1837 - The telegraph is invented by Samuel FB Morse.
1868 - Christopher Latham Sholes invents the first commercial typewriter.
1872 - One of the first large-scale analogue computers is developed by Lord Kelvin to predict the height of tides in English harbours.
1876 - Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone.
1881 - Charles S Tainter invents the dictaphone.
1896 - Guglielmo Marconi develops the radio telegraph.
1900 - Rene Graphen develops the photocopying machine.
1901 - Reginald A Fessenden develops the radio telephone.
1933 - IBM introduces the first commercial electric typewriter.
1940s - First electronic computers used in the US, UK and Germany.
1943 - Howard H Aiken and his team at Harvard University complete the "ASCC Mark I" ("Automatic Sequence-Controlled Calculator Mark I").
1946 - Zuse invents Plankalkul, the first programming language, while hiding out in Bavaria.
1948 - Newman, Freddie C Williams and their team at Manchester University complete a prototype machine, the "Manchester Mark I". This is the first machine that everyone would call a computer, because it's the first with a true stored-program capability.
1951 - Ferranti completes the first commercial computer. It has 256 40-bit words of main memory and 16KB words of drum.
1957 - Fortran, the first popular programming language, hits the streets.
1959 - Cobol, a programming language for business use, and LISP, the first string processing language, come out.
1960s - Algol 60, a European programming language and ancestor of many others, including Pascal, is released.
1963-64 - Doug Englebart invents the computer mouse, first called the X-Y Position Indicator.
1964 - John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz of Dartmouth College develop the first Basic programming language. The IBM programming language, PL1, comes out the same year.
1966 - HP introduced the HP2116A real-time computer. Intel is founded and begins marketing a semiconductor chip that holds 2 000 bits of memory.
1967 - IBM builds the first floppy disk.
1969 - Intel announces a 1KB RAM chip, which has a significantly larger capacity than any previously produced memory chip. The Unix operating system is designed by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at AT&T Bell Laboratories. Arpanet links two computers at UCLA and Stanford Research Institute. Dr Leonard Kleinrock and his assistant Charley Kline manage to successfully send a command login to a Stanford machine set up and tuned by Bill Duvall. The first e-mail is sent.
Late 1960s - IBM sells over 30 000 mainframe computers.
1970 - Nicklaus Wirth comes out with Pascal.
1971 - Wang introduces the 1200 Word Processing System. Intel markets the first microprocessor. Its speed is 60 000 additions per second.
1972 - Ray Tomlinson, the author of the first e-mail software, chooses @ sign for e-mail addresses. Dennis Ritchie invents the C programming language. Bill Gates and Paul Allen form Traf-O-Data (which eventually becomes Microsoft). Stephen Wozniak and Steven Jobs begin selling blue boxes.
1973 - IBM develops the first true sealed hard disk drive. It used two 30MB platters.
1975 - MITS introduces the first personal computer - Altair.
1976 - Shugart introduces 5.25-inch floppy drives. Apple Computer introduces the Apple II, the first personal computer with colour graphics. Inkjet printing is announced by IBM.
1978 - Apple begins shipping disk drives for the Apple II and initiates the Lisa research and development project. Bitnet (Because It's Time Network) protocol for electronic mail, listserv servers and file transfer is established by the City University of New York and Yale University. Xerox releases the 8010 Star and 820 computers. IBM announces its PC. DEC announces a line of PCs. HP introduces the HP 9000 technical computer with 32-bit "superchip" technology.
1979 - Kevin MacKenzie invents the emoticon :-) and Usenet news groups.
1980 - Telnet. Remote log-in and long-distance work (telecommuting) are now possible.
1981 - Listserv mailing list software. Online knowledge groups and virtual seminars are formed. Osborne introduces the first portable computer. MS-DOS is introduced.
1982 - CD disk and player released by Sony and Philips Europe and Japan.
1983 - IBM announces the PCjr. Apple Computer announces Lisa, the first business computer with a graphical user interface (GUI).
1984 - Macintosh personal computer is launched. The OS is bundled with MacWrite (word processor) and MacPaint (free-hand, black and white drawing). Apple introduces 3.5-inch floppy drives. The domain name system is established.
1985 - CD-ROM technology for computers is developed by Sony and Philips. File Transfer Protocol.
1987 - Microsoft ships Windows 1.01.
1988 - The 386 chip brings PC speeds into competition with LISP machines.
1990 - Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau invent the World Wide Web (WWW) while working at CERN. Archie FTP semi-crawler search engine is built by Peter Deutsch of MacGill University.
1991 - CD-recordable technology is released. Gopher is created at the University of Minnesota. WWW server combines URL syntax, HTML language for documents and HTTP. It offers integration of earlier Internet tools into a seamless whole.
1992 - There are about 20 Web servers in existence (Ciolek 1998).
1993 - Mosaic graphic WWW browser is developed by Marc Andreessen (Cailliau 1995). GUI finally makes WWW a competitor to Gopher. Production of Web pages becomes an easy task, even to an amateur. Mosaic was the first Explorer- or Netscape-like browser.) There are 200+ Web servers in existence (Ciolek 1998).
1994 - Netscape browser is developed by Marc Andreessen.
1995 - RealAudio narrowcasting (Reid 1997:69). Java programming language is developed by Sun Microsystems. Metacrawler WWW meta-search engine. The content of WWW is actively and automatically catalogued. Amazon.com is launched by Jeffrey P Bezos. AltaVista WWW crawler search engine is built by Digital. A very fast search of 30% to 50% of the Web is made possible.
1996 - There are 100 000 Web servers in existence.
1997 - There are 650 000 Web servers in existence. Web TV is introduced.
1998 - There are 3.6 million Web servers in existence (Zakon 1998).
1999 - There are 4.3 million Web servers in existence (Zakon 1999).
Source: www.ship.edu/cgboeree/computertimeline.html
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