What is a computer anyway? See here for calculating machines, Check this interesting Wikipedia article on the history of Computer hardware.
| When? | Who? | Where? | What? | |
| 1938 | Konrad Zuse | Berlin | Z1, the first (mechanical) digital computer, based on relays. Memory was
based on steel "needles". Private project. Initial motivation
was to solve systems of (30) linear equations for the aircraft industry
he was working at.
Click here and on Programme - Simulationen to get an impression. |
|
| 39-42 | Atanasoff, Berry | Iowa State University | The Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC), the first electronic digital computer using triode valves. Aim was to solve systems of linear equations. Memory used capacitors, secondary storage via punch cards. | |
| 1941 | Zuse | Berlin | Z3, program-controlled electromechanical digital computer with relays, supported by Nazi military. | |
| 1941 | Alan Turing & ... | Bletchlley Park, GB | Colossus, invented to break German enigma code, 1500 valves, 10 machines until 1945. Not a general-purpose computer. | |
| 1943 | Howard H. Aiken | Harvard, IBM | Mark I, electronic relay computer. used punched cards for storage and control. used for military, navy, and the atomic bomb project. programmer was Grace Hopper | |
| 1946 | John Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly | Pennsylvania | ENIAC, 18000 valves (vacuum tubes), 70000 resistors, .... . Was not digital---based on the decimal system. Hard wired---without separate processor and memory. | |
| 1946 | John von Neumann | the concept of a stored-program computer | ||
| 1948 | Max Newman, F. C. Williams | Manchester, GB | the first computer with stored-program capability, CRT memory | |
| 1949 | Jay W. Forrester | MIT | magnetic core memory | |
| 1947 | John Bardeen, Walter Brattain & Wiliam Shockley | Transistor | ||
| 1951 | Remington Rand | UNIVAC I, the first commercially available computer. | ||
| 1954/57 | John Backus | IBM | FORTRAN programming language | |
| 1955 | BellLabs | first transistor computer | ||
| 1958 | Jack Kilby & Robert Noyce | Integrated Circuit (IC, chip) | ||
| 1969 | The ARPANET | |||
| 1971 | Ted Hoff | Intel | Intel 4004 Computer Microprocessor, CPU, Memory, Input, Output controls All on one chip. | |
| 1974 | John Backus | IBM | the first parallel computer | |
| 1975 | Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak | first Apple computer | ||
| 1979 | Bob Frankston and Dan Bricklin | the first spreadsheet program, "VisiCalc", was released- | ||
| 1980 | Microsoft | Microsoft creates the operating system MS-DOS for IBM | ||
| 1981 | IBM | the IBM PC is introduced. | ||
| 1981 | Philips, Sony | (audio) CD | ||
| 1984 | Apple | Macintosh Computer with mouse and GUI | ||
| 1991 | Tim Berners-Lee | CERN | start of WWW | |
| 1991 | Philips | computer CD | ||
| 1993 | Intel | Pentium chip | ||
| 1994 | Linus Thorvald | Linux operating system is released. | ||
| 1995 | James Gosling | Sun | Java programming language | |
| 1995 | Microsoft | Windows operating system | ||
