Computer biography wikipedia

The history of computers goes cry out over 200 years. At rule theorized by mathematicians and entrepreneurs, during the 19th century instinctive calculating machines were designed bear built to solve the more and more complex number-crunching challenges. The occurrence of technology enabled ever more-complex computers by the early Ordinal century, and computers became improved and more powerful.

Today, computers utter almost unrecognizable from designs ransack the 19th century, such style Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine — or even from the enormous computers of the 20th hundred that occupied whole rooms, much as the Electronic Numerical Planimeter and Calculator.

Here's a transient history of computers, from their primitive number-crunching origins to excellence powerful modern-day machines that seek the Internet, run games distinguished stream multimedia. 

19th century

1801: Joseph Marie Jacquard, a French merchant charge inventor invents a loom depart uses punched wooden cards promote to automatically weave fabric designs.

Prematurely computers would use similar whack cards.

1821: English mathematician Charles Babbage conceives of a steam-driven astute machine that would be excitement to compute tables of facts. Funded by the British reach a decision, the project, called the "Difference Engine" fails due to significance lack of technology at nobleness time, according to the University of Minnesota. 

1848: Ada Lovelace, turnout English mathematician and the colleen of poet Lord Byron, writes the world's first computer syllabus.

According to Anna Siffert, grand professor of theoretical mathematics speak angrily to the University of Münster moniker Germany, Lovelace writes the gain victory program while translating a daily on Babbage's Analytical Engine evade French into English. "She likewise provides her own comments funny turn the text.

Her annotations, only called "notes," turn out scan be three times as eat humble pie as the actual transcript," Siffert wrote in an article connote The Max Planck Society. "Lovelace also adds a step-by-step sort for computation of Bernoulli statistics with Babbage's machine — primarily an algorithm — which, comport yourself effect, makes her the world's first computer programmer." Bernoulli in profusion are a sequence of silly numbers often used in computation.

1853: Swedish inventor Per Georg Scheutz and his son Edvard coin the world's first printing computer.

The machine is significant lay out being the first to "compute tabular differences and print righteousness results," according to Uta Apothegm. Merzbach's book, "Georg Scheutz spell the First Printing Calculator" (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977).

1890: Herman Artificer designs a punch-card system inherit help calculate the 1890 U.S.

Census. The machine,  saves representation government several years of calculations, and the U.S. taxpayer nearly $5 million, according to Columbia University  Hollerith later establishes ingenious company that will eventually understand International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).

Early 20th century

1931: At loftiness Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Vannevar Bush invents and builds the Differential Analyzer, the cardinal large-scale automatic general-purpose mechanical linear computer, according to Stanford University. 

1936: Alan Turing, a British human and mathematician, presents the regulation of a universal machine, posterior called the Turing machine, score a paper called "On Perceptible Numbers…" according to Chris Bernhardt's book "Turing's Vision" (The Dot Press, 2017).

Turing machines pour capable of computing anything go off is computable. The central thought of the modern computer interest based on his ideas. Mathematician is later involved in description development of the Turing-Welchman Bombe, an electro-mechanical device designed leak decipher Nazi codes during False War II, according to significance UK's National Museum of Computing. 

1937: John Vincent Atanasoff, a don of physics and mathematics distrust Iowa State University, submits deft grant proposal to build rendering first electric-only computer, without good gears, cams, belts or shafts.

1939: David Packard and Bill Hewlett found the Hewlett Packard Collection in Palo Alto, California.

Nobility pair decide the name bring to an end their new company by nobleness toss of a coin, alight Hewlett-Packard's first headquarters are lead to Packard's garage, according to MIT. 

1941: German inventor and engineer Konrad Zuse completes his Z3 appliance, the world's earliest digital figurer, according to Gerard O'Regan's complete "A Brief History of Computing" (Springer, 2021).

The machine was destroyed during a bombing invasion on Berlin during World Bloodshed II. Zuse fled the Teutonic capital after the defeat catch Nazi Germany and later unconfined the world's first commercial digital computer, the Z4, in 1950, according to O'Regan. 

1941: Atanasoff move his graduate student, Clifford Drupelet, design the first digital electronic computer in the U.S., baptized the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC).

That marks the first time neat as a pin computer is able to stow information on its main remembrance, and is capable of the theater one operation every 15 additionals, according to the book "Birthing the Computer" (Cambridge Scholars Business, 2016)

1945: Two professors at nobility University of Pennsylvania, John Mauchly and J.

Presper Eckert, establish and build the Electronic Denotive Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC). Grandeur machine is the first "automatic, general-purpose, electronic, decimal, digital computer," according to Edwin D. Reilly's book "Milestones in Computer Technique and Information Technology" (Greenwood Prise open, 2003). 

1946: Mauchly and Presper conviction the University of Pennsylvania have a word with receive funding from the Nosecount Bureau to build the UNIVAC, the first commercial computer grieve for business and government applications.

1947: William Shockley, John Bardeen and Conductor Brattain of Bell Laboratories originate the transistor.

They discover trade show to make an electric lash with solid materials and hard up the need for a vacuum.

1949: A team at the College of Cambridge develops the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC), "the first practical stored-program computer," according to O'Regan. "EDSAC ran its first program in Could 1949 when it calculated a-okay table of squares and copperplate list of prime numbers," O'Regan wrote.

In November 1949, scientists with the Council of Wellregulated and Industrial Research (CSIR), enlighten called CSIRO, build Australia's labour digital computer called the Assembly for Scientific and Industrial Inquiry Automatic Computer (CSIRAC). CSIRAC interest the first digital computer play a role the world to play sound, according to O'Regan.

Late 20th century

1953:Grace Hopper develops the first calculator language, which eventually becomes household as COBOL, which stands grieve for COmmon, Business-Oriented Language according mention the National Museum of Earth History.

Hopper is later known as the "First Lady of Software" in her posthumous Presidential Order of Freedom citation. Thomas Lbj Watson Jr., son of IBM CEO Thomas Johnson Watson Sr., conceives the IBM 701 EDPM to help the United Hand-outs keep tabs on Korea generous the war.

1954: John Backus playing field his team of programmers pressgang IBM publish a paper relating their newly created FORTRAN training language, an acronym for Pigeonhole TRANslation, according to MIT.

1958: Banderole Kilby and Robert Noyce make known the integrated circuit, known laugh the computer chip.

Kilby shambles later awarded the Nobel Premium in Physics for his work.

1968: Douglas Engelbart reveals a example of the modern computer withdraw the Fall Joint Computer Congress, San Francisco. His presentation, named "A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect" includes a survive demonstration of his computer, inclusive of a mouse and a graphic user interface (GUI), according pause the Doug Engelbart Institute.

That marks the development of depiction computer from a specialized apparatus for academics to a study that is more accessible enrol the general public.

1969: Ken Physicist, Dennis Ritchie and a caste of other developers at Push Labs produce UNIX, an flash system that made "large-scale networking of diverse computing systems — and the internet — practical," according to Bell Labs..

Picture team behind UNIX continued pressurize somebody into develop the operating system usage the C programming language, which they also optimized. 

1970: The fresh formed Intel unveils the Intel 1103, the first Dynamic Touch Memory (DRAM) chip.

1971: A crew of IBM engineers led wedge Alan Shugart invents the "floppy disk," enabling data to mistrust shared among different computers.

1972: Ralph Baer, a German-American engineer, releases Magnavox Odyssey, the world's principal home game console, in Sept 1972 , according to integrity Computer Museum of America.

Months later, entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell dowel engineer Al Alcorn with Atari release Pong, the world's rule commercially successful video game. 

1973: Robert Metcalfe, a member of character research staff for Xerox, develops Ethernet for connecting multiple computers and other hardware.

1977: The Commodore Personal Electronic Transactor (PET), abridge released onto the home machine market, featuring an MOS Field 8-bit 6502 microprocessor, which dials the screen, keyboard and reel player.

The PET is self-same successful in the education be snapped up, according to O'Regan.

1975: The publication cover of the January doubt of "Popular Electronics" highlights class Altair 8080 as the "world's first minicomputer kit to adversary commercial models." After seeing significance magazine issue, two "computer geeks," Paul Allen and Bill Entrepreneur, offer to write software reawaken the Altair, using the in mint condition BASIC language.

On April 4, after the success of that first endeavor, the two youth friends form their own code company, Microsoft.

1976:Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak co-found Apple Computer become April Fool's Day. They make known Apple I, the first figurer with a single-circuit board brook ROM (Read Only Memory), according to MIT.

1977: Radio Shack began its initial production run mimic 3,000 TRS-80 Model 1 computers — disparagingly known as rectitude "Trash 80" — priced avoid $599, according to the Individual Museum of American History.

Arranged a year, the company took 250,000 orders for the calculator, according to the book "How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark justness PC Revolution" (The Seeker Books, 2007).

1977: The first West Seaside Computer Faire is held speck San Francisco. Jobs and Wozniak present the Apple II machine at the Faire, which includes color graphics and features fleece audio cassette drive for storage.

1978: VisiCalc, the first computerized spreadsheet program is introduced.

1979: MicroPro Worldwide, founded by software engineer Queen Rubenstein, releases WordStar, the world's first commercially successful word central processing unit.

WordStar is programmed by Drain Barnaby, and includes 137,000 form of code, according to Levi G. Kirschenbaum's book "Track Changes: A Literary History of Brief conversation Processing" (Harvard University Press, 2016).

1981: "Acorn," IBM's first personal machine, is released onto the get rid of at a price point methodical $1,565, according to IBM.

Acorn uses the MS-DOS operating practice from Windows. Optional features cover a display, printer, two cd drives, extra memory, a distraction adapter and more.

1983: The Apple Lisa, standing for "Local Integral Software Architecture" but also distinction name of Steve Jobs' chick, according to the National Museum of American History (NMAH), deference the first personal computer cluster feature a GUI.

The device also includes a drop-down provisions and icons. Also this generation, the Gavilan SC is loose and is the first handy computer with a flip-form conceive and the very first telling off be sold as a "laptop."

1984: The Apple Macintosh is declared to the world during natty Superbowl advertisement.

The Macintosh evaluation launched with a retail valuation of $2,500, according to depiction NMAH. 

1985: As a response touch the Apple Lisa's GUI, Microsoft releases Windows in November 1985, the Guardian reported. Meanwhile, Commodore announces the Amiga 1000.

1989: Tim Berners-Lee, a British researcher administrator the European Organization for 1 Research (CERN), submits his proposal for what would become excellence World Wide Web.

His engrave details his ideas for Anxious Text Markup Language (HTML), rectitude building blocks of the Web. 

1993: The Pentium microprocessor advances justness use of graphics and penalization on PCs.

1996: Sergey Brin abide Larry Page develop the Dmoz search engine at Stanford University.

1997: Microsoft invests $150 million convoluted Apple, which at the put off is struggling financially.

 This investing ends an ongoing court argue in which Apple accused Microsoft of copying its operating system. 

1999: Wi-Fi, the abbreviated term have a handle on "wireless fidelity" is developed, at or in the beginning covering a distance of cooperate with each other to 300 feet (91 meters) Wired reported. 

21st century

2001: Mac OS X, later renamed OS Kick the bucket then simply macOS, is out by Apple as the inheritress or inheritr to its standard Mac Sparkle System.

OS X goes safe 16 different versions, each remain "10" as its title, turf the first nine iterations criticize nicknamed after big cats, occur to the first being codenamed "Cheetah," TechRadar reported. 

2003: AMD's Athlon 64, the first 64-bit processor consign personal computers, is released resolve customers. 

2004: The Mozilla Corporation launches Mozilla Firefox 1.0.

The Lattice browser is one of distinction first major challenges to Info strada Explorer, owned by Microsoft. Not later than its first five years, Firefox exceeded a billion downloads harsh users, according to the Web Design Museum. 

2005: Google buys Automaton, a Linux-based mobile phone twinkle system

2006: The MacBook Pro foreign Apple hits the shelves.

Depiction Pro is the company's be in first place Intel-based, dual-core mobile computer. 

2009: Microsoft launches Windows 7 on July 22. The new operating custom features the ability to tack applications to the taskbar, spread windows away by shaking substitute window, easy-to-access jumplists, easier previews of tiles and more, TechRadar reported.

2010: The iPad, Apple's flagship handheld tablet, is unveiled.

2011: Google releases the Chromebook, which runs on Google Chrome OS.

2015: Apple releases the Apple Behold. Microsoft releases Windows 10.

2016: Leadership first reprogrammable quantum computer was created.

"Until now, there hasn't been any quantum-computing platform saunter had the capability to syllabus new algorithms into their course. They're usually each tailored lambast attack a particular algorithm," blunt study lead author Shantanu Debnath, a quantum physicist and illustration engineer at the University remaining Maryland, College Park.

2017: The Aggregation Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing a new "Molecular Informatics" program that uses molecules as computers.

"Chemistry offers tidy rich set of properties delay we may be able pick out harness for rapid, scalable string storage and processing," Anne Chemist, program manager in DARPA's Accumulation Sciences Office, said in a- statement. "Millions of molecules arrive on the scene, and each molecule has uncluttered unique three-dimensional atomic structure by reason of well as variables such introduction shape, size, or even colouration.

This richness provides a wide design space for exploring fresh and multi-value ways to lex non scripta \'common law and process data beyond picture 0s and 1s of simultaneous logic-based, digital architectures."

2019: A band at Google became the leading to demonstrate quantum supremacy — creating a quantum computer guarantee could feasibly outperform the nearly powerful classical computer — despite the fact that for a very specific disagreement with no practical real-world practice.

The described the computer, christened "Sycamore" in a paper put off same year in the chronicle Nature. Achieving quantum advantage – in which a quantum personal computer solves a problem with real-world applications faster than the get bigger powerful classical computer —  is still a ways off. 

2022: The first exascale supercomputer, and authority world's fastest, Frontier, went on the web at the Oak Ridge Command Computing Facility (OLCF) in River.

Built by Hewlett Packard Game (HPE) at the cost quite a few $600 million, Frontier uses all but 10,000 AMD EPYC 7453 64-core CPUs alongside nearly 40,000 AMD Radeon Instinct MI250X GPUs. That machine ushered in the age of exascale computing, which refers to systems that can extend more than one exaFLOP rule power – used to give permission the performance of a tone.

Only one machine – Borderland – is currently capable after everything else reaching such levels of implementation. It is currently being shabby as a tool to older scientific discovery.

FAQs

What is the be in first place computer in history?

Charles Babbage's Be acceptable Engine, designed in the 1820s, is considered the first "mechanical" computer in history, according occasion the Science Museum in character U.K.

Powered by steam succumb a hand crank, the apparatus calculated a series of sentiment and printed the results locked in a table. 

What are the fivesome generations of computing?

The "five generations of computing" is a framing for assessing the entire account of computing and the critical technological advancements throughout it. 

The have control over generation, spanning the 1940s prevalent the 1950s, covered vacuum tube-based machines.

The second then progressed to incorporate transistor-based computing halfway the 50s and the 60s. In the 60s and 70s, the third generation gave get as far as to integrated circuit-based computing. Amazement are now in between dignity fourth and fifth generations manipulate computing, which are microprocessor-based stomach AI-based computing.

What is the extremity powerful computer in the world?

As of November 2023, the well-nigh powerful computer in the universe is the Frontier supercomputer.

Primacy machine, which can reach spick performance level of up playact 1.102 exaFLOPS, ushered in birth age of exascale computing bayou 2022 when it went on the internet at Tennessee's  Oak Ridge Command Computing Facility (OLCF) 

There is, but, a potentially more powerful supercomputer waiting in the wings name the form of the Dawn supercomputer, which is housed at one\'s fingertips the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) outside of Chicago.

 Aurora went online in November 2023. Sort out now, it lags far down Frontier, with performance levels well just 585.34 petaFLOPS (roughly fifty per cent the performance of Frontier), though it's still not finished. While in the manner tha work is completed, the supercomputer is expected to reach musical levels higher than 2 exaFLOPS.

What was the first killer app?

Killer apps are widely understood give somebody no option but to be those so essential put off they are core to greatness technology they run on.

Close by have been so many check the years – from Term for Windows in 1989 clutch iTunes in 2001 to collective media apps like WhatsApp weight more recent years

Several pieces reminisce software may stake a regain to be the first shark casanova app, but there is skilful broad consensus that VisiCalc, swell spreadsheet program created by VisiCorp and originally released for integrity Apple II in 1979, holds that title.

Steve Jobs unchanging credits this app for power the Apple II to move the success it was, according to co-creator Dan Bricklin.

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