By:Doneville Prescott 1st period Multimedia

The History Of Computers

Charles Babbage invented the concept of a programmable computer in about 1856.

In 1981, International Business Machines Corp. entered the personal computer

market, and was welcomed as a competitor, rather slyly, by Apple. IBM's PC boasted a disk operating system that became an industry standard. Hewlett-

Packard had launched its first PC in 1980. The early '80s were to be

dominated by microcomputer expansions -- and by a torrid pace of start-ups.

Hewlett-Packard is Founded. David Packard and Bill Hewlett found Hewlett-Packard in a Palo Alto, California garage. Their first product was the HP 200A Audio Oscillator, which rapidly becomes a popular piece of test equipment for engineers. Walt Disney Pictures ordered eight of the 200B model to use as sound effects generators for the 1940 movie “Fantasia.”

1939

Konrad Zuse began work on Plankalkul (Plan Calculus), the first algorithmic programming language, with an aim of creating the theoretical preconditions for the formulation of problems of a general nature. Seven years earlier, Zuse had developed and built the world´s first binary digital computer, the Z1. He completed the first fully functional program-controlled electromechanical digital computer, the Z3, in 1941. Only the Z4 — the most sophisticated of his creations — survived World War II.

1945

IBM´s Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator computed scientific data in public display near the company´s Manhattan headquarters. Before its decommissioning in 1952, the SSEC produced the moon-position tables used for plotting the course of the 1969 Apollo flight to the moon. Speed: 50 multiplications per second Input/output: cards, punched tape Memory type: punched tape, vacuum tubes, relays Technology: 20,000 relays, 12,500 vacuum tubes Floor space: 25 feet by 40 feet Project leader: Wallace Eckert

1948

MIT´s Whirlwind debuted on Edward R. Murrow´s "See It Now" television series. Project director Jay Forrester described the computer as a "reliable operating system," running 35 hours a week at 90-percent utility using an electrostatic tube memory. Start of project: 1945 Completed: 1951 Add time: .05 microseconds Input/output: cathode ray tube, paper tape, magnetic tape Memory size: 2048 16-digit words Memory type: cathode ray tube, magnetic drum, tape (1953 - core memory) Technology: 4,500 vacuum tubes, 14,800 diodes Floor space: 3,100 square feet Project leaders: Jay Forrester and Robert Everett

LEOEngland´s first commercial computer, the Lyons Electronic Office,

solved clerical problems. The president of Lyons Tea Co. had the computer, modeled after the EDSAC, built to solve the problem of daily scheduling production and delivery of cakes to the Lyons tea shops. After the success of the first LEO, Lyons went into business manufacturing computers to meet the growing need for data processing systems.

1951

Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. invented the resistor-transistor logic (RTL) product, a set/reset flip-flop and the first integrated circuit available as a monolithic chip.

1961

The first e-mail is sent. Ray Tomlinson of the research firm Bolt, Beranek and Newman sent the first e-mail when he was supposed to be working on a different project. Tomlinson, who is credited with being the one to decide on the "@" sign for use in e-mail, sent his message over a military network called ARPANET. When asked to describe the contents of the first email, Tomlinson said it was “something like "QWERTYUIOP"”

1971

Sony introduced and shipped the first 3 1/2" floppy drives and diskettes in 1981. The first significant company to adopt the 3 1/2" floppy for general use was Hewlett-Packard in 1982, an event which was critical in establishing momentum for the format and which helped it prevail over the other contenders for the microfloppy standard, including 3", 3 1/4", and 3.9" formats.

1981

FUTURE COMPUTERS

The Iomega Zip Disk is released.  The initial Zip system allowed 100MB to be stored on a cartridge roughly the size of a 3 ½ inch floppy disk. Later versions increased the capacity of a single disk from 100Mbytes to 2GB. 

1994

THE END

www.computerhistory.org/timeline

inventors.about.com/library/blcoindex.htm

http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en

http://weburbanist.com/2020