than testing components like t SEAC, the SWAC was built using already-developed technology. SWAC was used to solve problems in numer analysis, including developing climate models and discov First Univac 1 delivered to US five previously unknown Mersenne prime numbers. Census Bureau IAS computer operational 1952

Univac 1 installation

MANIAC at Los Alamos

The Univac 1 is the first commercial computer to attract widespread public attention. Although manufactured by The Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) computer is a mult Remington Rand, the machine was often mistakenly referred year research project conducted under the overall superv to as “the IBM Univac." Univac computers were used in many of world-famous mathematician John von Neumann. The different applications but utilities, insurance companies and notion of storing both data and instructions in memory the US military were major customers. One biblical scholar became known as the ‘stored program concept’ to disting even used a Univac 1 to compile a concordance to the King it from earlier methods of instructing a computer. The IAS James version of the Bible. Created by Presper Eckert and John Mauchly -- designers of the earlier ENIAC computer -- computer was designed for scientific calculations and it the Univac 1 used 5,200 vacuum tubes and weighed 29,000 performed essential work for the US atomic weapons pounds. Remington Rand eventually sold 46 Univac 1s at program. Over the next few years, the basic design of the more than $1 million each. machine was copied in at least 17 places and given simil sounding names, for example, the MANIAC at Los Alamo Scientific Laboratory; the ILLIAC at the University of Illino the Johnniac at The Rand Corporation; and the SILLIAC J. Lyons & Company introduce Australia. LEO-1

Grimsdale and Webb build ear 1953 transistorized computer

The LEO

Modeled after the Cambridge University EDSAC computer, the president of Lyons Tea Co. has the LEO built to solve the problem of production scheduling and delivery of cakes to the hundreds of Lyons tea shops around England. After the success of the first LEO, Lyons went into business manufacturing computers to meet the growing need for data processing systems in business. The LEO was England’s first commercial computer and was performing useful work before Manchester transistorized computer any other commercial computer system in the world.

Working under Tom Kilburn at England’s Manchester University, Richard Grimsdale and Douglas Webb demonstrate a prototype transistorized computer, the "Manchester TC", on November 16, 1953. The 48-bit ma used 92 point-contact transistors and 550 diodes.

IBM 650 magnetic drum 1954 calculator introduced IBM ships its Model 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine

IBM 650

IBM establishes the 650 as its first mass-produced computer, with the company selling 450 in just one year. Spinning at Cuthbert Hurd (standing) and Thomas Watson, Sr. at IBM 701 console 12,500 rpm, the 650´s magnetic data-storage drum allowed much faster access to stored information than other drum- based machines. The Model 650 was also highly popular in universities, where a generation of students first learned During three years of production, IBM sells 19 701s to programming. research laboratories, aircraft companies, and the federa government. Also known inside IBM as the “Defense Calculator," the 701 rented for $15,000 a month. Program Arthur Samuels used the 701 to write the first computer program designed to play checkers. The 701 introduction marked the beginning of IBM’s entry into the large-scale computer market, a market it came to dominate in later decades.

English Electric DEUCE 1955 introduced RAND Corporation completes Johnniac computer

English Electric DEUCE

RAND Corporation’s Johnniac A commercial version of Alan Turing's Pilot ACE, called DEUCE—the Digital Electronic Universal Computing Engine - - is used mostly for science and engineering problems and a few commercial applications. Over 30 were completed, The Johnniac computer is one of 17 computers that follow including one delivered to Australia. the basic design of Princeton's Institute of Advanced Stud (IAS) computer. It was named after John von Neumann, a world famous mathematician and computer pioneer of the day. Johnniac was used for scientific and engineering calculations. It was also repeatedly expanded and improv throughout its 13-year lifespan. Many innovative program were created for Johnniac, including the time-sharing sys JOSS that allowed many users to simultaneously access machine.

Direct keyboard input to 1956 computers

Digital Equipment Corporation 1957 (DEC) founded

Joe Thompson at Whirlwind console, ca. 1951 At MIT, researchers begin experimenting with direct keyboard input to computers, a precursor to today´s normal mode of operation. Typically, computer users of the time fed their programs into a computer using punched cards or paper tape. Doug Ross wrote a memo advocating direct access in February. Ross contended that a Flexowriter -- an electrically- controlled typewriter -- connected to an MIT computer could function as a keyboard input device due to its low cost and flexibility. An experiment conducted five months later on the MIT Whirlwind computer confirmed how useful and convenient a keyboard input device could be.

Librascope LGP-30 introduced

The Maynard mill

DEC is founded initially to make electronic modules for te measurement, prototyping and control markets. Its found were Ken and Stan Olsen, and Harlan Anderson. Headquartered in Maynard, Massachusetts, Digital Equipment Corporation, took over 8,680 square foot leas space in a nineteenth century mill that once produced blankets and uniforms for soldiers who fought in the Civil General Georges Doriot and his pioneering venture capit

LGP-30 firm, American Research and Development, invested $70 for 70% of DEC’s stock to launch the company in 1957. T mill is still in use today as an office park (Clock Tower Pla RCAtoday. introduces its Model 501 Physicist Stan Frankel, intrigued by small, general-purpose 1958 computers, developed the MINAC at Caltech. The Librascope transistorized computer division of defense contractor General Precision buys Frankel’s design, renaming it the LGP-30 in 1956. Used for science and engineering as well as simple data processing, the LGP-30 was a “bargain” at less than $50,000 and an early example of a ‘personal computer,’ that is, a computer made for a single user.

MIT researchers build the TX-0

RCA 501 brochure cover

The 501 is built on a 'building block' concept which allows be highly flexible for many different uses and could simultaneously control up to 63 tape drives—very useful large databases of information. For many business users quick access to this huge storage capability outweighed i relatively slow processing speed. Customers included US military as well as industry.

TX-0 at MIT

SAGE system goes online The TX-0 (“Transistor eXperimental - 0”) is the first general- purpose programmable computer built with transistors. For easy replacement, designers placed each transistor circuit inside a "bottle," similar to a vacuum tube. Constructed at MIT ´s Lincoln Laboratory, the TX-0 moved to the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, where it hosted some early imaginative tests of programming, including writing a Western movie shown on television, 3-D tic-tac-toe, and a maze in which a mouse found martinis and became increasingly inebriated.

SAGE Operator Station

DEC PDP-1 introduced 1960 The first large-scale computer communications network, SAGE connects 23 hardened computer sites in the US a Canada. Its task was to detect incoming Soviet bombers direct interceptor aircraft to destroy them. Operators direc actions by touching a light gun to the SAGE airspace disp The air defense system used two AN/FSQ-7 computers, of which used a full megawatt of power to drive its 55,000 vacuum tubes, 175,000 diodes and 13,000 transistors.

IBM 7030 (“Stretch”) complete 1961

Ed Fredkin at DEC PDP-1

The typical PDP-1 computer system, which sells for about $120,000, includes a cathode ray tube graphic display, paper tape input/output, needs no air conditioning and requires only one operator; all of which become standards for minicomputers. Its large scope intrigued early hackers at MIT, who wrote the first computerized video game, SpaceWar!, as well as programs to play music. More than 50 PDP-1s were IBM Stretch sold.

IBM´s 7000 series of mainframe computers are the comp ´s first to use transistors. At the top of the line was the Mo NEAC 2203 goes online 7030, also known as "Stretch." Nine of the computers, wh featured dozens of advanced design innovations, were so mainly to national laboratories and major scientific users. special version, known as HARVEST, was developed for US National Security Agency (NSA). The knowledge and technologies developed for the Stretch project played a m role in the design, management, and manufacture of the IBM System/360--the most successful computer family in history.

IBM Introduces 1400 series NEAC 2203 transistorized computer IBM 1401

An early transistorized computer, the NEAC (Nippon Electric The 1401 mainframe, the first in the series, replaces earl Automatic Computer) includes a CPU, console, paper tape vacuum tube technology with smaller, more reliable reader and punch, printer and magnetic tape units. It was sold transistors. Demand called for more than 12,000 of the 1 exclusively in Japan, but could process alphabetic and computers, and the machine´s success made a strong ca Japanese kana characters. Only about thirty NEACs were MIT LINC introduced for using general-purpose computers rather than speciali sold. It managed Japan's first on-line, real-time reservation 1962 systems. By the mid-1960s, nearly half of all computers i system for Kinki Nippon Railways in 1960. The last one was world were IBM 1401s. decommissioned in 1979.

Minuteman I missile guidance computer developed

Wesley Clark with LINC

The LINC is an early and important example of a ‘personal computer,’ that is, a computer designed for only one user. It was designed by MIT Lincoln Laboratory engineer Wesley Clark. Under the auspices of a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant, biomedical research faculty from around the United States came to a workshop at MIT to build their own LINCs, and then bring them back to their home institutions where they would be used. For research, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) supplied the components, and 50 original LINCs were made. The LINC was later commercialized by DEC and sold as the LINC-8.

The Atlas Computer debuts

Minuteman Guidance computer

Minuteman missiles use transistorized computers to continuously calculate their position in flight The comput continuously calculate their position in flight. The comput had to be rugged and fast, with advanced circuit design a reliable packaging able to withstand the forces of a missi launch. The military’s high standards for its transistors pu manufacturers to improve quality control. When the Minuteman I was decommissioned, some universities received these computers for use by students.

Naval Tactical Data System Chilton Atlas installation introduced

A joint project of England’s Manchester University, Ferranti Computers, and Plessey, Atlas comes online nine years after Manchester’s computer lab begins exploring transistor technology. Atlas was the fastest computer in the world at the time and introduced the concept of “virtual memory,” that is, CDCusing a disk 6600 or drum supercomputeras an extension of main memory. System control was provided through the Atlas Supervisor, 1964 introducedwhich some consider to be the first true operating system.

3C DDP-116 introduced 1965 Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS)

CDC 6600 The US Navy Tactical Data System uses computers to integrate and display shipboard radar, sonar and communications data. This real-time information system The Control Data Corporation (CDC) 6600 performs up to 3 began operating in the early 1960s. In October 1961, the million instructions per second —three times faster than that Navy tested the NTDS on the USS Oriskany carrier and t of its closest competitor, the IBM 7030 supercomputer. The USS King and USS Mahan frigates. After being successf 6600 retained the distinction of being the fastest computer in used for decades, NTDS was phased out in favor of the the world until surpassed by its successor, the CDC 7600, in newer AEGIS system in the 1980s. 1968. Part of the speed came from the computer´s design, which used 10 small computers, known as peripheral DDP-116 General Purpose Computer processing units, to offload the workload from the central processor.

Designed by engineer Gardner Hendrie for Computer Co Corporation (CCC), the DDP-116 is announced at the 19 Spring Joint Computer Conference. It was the world's firs Digital Equipment Corporation commercial 16-bit minicomputer and 172 systems were s introduces the PDP-8 The basic computer cost $28,500.

Olivetti Programma 101 is released PDP-8 advertisement

Olivetti Programma 101

The Canadian Chalk River Nuclear Lab needed a special device to monitor a reactor. Instead of designing a custom Announced the year previously at the New York World's F controller, two young engineers from Digital Equipment the Programma 101 goes on sale. This printing Corporation (DEC) -- Gordon Bell and Edson de Castro -- do programmable calculator was made from discrete transis something unusual: they develop a small, general purpose and an acoustic delay-line memory. The Programma 101 computer and program it to do the job. A later version of that could do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division machine became the PDP-8, the first commercially successful well as calculate square roots. 40,000 were sold, includin minicomputer. The PDP-8 sold for $18,000, one-fifth the price to NASA for use on the Apollo space project. of a small IBM System/360 mainframe. Because of its speed, small size, and reasonable cost, the PDP-8 was sold by the thousands to manufacturing plants, small businesses, and scientific laboratories around the world.

HP introduces the HP 2116A IBM announces System/360 1966

IBM 360 Model 40

System/360 is a major event in the history of computing. On

April 7, IBM announced five models of System/360, spanning HP 2116A system a 50-to-1 performance range. At the same press conference, IBM also announced 40 completely new peripherals for the new family. System/360 was aimed at both business and scientific customers and all models could run the same The 2116A is HP’s first computer. It was developed as a software, largely without modification. IBM’s initial investment versatile instrument controller for HP's growing family of of $5 billion was quickly returned as orders for the system programmable test and measurement products. It interfac climbed to 1,000 per month within two years. At the time IBM with a wide number of standard laboratory instruments, released the System/360, the company had just made the allowing customers to computerize their instrument syste transition from discrete transistors to integrated circuits, and The 2116A also marked HP's first use of integrated circui its major source of revenue began to move from punched a commercial product. card equipment to electronic computer systems.

ILLIAC IV project begins SABRE comes on-line

Airline reservation agents working with SABRE

ILLIAC IV

SABRE is a joint project between American Airlines and IBM. Operational by 1964, it was not the first computerized A large parallel processing computer, the ILLIAC IV does reservation system, but it was well publicized and became operate until 1972. It was eventually housed at NASA´s A very influential. Running on dual IBM 7090 mainframe Research Center in Mountain View, California. The most computer systems, SABRE was inspired by IBM’s earlier work ambitious massively parallel computer at the time, the ILL on the SAGE air-defense system. Eventually, SABRE IV was plagued with design and production problems. On expanded, even making airline reservations available via on- finally completed, it achieved a computational speed of 2 line services such as CompuServe, Genie, and America million instructions per second and 1 billion bits per seco Online. I/O transfer via a unique combination of its parallel architecture and the overlapping or "pipelining" structure 64 processing elements. Teletype introduced its ASR-33 Teletype RCA announces its Spectra series of computers

Student using ASR-33

At a cost to computer makers of roughly $700, the ASR-33 Image from RCA Spectra-70 brochure Teletype is originally designed as a low cost terminal for the Western Union communications network. Throughout the 1960s and ‘70s, the ASR-33 was a popular and inexpensive choice of input and output device for minicomputers and The first large commercial computers to use integrated Apollo Guidance Computer circuits, RCA highlights the IC's advantage over IBM’s cu many of the first generation of microcomputers. 1968 (AGC) makes its debut SLT modules. Spectra systems were marketed on the ba their compatibility with the IBM System/360 series of computer since it implemented the IBM 360 instruction se and could run most IBM software with little or no modifica 1970 Amdahl Corporation introduce the Amdahl 470

DSKY interface for the Apollo Guidance Computer

Designed by scientists and engineers at MIT’s Instrumentation Laboratory, the Apollo Guidance Computer Gene Amdahl with 470V/6 model (AGC) is the culmination of years of work to reduce the size of the Apollo spacecraft computer from the size of seven refrigerators side-by-side to a compact unit weighing only 70 Gene Amdahl, father of the IBM System/360, starts his o lbs. and taking up a volume of less than 1 cubic foot. The company, Amdahl Corporation, to compete with IBM in AGC’s first flight was on Apollo 7. A year later, it steered mainframe computer systems. The 470V/6 was the Apollo 11 to the lunar surface. Astronauts communicated with company’s first product and ran the same software as IB the computer by punching two-digit codes into the display and System/370 computers but cost less and was smaller and keyboard unit (DSKY). The AGC was one of the earliest uses faster. of integrated circuits, and used core memory, as well as read- only magnetic rope memory. The astronauts were responsible for entering more than 10,000 commands into the AGC for each trip between Earth and the Moon.

Data General Corporation First Kenbak-1 is sold introduces the Nova 1971 Minicomputer

Kenbak-1

One of the earliest personal computers, the Kenbak-1 is advertised for $750 in Scientific American magazine. Designed by John V. Blankenbaker using standard mediu and small-scale integrated circuits, the Kenbak-1 relied o switches for input and lights for output from its 256-byte memory. In 1973, after selling only 40 machines, Kenbak Corporation closed its doors.

Edson deCastro with a Data General Nova Hewlett-Packard introduces th

IBMStarted by SCAMP a group of engineers is developed that left Digital Equipment HP-35 Corporation (DEC) Data General designs the Nova Corporation (DEC), Data General designs the Nova minicomputer. It had 32 KB of memory and sold for $8,000. 1973 Ed de Castro, its main designer and co-founder of Data General, had earlier led the team that created the DEC PDP- 8. The Nova line of computers continued through the 1970s, and influenced later systems like the Xerox Alto and Apple 1.

HP-35 handheld calculator

Initially designed for internal use by HP employees, co- Dr. Paul Friedl with SCAMP prototype founder Bill Hewlett issues a challenge to his engineers i 1971: fit all of the features of their desktop scientific calcu into a package small enough for his shirt pocket. They did Under the direction of engineer Dr. Paul Friedl, the Special Marketed as “a fast, extremely accurate electronic slide r Computer APL Machine Portable (SCAMP) personal with a solid-state memory similar to that of a computer, th computer prototype is developed at IBM's Los Gatos and Palo HP-35 distinguished itself from its competitors by its abilit Alto, California laboratories. IBM’s first personal computer, the perform a broad variety of logarithmic and trigonometric system was designed to run the APL programming language functions, to store more intermediate solutions for later us in a compact, briefcase-like enclosure which comprised a and to accept and display entries in a form similar to stan keyboard, CRT display, and cassette tape storage. Friedl scientific notation. The HP-35 helped HP become one of used the SCAMP prototype to gain approval within IBM to most dominant companies in the handheld calculator ma promote and develop IBM’s 5100 family of computers, for more than two decades. including the most successful, the 5150, also known as the IBM Personal Computer (PC), introduced in 1981. From concept to finished system, SCAMP took only six months to develop. Intel introduces the first microprocessor

Micral is released

Advertisement for Intel's 4004

Computer History Museum Micral

The first advertisement for a microprocessor, the Intel 40 Based on the Intel 8008 microprocessor, the Micral is one of appears in Electronic News. Developed for Busicom, a the earliest commercial, non-kit personal computers. Designer Japanese calculator maker, the 4004 had 2250 transistor Thi Truong developed the computer while Philippe Kahn and could perform up to 90,000 operations per second in wrote the software. Truong, founder and president of the bit chunks. Federico Faggin led the design and Ted Hoff French company R2E, created the Micral as a replacement the architecture. for minicomputers in situations that did not require high performance, such as process control and highway toll collection. Selling for $1,750, the Micral never penetrated the U.S. market. In 1979, Truong sold R2E to Bull. Laser printer invented at Xero PARC The TV Typewriter plans are published

Dover laser printer

TV Typewriter Xerox PARC physicist Gary Starkweather realizes in 196 that exposing a copy machine’s light-sensitive drum to a paper original isn’t the only way to create an image. A computer could “write” it with a laser instead. Xerox wasn Designed by Don Lancaster, the TV Typewriter is an easy-to- interested. So in 1971, Starkweather transferred to Xerox build kit that can display alphanumeric information on an Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), away from corporate ordinary television set. It used $120 worth of electronics oversight. Within a year, he had built the world’s first lase components, as outlined in the September 1973 issue of printer, launching a new era in computer printing, genera hobbyist magazine Radio Electronics. The original design billions of dollars in revenue for Xerox. The laser printer w included two memory boards and could generate and store used with PARC’s Alto computer, and was commercialize 512 characters as 16 lines of 32 characters. A cassette tape the Xerox 9700. interface provided supplementary storage for text. The TV Typewriter was used by many small television stations well in the 1990s.

Wang Laboratories releases the Wang 2200 Scelbi advertises its 8H 1974 computer

Wang 2200

Wang was a successful calculator manufacturer, then a successful word processor company. The 1973 Wang 2200 makes it a successful computer company, too. Wang sold the 2200 primarily through Value Added Resellers, who added special software to solve specific customer problems. The 2200 used a built-in CRT, cassette tape for storage, and ran the programming language BASIC. The PC era ended Wang’s success, and it filed for bankruptcy in 1992.

Scelbi 8H The first commercially advertised US computer based on microprocessor (the Intel 8008,) the Scelbi has 4 KB of internal memory and a cassette tape interface, as well as Teletype and oscilloscope interfaces. Scelbi aimed the 8H MITS Altair 8800 kit appears in available both in kit form and fully assembled, at scientific 1975 electronic, and biological applications. In 1975, Scelbi Popular Electronics introduced the 8B version with 16 KB of memory for the business market. The company sold about 200 machines losing $500 per unit.

The Mark-8 appears in the pag of Radio­Electronics

Altair 8800

For its January issue, hobbyist magazine Popular Electronics runs a cover story of a new computer kit – the Altair 8800. Within weeks of its appearance, customers inundated its maker, MITS, with orders. Bill Gates and Paul Allen licensed their BASIC programming language interpreter to MITS as the main language for the Altair. MITS co-founder Ed Roberts invented the Altair 8800 — which sold for $297, or $395 with a case — and coined the term “personal computer”. The machine came with 256 bytes of memory (expandable to 64 KB) and an open 100-line bus structure that evolved into the “S-100” standard widely used in hobbyist and personal computers of this era. In 1977, MITS was sold to Pertec, which continued producing Altairs in 1978.

Mark-8 featured on Radio-Electronics July 1974 cover

MOS 6502 is introduced The Mark-8 “Do-It-Yourself” kit is designed by graduate student John Titus and uses the Intel 8008 microprocess The kit was the cover story of hobbyist magazine Radio- Electronics in July 1974 – six months before the MITS Al 8800 was in rival Popular Electronics magazine. Plans fo Mark-8 cost $5 and the blank circuit boards were availab $50.

Xerox PARC Alto introduced MOS 6502 ad from IEEE Computer, Sept. 1975 Xerox Alto

Chuck Peddle leads a small team of former Motorola The Alto is a groundbreaking computer with wide influenc employees to build a low-cost microprocessor. The MOS the computer industry. It was based on a graphical user 6502 was introduced at a conference in San Francisco at a interface using windows, icons, and a mouse, and worke cost of $25, far less than comparable processors from Intel together with other Altos over a local area network. It cou and Motorola, leading some attendees to believe that the also share files and print out documents on an advanced company was perpetrating a hoax. The chip quickly became Xerox laser printer. Applications were also highly innovat popular with designers of early personal computers like the WYSISYG word processor known as “Bravo,” a paint Apple II and Commodore PET, as well as game consoles like program, a graphics editor, and email for example. Apple the Nintendo Entertainment System. The 6502 and its Cray-1inspiration for supercomputer the Lisa and Macintosh computers came fr progeny are still used today, usually in embedded 1976 the Xerox Alto. applications. introduced

Southwest Technical Products introduces the SWTPC 6800

Cray I 'Self-portrait'

The fastest machine of its day, The Cray-1's speed come partly from its shape, a "C," which reduces the length of w Southwest Technical Products 6800 and thus the time signals need to travel across them. Hig packaging density of integrated circuits and a novel Freo cooling system also contributed to its speed. Each Cray-1 took a full year to assemble and test and cost about $10 Southwest Technical Products is founded by Daniel Meyer as million. Typical applications included US national defense DEMCO in the 1960s to provide a source for kit versions of work, including the design and simulation of nuclear wea projects published in electronics hobbyist magazines. SWTPC and weather forecasting. introduces many computer kits based on the Motorola 6800, and later, the 6809. Of the dozens of different SWTP kits available, the 6800 proved the most popular. Intel 8080 and Zilog Z-80 Tandem Computers releases the Tandem-16

Zilgo Z-80 microprocessor

Image by Gennadiy Shvets

Intel and Zilog introduced new microprocessors. Five tim faster than its predecessor, the 8008, the Intel 8080 could address four times as many bytes for a total of 64 kilobyt The Zilog Z-80 could run any program written for the 808 and included twice as many built-in machine instructions.

Steve Wozniak completes the Dual-processor Tandem 16 system Apple-1

Tailored for online transaction processing, the Tandem-16 is one of the first commercial fault-tolerant computers. The banking industry rushed to adopt the machine, built to run during repair or expansion. The Tandem-16 eventually led to the “Non-Stop” series of systems, which were used for early ATMs and to monitor stock trades.

VDM prototype built

Apple-I

Designed by Sunnyvale, California native Steve Wozniak marketed by his friend Steve Jobs, the Apple-1 is a single Apple II introduced board computer for hobbyists. With an order for 50 assem 1977 systems from Mountain View, California computer store T Byte Shop in hand, the pair started a new company, nam The Video Display Module (VDM) Apple Computer, Inc. In all, about 200 of the boards were before Apple announced the follow-on Apple II a year late a ready-to-use computer for consumers, a model which s The Video Display Module (VDM) marks the first in the millions for nearly two decades. implementation of a memory-mapped alphanumeric video display for personal computers. Introduced at the Altair Convention in Albuquerque in March 1976, the visual display module enabled the use of personal computers for interactive games. The DEC VAX introduced 1978

DEC VAX 11/780 Apple II

Beginning with the VAX-11/780, the Digital Equipment Sold complete with a main logic board, switching power Corporation (DEC) VAX family of computers rivals much supply, keyboard, case, manual, game paddles, and cassette expensive mainframe computers in performance and fea tape containing the game Breakout, the Apple-II finds the ability to address over 4 GB of virtual memory, hundre popularity far beyond the hobbyist community which made up of times the capacity of most minicomputers. Called a Apple’s user community until then. When connected to a color “complex instruction set computer,” VAX systems were television set, the Apple II produced brilliant color graphics for backward compatible and so preserved the investment the time. Millions of Apple IIs were sold between 1977 and owners of previous DEC computers had in software. The 1993, making it one of the longest-lived lines of personal success of the VAX family of computers transformed DEC computers. Apple gave away thousands of Apple IIs to the second-largest computer company in the world, as VA school, giving a new generation their first access to personal systems became the de facto standard computing system computers. industry, the sciences, engineering, and research.

Tandy Radio Shack introduces its TRS-80

Atari introduces its Model 400 1979 and 800 computers

TRS-80

Performing far better than the company projections of 3,000 units for the first year, in the first month after its release Tandy Radio Shack´s first desktop computer — the TRS-80 — sells 10,000 units. The TRS-80 was priced at $599.95, included a

Z80 microprocessor, video display, 4 KB of memory, a built-in Early Atari 400/800 advertisement BASIC programming language interpreter cassette storage BASIC programming language interpreter, cassette storage, and easy-to-understand manuals that assumed no prior knowledge on the part of the user. The TRS-80 proved popular with schools, as well as for home use. The TRS-80 Shortly after delivery of the Atari VCS game console, Ata line of computers later included color, portable, and handheld designs two microcomputers with game capabilities: the versions before being discontinued in the early 1990s. Model 400 and Model 800. The 400 served primarily as a game console, while the 800 was more of a home compu Both faced strong competition from the Apple II, Commod PET, and TRS-80 computers. Atari's 8-bit computers wer influential in the arts, especially in the emerging DemoSc The Commodore PET (Personal culture of the 1980s and '90s. Electronic Transactor) introduced Motorola introduces the 6800 microprocessor

Commodore introduces the VIC- 1980 20 Die shot of Motorola 68000

Image by Pauli Rautakorpi

The Motorola 68000 microprocessor exhibited a process speed far greater than its contemporaries. This high Commodore PET performance processor found its place in powerful work stations intended for graphics-intensive programs commo engineering. The first of several personal computers released in 1977, the PET comes fully assembled with either 4 or 8 KB of memory, a built-inCommodore cassette VIC-20 tape drive, and a membrane keyboard. The PET was popular with schools and for use as a home computer. It used a MOS Technologies 6502 microprocessor Texas Instruments TI 99/4 is running at 1 MHz. After the success of the PET, Commodore Commodore releases the VIC-20 home computer as the released remained a major player in the personal computer market into successor to the Commodore PET personal computer. the 1990s. Intended to be a less expensive alternative to the PET, the VIC-20 was highly successful, becoming the first computer to sell more than a million units. Commodore even used Star Trek television star William Shatner in advertisements.

The Sinclair ZX80 introduced

Texas Instruments TI 99/4 microcomputer Based around the Texas Instruments TMS 9900 microprocessor running at 3 MHz, the TI 99/4 has one of fastest CPUs available in a home computer. The TI99/4 h wide variety of expansion boards, with an especially popu speech synthesis system that could also be used with TI' Speak & Spell educational game. The TI 99/4 sold well a led to a series of TI follow-on machines.

Sinclair ZX80

This very small home computer is available in the UK as a kit The Computer Programme 1981 for £79 or pre-assembled for £99. Inside was a Z80 microprocessor and a built-in BASIC language interpreter. debuts on the BBC Output was displayed on the user’s home TV screen through use of an adapter. About 50,000 were sold in Britain, primarily to hobbyists, and initially there was a long waiting list for the system.

Commodore introduces the 1982 Commodore 64

Title card- BBC’s The Computer Programme

The British Broadcasting Corporation’s Computer Literac Project hoped “to introduce interested adults to the world computers.” Acorn produces a popular computer, the BBC Microcomputer System, so viewers at home could follow along on their own home computers as they watched the program. The machine was expandable, with ports for cassette storage, serial interface and rudimentary networ Commodore 64 system A large amount of software was created for the “BBC Mic including educational, productivity, and game programs.

The C64, as it is better known, sells for $595, comes with 64 KB of RAM and features impressive graphics. Thousands of software titles were released over the lifespan of the C64 and Apollo Computer unveils its fir by the time it was discontinued in 1993, it had sold more than 22 million units. It is recognized by the 2006 Guinness Book workstation, its DN100 of World Records as the greatest selling single computer of all time.

Franklin releases Apple II “clones” Franklin Ace 100 microcomputer

Created almost five years after the original Apple II, Franklin's Ace 1000 main logic board is nearly identical to that in the Apple II+ computer, and other models were later cloned as well. Franklin was able to undercut Apple's pricing even while offering some features not available on the original. Initially, Apollo DN100 Franklin won a court victory allowing them to continue cloning the machines, but in 1988, Apple won a copyright lawsuit against Franklin, forcing them to stop making Apple II “clones.” The DN100 is based on the Motorola 68000 microproces high-resolution display and built-in networking - the three basic features of all workstations. Apollo and its main competitor, Sun Microsystems, optimized their machines run the computer-intensive graphics programs common i Sun Microsystems is founded engineering and scientific applications. Apollo was a lead innovator in the workstation field for more than a decade, was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 1989.

IBM introduces its Personal Computer (PC)

Sun-1 workstation

When Xerox PARC loaned the Stanford Engineering Department an entire Alto Ethernet network with laser printer, graduate student Andy Bechtolsheim re-designed it into a prototype that he then attached to Stanford’s computer network. Sun Microsystems grows out of this prototype. The roots of the company’s name came from the acronym for IBM PC Stanford University Network (SUN). The company was incorporated by three 26-year-old Stanford alumni: Bechtolsheim, Vinod Khosla and Scott McNealy. The trio soon IBM's brand recognition, along with a massive marketing attracted UC Berkeley UNIX guru Bill Joy, who led software campaign, ignites the fast growth of the personal comput development. Sun helped cement the model of a workstation market with the announcement of its own personal comp having an Ethernet interface as well as high-resolution (PC). The first IBM PC, formally known as the IBM Mode graphics and the UNIX operating system. 5150, was based on a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 microprocess and used Microsoft´s MS-DOS operating system. The IB revolutionized business computing by becoming the first Apple introduces the Lisa to gain widespread adoption by industry. The IBM PC wa 1983 widely copied (“cloned”) and led to the creation of a vast computer “ecosystem” of software, peripherals, and other commod for use with the platform.

Osborne 1 introduced

Apple Lisa

Lisa is the first commercial personal computer with a graphical user interface (GUI). It was thus an important milestone in computing as soon Microsoft Windows and the Apple Macintosh would soon adopt the GUI as their user interface, making it the new paradigm for personal computing. Osborne I The Lisa ran on a Motorola 68000 microprocessor and came equipped with 1 MB of RAM, a 12-inch black-and-white monitor, dual 5.25-inch floppy disk drives and a 5 MB “Profile” Apple Computer launches the 1984 hard drive. Lisa itself, and especially its GUI, were inspired by MacintoshWeighing 24 pounds and costing $1,795, the Osborne 1 earlier work at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. first mass-produced portable computer. Its price was especially attractive as the computer included very usefu productivity software worth about $1,500 alone. It feature 5-inch display, 64 KB of memory, a modem, and two 5.25 floppy disk drives. Compaq Computer Corporation introduces the Compaq Portable

Apple Macintosh

Apple introduces the Macintosh with a television commer during the 1984 Super Bowl, which plays on the theme o totalitarianism in George Orwell´s book 1984. The ad fea the destruction of “Big Brother” – a veiled reference to IB through the power of personal computing found in a Macintosh. The Macintosh was the first successful mouse driven computer with a graphical user interface and was based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor. Its price w $2,500. Applications that came as part of the package included MacPaint, which made use of the mouse, and MacWrite, which demonstrated WYSIWYG (What You Se What You Get) word processing.

Compaq Portable IBM releases its PC Jr. and

Advertised as the first 100% IBM PC-compatible computer, PC/AT the Compaq Portable can run the same software as the IBM PC. With the success of the clone, Compaq recorded first- year sales of $111 million, the most ever by an American business in a single year. The success of the Portable inspired many other early IBM-compatible computers. Compaq licensed the MS-DOS operating system from Mi f d l ll i d IBM’ BIOS Microsoft and legally reverse-engineered IBM’s BIOS software. Compaq's success launched a market for IBM- PC'scompatible Limited computers that is by founded 1996 had achieved an 83- percent share of the personal computer market. 1985

IBM PC Jr.

PC’s Limited founder Michael Dell The PC Jr. is marketed as a home computer but is too expensive and limited in performance to compete with ma of the other machines in that market. It’s “chiclet” keyboa In 1984, Michael Dell creates PC's Limited while still a student was also criticized for poor ergonomics. While the PC Jr. of the University of Texas at Austin. The dorm-room poorly, the PC/AT sold in the millions. It offered increased headquartered company sold IBM PC-compatible computers performance and storage capacity over the original IBM P built from stock components. Dell dropped out of school to and sold for about $4,000. It also included more memory focus on his business and in 1985, the company produced the accommodated high-density 1.2-megabyte 5 1/4-inch flop first computer of its own design, the Turbo PC, which sold for disks. $795. By the early 1990s, Dell became one of the leading computer retailers.

Compaq introduces the Deskpr 1986 The Amiga 1000 is released 386 system

Music composition on the Amiga 1000

Commodore’s Amiga 1000 is announced with a major event at New York's Lincoln Center featuring celebrities like Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry of the musical group Blondie. The Amiga sold for $1,295 (without monitor) and had audio and video capabilities beyond those found in most other personal computers. It developed a very loyal following while add-on Promotional shot of the Compaq Deskpro 386s, components allowed it to be upgraded easily. The inside of the Amiga case is engraved with the signatures of the Amiga designers, including Jay Miner as well as the paw print of his dog Mitchy. Compaq beats IBM to the market when it announces the Deskpro 386, the first computer on the market to use Inte new 80386 chip, a 32-bit microprocessor with 275,000 transistors on each chip. At 4 million operations per seco and 4 kilobytes of memory, the 80386 gave PCs as much speed and power as older mainframes and minicomputer The 386 chip brought with it the introduction of a 32-bit architecture, a significant improvement over the 16-bit Acorn Archimedes is released architecture of previous microprocessors. It had two oper 1987 modes, one that mirrored the segmented memory of olde chips, allowing full backward compatibility, and one that t full advantage of its more advanced technology. The new made graphical operating environments for IBM PC and compatible computers practical. The architecture that allo Windows and IBM OS/2 has remained in subsequent chi

IBM releases the first Acorn Archimedes microcomputer commercial RISC-based workstation Acorn's ARM RISC microprocessor is first used in the company's Archimedes computer system. One of Britain's leading computer companies, Acorn continued the Archimedes line, which grew to nearly twenty different models, into the 1990s. Acorn spun off ARM as its own company to license microprocessor designs, which in turn has transformed mobile computing with ARM’s low power, high- performance processors and systems-on-chip (SoC).

IBM PC-RT IBM introduces its Personal

System/2 (PS/2) machines Reduced instruction set computers (RISC) grow out of th observation that the simplest 20 percent of a computer´s instruction set does 80 percent of the work. The IBM PC- had 1 MB of RAM, a 1.2-megabyte floppy disk drive, and MB hard drive. It performed 2 million instructions per sec but other RISC-based computers worked significantly fas

The Connection Machine is unveiled

IBM PS/2

The first IBM system to include Intel´s 80386 chip, the Connection Machine CM-1 company ships more than 1 million units by the end of the first year. IBM released a new operating system, OS/2, at the same time, allowing the use of a mouse with IBM PCs for the Daniel Hillis of Thinking Machines Corporation moves art first time. Many credit the PS/2 for making the 3.5-inch floppy intelligence a step forward when he develops the disk drive and video graphics array (VGA) standard for IBM controversial concept of massive parallelism in the computers. The system was IBM's response to losing control Connection Machine CM-1. The machine used up to 65,5 of the PC market with the rise of widespread copying of the one-bit processors and could complete several billion original IBM PC design by “clone” makers. operations per second. Each processor had its own smal memory linked with others through a flexible network that e o y ed o e s oug a e b e e o a users altered by reprogramming rather than rewiring. The machine´s system of connections and switches let proces broadcast information and requests for help to other processors in a simulation of brain-like associative recall. Using this system, the machine could work faster than an other at the time on a problem that could be parceled out among the many processors. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs 1988 unveils the NeXT Cube

Intel introduces the 80486 1989 microprocessor

NeXT Cube

Steve Jobs, forced out of Apple in 1985, founds a new company – NeXT. The computer he created, an all-black cube was an important innovation. The NeXT had three Motorola microprocessors and 8 MB of RAM. Its base price was $6,500. Some of its other innovations were the inclusion of a magneto-optical (MO) disk drive, a digital signal processor and the NeXTSTEP programming environment (later released Intel 80486 promotional photo as OPENSTEP). This object-oriented multitasking operating Computer History Museum system was groundbreaking in its ability to foster rapid development of software applications. OPENSTEP was used as one of the foundations for the new Mac OS operating system soon after NeXT was acquired by Apple in 1996. Intel released the 80486 microprocessor and the i860 RISC/coprocessor chip, each of which contained more th million transistors. The RISC microprocessor had a 32-bi integer arithmetic and logic unit (the part of the CPU that Laser 128 is released performs operations such as addition and subtraction), a bit floating-point unit, and a clock rate of 33 MHz.

The 486 chips remained similar in structure to their predecessors, the 386 chips. What set the 486 apart was optimized instruction set, with an on-chip unified instructio and data cache and an optional on-chip floating-point uni Combined with an enhanced bus interface unit, the microprocessor doubled the performance of the 386 with increasing the clock rate.

Laser 128 Apple II clone Macintosh Portable is introduced

VTech, founded in Hong Kong, had been a manufacturer of Pong-like games and educational toys when they introduce the Laser 128 computer. Instead of simply copying the basic input output system (BIOS) of the Apple II as Franklin Computer had done, they reversed engineered the system and sold it for US $479, a much lower price than the comparable Apple II. While Apple sued to remove the Laser 128 from the market, they were unsuccessful and the Laser remained one of the very few Apple “clones” for sale.

Intel's Touchstone Delta 1990 supercomputer system comes Macintosh Portable online

Apple had initially included a handle in their Macintosh computers to encourage users to take their Macs on the though not until five years after the initial introduction doe Apple introduce a true portable computer. The Macintosh Portable was heavy, weighing sixteen pounds, and expen (US$6,500). Sales were weaker than projected, despite b widely praised by the press for its active matrix display, removable trackball, and high performance. The line was discontinued less than two years later.

Babbage's Difference Engine # Intel Touchstone Delta supercomputer 1991 is completed

Reaching 32 gigaflops (32 billion floating point operations per second), Intel’s Touchstone Delta has 512 processors operating independently, arranged in a two-dimensional communications “mesh.” Caltech researchers used this supercomputer prototype for projects such as real-time processing of satellite images, and for simulating molecular models in AIDS research. It would serve as the model for several other significant multi-processor systems that would be among the fastest in the world.

The Difference Engine #2 at the Science Museum, London

Based on Charles Babbage's second design for a mecha calculating engine, a team at the Science Museum in Lon sets out to prove that the design would have worked as DEC announces Alpha chip planned. Led by curator Doron Swade the team built 1992 Babbage’s machine in six years, using techniques that w architecture have been available to Babbage at the time, proving that Babbage’s design was accurate and that it could have be built in his day.

PowerBook series of laptops is introduced PowerBook 100 laptop computer

Apple's Macintosh Portable meets with little success in th DEC Alpha chip die-shot marketplace and leads to a complete redesign of Apple's of portable computers. All three PowerBooks introduced featured a built-in trackball, internal floppy drive, and palm rests, which would eventually become typical of 1990s la Designed to replace the 32-bit VAX architecture, the Alpha is design. The PowerBook 100 was the entry-level machine a 64-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) while the PowerBook 140 was more powerful and had a microprocessor. It was widely used in DEC's workstations and larger memory. The PowerBook 170 was the high-end m servers, as well as several supercomputers like the Chinese featuring an active matrix display, faster processor, as we Sunway Blue Light system, and the Swiss Gigabooster. The a floating point unit. The PowerBook line of computers wa Alpha processor designs were eventually acquired by discontinued in 2006. Compaq, which, along with Intel, phased out the Alpha architecture in favor of the HP/Itanium microprocessor.

Intel Paragon is operational Apple ships the first Newton 1993

Intel Paragon system

Based on the Touchstone Delta computer Intel had built at Caltech, the Paragon is a parallel supercomputer that uses 2,048 (later increased to more than four thousand) Intel i860 processors. More than one hundred Paragons were installed over the lifetime of the system, each costing as much as five million dollars. The Paragon at Caltech was named the fastest supercomputer in the world in 1992. Paragon systems were used in many scientific areas, including atmospheric and oceanicRISC flow PC studies, is releasedand energy research. 1994 The Apple Newton Personal Digital Assistant Apple enters the handheld computer market with the New Dubbed a “Personal Data Assistant” by Apple President J Scully in 1992, the Newton featured many of the features would define handheld computers in the following decade The handwriting recognition software was much maligned inaccuracy. The Newton line never performed as well as hoped and was discontinued in 1998.

Acorn RISC PC Intel's Pentium microprocesso is released Replacing their Archimedes computer, the RISC PC from UK's Acorn Computers uses the ARMv3 RISC microprocessor. Though it used a proprietary operating system, RISC OS, the RISC PC could run PC-compatible software using the Acorn PC Card. The RISC PC was used widely in UK broadcast television and in music production.

BeBox is released 1995

HP Netserver LM, one of the first to use Intel's Pentium

Computer History Museum

The Pentium is the fifth generation of the ‘x86’ line of microprocessors from Intel, the basis for the IBM PC and clones. The Pentium introduced several advances that m programs run faster such as the ability to execute severa instructions at the same time and support for graphics an music.

BeBox computer Palm Pilot is introduced 1996 Be, founded by former Apple executive Jean Louis Gassée and a number of former Apple, NeXT and SUN employees, releases their only product – the BeBox. Using dual PowerPC 603 CPUs, and featuring a large variety of peripheral ports, the first devices were used for software development. While it did not sell well, the operating system, Be OS, retained a loyal following even after Be stopped producing hardware in 1997 after less than 2,000 machines were produced. IBM releases the ThinkPad 701C

IBM ThinkPad 701C

Ed Colligan, Donna Dubinsky, and Jeff Hawkins

Officially known as the Track Write, the automatically expanding full-sized keyboard used by the ThinkPad 701 is designed by inventor John Karidis. The keyboard was Palm Inc., founded by Ed Colligan, Donna Dubinsky, and comprised of three roughly triangular interlocking pieces, Hawkins, originally created software for the Casio Zoome which formed a full-sized keyboard when the laptop was personal data assistant. The first generation of Palm- opened -- resulting in a keyboard significantly wider than the produced devices, the Palm 1000 and 5000, are based case. This keyboard design was dubbed “the Butterfly.” The around a Motorola microprocessor running at 16MHz, an need for such a design was lessened as laptop screens grew uses a special gestural input language called “Graffiti,” w wider. is quick to learn and fast. Palm could be connected to a P Mac using a serial port to synchronize – “sync” – both computer and Palm. The company called it a ‘connected organizer’ rather than a PDA to emphasize this ability.

Sony Vaio series is begun ASCI Red is operational 1997

ASCI Red supercomputers

Sony Vaio laptop

The Advanced Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) needed a supercomputer to help with the maintenance of the US Sony had manufactured and sold computers in Japan, bu nuclear arsenal following the ban on underground nuclear VAIO signals their entry into the global computer market. testing. The ASCI Red, based on the design of the Intel first VAIO, a desktop computer, featured an additional 3D Paragon, was built by IBM and delivered to Sandia National interface on top of the Windows 95 operating system as a Laboratories. Until the year 2000, it was the world's fastest way of attracting new users. The VAIO line of computers supercomputer, able to achieve peak performance of 1.3 would be best known for laptops were designed with teraflops, (about 1.3 trillion calculations per second). communications and audio-video capabilities at the forefr Theincluding iMac, innovative a designs range that incorporated of all-in-one TV and rad 1998 tuners, web cameras, and handwriting recognition. The li wasMacintosh discontinued in 2014.desktop computers launched First camera phone introduced 2000

iMac poster

Apple makes a splash with its Bondi Blue iMac, which se about $1,300. Customers got a machine with a 233-MHz

Sony-built J-Phone J-SH04 processor, 4GB hard drive, 32MB of RAM, a CD-ROM dr and a 15" monitor. The machine was noted for its ease-o and included a 'manual' that contained only a few picture and less than 20 words. As Apple’s first new product und Japan's SoftBank introduces the first camera phone, the J- the leadership of a returning Steve Jobs, many consider Phone J-SH04; a Sharp-manufactured digital phone with the most significant step in Apple's return from near- integrated camera. The camera had a maximum resolution of bankruptcy in the middle 1990s. 0.11 megapixels a 256-color display, and photos could be shared wirelessly. The J-Phone line would quickly expand, releasing a flip-phone version just a month later. Cameras would become a significant part of most phones within a year, and several countries have even passed laws regulating their use.

Earth Simulator is world's fast 2002 supercomputer

PowerMac G5 is released 2003

Earth Simulator Supercomputer

Developed by the Japanese government to create global climate models, the Earth Simulator is a massively parall vector-based system that costs nearly 60 billion yen (roug $600 million at the time). A consortium of aerospace, ene and marine science agencies undertook the project, and system was built by NEC around their SX-6 architecture. protect it from earthquakes, the building housing it was b using a seismic isolation system that used rubber suppor The Earth Simulator was listed as the fastest supercomp in the world from 2002 to 2004. Handspring Treo is released

Colligan, Dubinsky, Hawkins (left to right)

Leaving Palm Inc., Ed Colligan, Donna Dubinsky, and Jef Hawkins found Handspring. After retiring their initial Visor Arduino series of PDAs, Handspring introduced the Treo line of 2005 smartphones, designed with built-in keyboards, cameras the Palm operating system. The Treo sold well, and the li PowerMac G5 tower computer continued until Handspring was purchased by Palm in 20

With a distinctive anodized aluminum case, and hailed as the first true 64-bit personal computer, the Apple G5 is the most powerful Macintosh ever released to that point. While larger than the previous G4 towers, the G5 had comparatively limited space for expansion. Virginia Tech used more than a thousand PowerMac G5s to create the System X cluster supercomputer, rated #3 in November of that year on the world’s TOP500 fastest computers. One Laptop Per Child initiative 2006 Arduino starter kit begins

Harkening back to the hobbyist era of personal computing in the 1970s, Arduino begins as a project of the Interaction Design Institute, Ivrea, Italy. Each credit card-sized Arduino board consisted of an inexpensive microcontroller and signal connectors which made Arduinos ideal for use in any application connecting to or monitoring the outside world. The Arduino used a Java-based integrated development environment and users could access a library of programs, called “Wiring,” that allowed for simplified programming. Arduino soon became the main computer platform of the worldwide “Maker” movement. OLPC XO laptop computer

At the 2006 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerlan Lenovo acquires IBM's PC the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) annou business it will create a program to deliver technology and resourc targeted schools in the least developed countries. The pr became the One Laptop per Child Consortium (OLPC) founded by Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of MIT's M Lab. The first offering to the public required the buyer to purchase one to be given to a child in the developing wor a condition of acquiring a machine for themselves. By 20 over 2.4 million laptops had been shipped. The Amazon Kindle is released 2007

IBM and Lenovo logos

Nearly a quarter century after IBM launched their PC in 1981, they had become merely another player in a crowded marketplace. Lenovo, China's largest manufacturer of PCs, purchased IBM's personal computer business in 2005, largely to gain access to IBM's ThinkPad line of computers and sales force. Lenovo became the largest manufacturer of PCs in the world with the acquisition, later also acquiring IBM's server line of computers.

Amazon Kindle

NASA Ames Research Center Many companies have attempted to release electronic supercomputer Columbia reading systems dating back to the early 1990s. Online retailer Amazon released the Kindle, one of the first to ga large following among consumers. The first Kindle feature wireless access to content via Amazon.com, along with a card slot allowing increased storage. The first release pro so popular there was a long delay in delivering systems o release. Follow-on versions of the Kindle added further a video capabilities.

The Apple iPhone is released

Columbia Supercomputer system made up of SGI Altix

Named in honor of the space shuttle which broke-up on re- entry, the Columbia supercomputer is an important part of NASA's return to manned spaceflight after the 2003 disaster. Columbia was used in space vehicle analysis, including studying the Columbia disaster, but also in astrophysics, weather and ocean modeling. At its introduction, it was listed as the second fastest supercomputer in the world and this single system increased NASA's supercomputing capacity 10- fold. The system was kept at NASA Ames Research Center until 2013, when it was removed to make way for two new Apple iPhone supercomputers. The MacBook Air is released 2008 Apple launches the iPhone - a combination of web brows music player and cell phone - which could download new functionality in the form of "apps" (applications) from the online Apple store. The touchscreen enabled smartphone also had built-in GPS navigation, high-definition camera, texting, calendar, voice dictation, and weather reports. IBM's Roadrunner 2009 supercomputer is completed

Steve Jobs introducing MacBook Air

Computer-enhanced image of IBM’s Roadrunner

Apple introduces their first ultra notebook – a light, thin laptop with high-capacity battery. The Air incorporated many of the technologies that had been associated with Apple's MacBook The Roadrunner is the first computer to reach a sustaine line of laptops, including integrated camera, and Wi-Fi performance of 1 petaflop (one thousand trillion floating p capabilities. To reduce its size, the traditional hard drive was operations per second). It used two different microproces replaced with a solid-state disk, the first mass-market an IBM POWER XCell L8i and AMD Opteron. It was used computer to do so. model the decay of the US nuclear arsenal, analyze finan data, and render 3D medical images in real-time. An offs of the POWER XCell8i chip was used as the main proces in the Sony PlayStation 3 game console. Apple Retina Display 2010

Jaguar Supercomputer at Oak Ridge upgraded

Originally a Cray XT3 system, the Jaguar is a massively parallel supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory US science and energy research facility. The system cos more than $100 million to create and ran a variation of th Linux operating system with up to 10 petabytes of storag The Jaguar was used to study climate science, seismolog Introduction of the iPhone 4 with retina display and astrophysics applications. It was the fastest compute the world from November 2009 to June 2010.

Since the release of the Macintosh in 1984, Apple has placed emphasis on high-resolution graphics and display technologies. In 2012, Apple introduced the Retina display for the MacBook Pro laptop and iPad tablet. With a screen resolution of up to 400 pixels-per-inch (PPI), Retina displays approached the limit of pixel visibility to the human eye. The display also used In Plane Switching (IPS) technology, which allowed for a wider viewing angle and improved color accuracy. The Retina display became standard on most of the IBM Sequoia is delivered to iPad, iPhone, MacBook, and Apple Watch product lines. 2011 Lawrence Livermore Labs China's Tianhe supercomputers Built by IBM using their Blue Gene/Q supercomputer architecture, the Sequoia system is the world's fastest are operational supercomputer in 2012. Despite using 98,304 PowerPC chips, Sequoia's relatively low power usage made it unus efficient. Scientific and defense applications included stud of human electrophysiology, nuclear weapon simulation, human genome mapping, and global climate change.

Nest Learning Thermostat is Introduced

Tianhe-1A Supercomputer

With a peak speed of over a petaflop (one thousand trillion calculations per second), the Tianhe 1 (translation: Milky Way 1) is developed by the Chinese National University of Defense Technology using Intel Xeon processors combined with AMD graphic processing units (GPUs). The upgraded and faster Tianhe-1A used Intel Xeon CPUs as well, but switched to nVidia's Tesla GPUs and added more than 2,000 Fei-Tang (SPARC-based) processors. The machines were used by the Chinese Academy of Sciences to run massive solar energy simulations, as well as some of the most complex molecular studies ever undertaken.

The Apple iPad is released Nest Learning Thermostat

The Nest Learning Thermostat is an early product made the emerging “Internet of Things,” which envisages a wor which common everyday devices have network connectiv and can exchange information or be controlled. The Nest allowed for remote access to a user’s home’s thermostat using a smartphone or tablet and could also send monthl power consumption reports to help save on energy bills.

Nest would remember what temperature users preferred ‘training’ itself to monitor daily use patterns for a few days then adopting that pattern as its new way of controlling ho temperature.

Raspberry Pi, a credit-card-siz 2012 single board computer, is released as a tool to promote science education Steve Jobs introducing the iPad

The iPad combines many of the popular capabilities of the iPhone, such as built-in high-definition camera, access to the iTunes Store, and audio-video capabilities, but with a nine- inch screen and without the phone. Apps, games, and accessories helped spur the popularity of the iPad and led to its adoption in thousands of different applications from movie making, creating art, making music, inventory control and point-of-sale systems, to name but a few. University of Michigan Micro Raspberry Pi computer 2014 Mote is Completed Conceived in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, thi The University of Michigan Micro Mote (M3) is the smallest credit card-sized computer features ease of use and simp computer in the world at the time of its completion. Three making it highly popular with students and hobbyists. In types of the M3 were available – two types that measured October 2013, the one millionth Raspberry Pi was shippe either temperature or pressure and one that could take Only one month later, another one million Raspberry Pis images. The motes were powered by a tiny battery and could delivered. The Pi weighed only 45 grams and initially sold gain light energy through a photocell, which was enough to only $25-$35 U.S. Dollars. feed the infinitesimally small amount of energy a mote consumes (1 picowatt). Motes are also known as “smart dust,” since the intention is that their tiny size and low cost make them inexpensive enough to “sprinkle” in the real world to as sensors. An ecologist, for example, could sprinkle thousands of motes from the air onto a field and measure soil and air temperature, moisture, and sunlight, giving them Apple Watch accurate real-time data about the environment. 2015

Apple Store’s display of newly introduced Apple Watches

Building a computer into the watch form factor has been attempted many times but the release of the Apple Watch leads to a new level of excitement. Incorporating a versio Apple's iOS operating system, as well as sensors for environmental and health monitoring, the Apple Watch w designed to be incorporated into the Apple environment w compatibility with iPhones and Mac Books. Almost a milli units were ordered on the day of release. The Watch was received with great enthusiasm, but critics took issue with somewhat limited battery life and high price.

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