The first abacus is likely invented and used by the Babylonians

Algorithms are developed by a Babylonian mathematician as an aid in solving numerical problems

The Egyptians invent the bead and wire abacus

Computing trays were introduced by both China and Japan at this time. For China it was the saun-pan computing tray; in Japan the soroban computing tray was invented

Pope Sylvester II devised and introduced Europe to a new abacus to which he applied his knowledge of Hindu-Arabic numerals

The Scottish inventor John Napier demonstrated a method of multiplication using numbering rods made of ivory. These rods became known as Napier’s bones due to the material they were made of

The first mechanical calculating machine, the Pascaline, is built by Blaise Pascal who was 19 years old

A mechanical calculating machine that adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides is built by Gottfried Leibniz

Joseph Marie Jacquard invented punch cards to control certain aspects of his mechanical loom

Charles Babbage proposes and designs a Difference Engine to calculate logarithms; however, the machine is never completed

The Analytical Machine, which is considered the original general purpose computer, is designed by Charles Babbage

Babbage’s work is documented by Ada Lovelace. In addition, she also wrote programs for him

The Mathematical Analysis of Logic is published by George Boole

The first practical mechanical computer is based on work by Babbage, but is built by George and Edvard Scheutz of Stockholm

A patent application for a punch-card tabulating machine is filed by Herman Hollerith

The first commercial listing and adding machine was developed and patented by William Burroughs

The Hollerith tabulating machine patent is issued

To aid the taking of the U.S. census, Dr. Herman Hollerith creates a machine that uses perforated cards

Electric logic circuits known as gates or switches are patented by Nikola Tesla

International Business Machines becomes the new name for the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company

Konrad Zuse builds Z1, which is the first calculator

The Voder, a talking machine and the first of its kind, is invented by Homer Dudley for Bell Telephone Laboratory

The first binary calculator is created by George Stibitz for Bell Telephone Laboratories

Hewlett-Packard Co. is founded

Homer Dudley demonstrates his voice encoder called VOCODER at New York’s World Fair

A prototype for the ABC (Atanasoff-Berry Computer) is designed by John J. Atanasoff and Clifford Berry

The first terminal is created as a result of remote processing experiments at Bell Laboratories

Alan M. Turing designs the Colossus computer, which is then built by M.H.A. Neuman at the University of Manchester

A calculator with automated controls is built by Konrad Zuse. It is called the Z3

Colossus Mark II is built in England

The relay-based computer called Mark I (IBM ASCC) is completed and Grace Murray Hopper becomes its first programmer

Eckert and Mauchly start the first real-time computer called Binac (Binary Automatic Computer), which takes three years to complete

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) is dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania

The Universal Automatic Computer Univac is designed by the Electronic Control Co., which was formerly Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation

John Tukey coins the word 'bit' for binary digit

An Intelligent Machinery article by Alan M. Turing defines artificial intelligence

The not-for-profit Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is founded

Maurice V. Wilkes of the University of Cambridge develops the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator, or EDSAC

The 12,000 tube Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC) is created by IBM

William Bradford Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter H. Brattain invent the transistor

The first tests of magnetic disks are supported by EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer)

Assembler (symbolic assembly language) is applied to EDSAC by Cambridge University’s Maurice V. Wilkes

The National Bureau of Standards receives SEAC (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer)

The concept of microprogramming is introduced by Maurice V. Wilkes

UNIVAC I, which utilizes a magnetic tape for a memory buffer, is installed at the Bureau of Census

The first real-time computer called Whirlwind becomes operational at MIT

Fred Gruenberger writes the first computer manual

IBM announces its first electronic stored-program computer called the 701

Bizmac, which has a magnetic storage and an iron-core memory, is developed by RCA

IBM 726 has 100 character-per-inch density and a speed that is 75 inches-per-second speed. It is the first magnetic tape device

FORTRAN is created by John Backus and his team at IBM

Information Processing Language, known as IPL, is invented by F. Simon, D. Shaw and A. Newell

Atlas, the world’s first virtual memory machine, is built at the University of Manchester by R.M. Kilburn

The first integrated circuit is built by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments

The patent for the first integrated circuit is filed by Kilby at Texas Instruments

The PDP-1 is developed at Digital Equipment Corporation by Benjamin Curley. It is the first minicomputer

The first removable disks are invented

The Stretch computer, a transistorized machine with 64-bit data paths, is delivered to Los Alamos by IBM. This computer is the first to use eight-bit bytes; it stays in operation until l971

Ken Iverson, in conjunction with Harvard University and IBM, develop 'A Programming Language,' or APL

Computer-aided design (CAD) is made possible by the development of conversational graphics consoles by General Motors’ DAC-1 and MIT Lincoln Laboratories’ Sketchpad

Tom Kurtz and John Kemeny of Dartmouth develop the BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Language) programming language

Texas Instruments introduces the first solid-state hand-held calculator to the market

DEC manufactures the PDP-10 mainframe

Computerworld publishes its first issue

Joshua Lederberg ?writes Dendral, a medical program designed for medical diagnostics, at Stanford University

Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce found Integrated Electronics Corp., also known as Intel

Nova, the world’s first 16-bit minicomputer, is introduced by Edson deCastro and Data General Corp

The First International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence takes place

IBM separates hardware from software and brings to market a line of minicomputers called System/3

Nicklaus Wirth creates the first PASCAL compiler software

The first computer chess tournament is hosted by the ACM

Honeywell acquires General Electric’s computer operations

Floppy disks enter the market

The first microprocessor, the Intel 4004, is developed by Marcian E. Hoff and his team at Intel

The Kenbak I, the world’s first personal computer (PC), is invented by John Blankenbaker

The founding of Cray Research

Jack Kilby, Jerry Merryman, and Jim VanTassel create the first electronic pocket calculator for Texas Instruments

Gary Kildall writes the programming language PL/1 for the Intel 4004 microprocessor

Intel introduces an 8-bit microprocessor called the 8008

Alain Comerauer develops the PROLOG programming language at the University of Marseilles-Luminy in France

MICRAL is the first microcomputer marketed in France. It is created by the company R2E

IBM invents the first Winchester disk drives

Intel invents the 8-bit microprocessor called the 8080

The Cray-1 supercomputer comes online

The first computer users group, Homebrew Computer Club, holds its first meeting

MITS brings the Altair personal computer kit to market. Designed by Ed Roberts and Bill Yates, it is named after 'A Voyage to Altair,' a Star Trek episode. The 256-byte computer kit cost $397

Bill Gates and Paul Allen develop a version of the BASIC computer language for the Altair PC. They also found the Microsoft Corporation

In Santa Monica, CA, the first computer store goes into business

Tandem creates the T/16, the world’s first fault-tolerant computer

Engineers at Seymour Cray introduce the Cray 1, a supercomputer with 200,000 freon-cooled ICs and 100 million floating point operations per second (MFLOP)

Perkin-Elmer and Gould SEL introduce super minicomputers to the market

Apple Computer goes into business and brings the Apple II personal computer to the market. Tandy and Commodore also enter the personal computer market

DEC introduces the VAX-11/780, the first 32-bit super minicomputer

Datapoint invents the first local area network, the ARC system

The educational toy Speak-and-Spell is introduced by Texas Instruments. The toy features digitized speech synthesis

COMDEX holds its first trade show

Jean Ichbiah and a team at CII-Honeywell Bull in France develop the Ada language

CompuServe Information Services begins operating

VisiCalc is the world’s first electronic spreadsheet program. It makes its first appearance at the West Coast Computer Faire

Micropro (now Wordstar International) introduces Wordstar, which becomes one of the most popular word processing programs in the world for PCs

Bell Laboratories licenses the UNIX operating system to Microsoft, which then introduces their own version of UNIX called XENIX

The number of active computers in the U.S. reaches a milestone of one million units

Commodore brings the home computer known as the VIC-20 to market. The computer sells over a million units

IBM brings de facto standards to the personal computer market

The first portable computer, the Osborne 1, is introduced by Osborne Computer

Sun Microsystems opens for business

16 months after MS-DOS becomes available on the market, Microsoft licenses the operating system to 50 microcomputer manufacturers

The computer is declared Man of the Year by Time Magazine

Upon introducing its first computer to the market in January, Compaq sales reach $111M

The Cray 2 super computer reaches a performance rating of one billion floating point operations per second, or FLOPs

Apple brings the Macintosh computer to the consumer market

IBM invents the PC Advanced Technology, or PC AT

Aldus releases PageMaker for the Apple Macintosh. This is the beginning of the desktop publishing era

IBM produces the PS/2 family of computers and ships over 1 million machines

Sun Microsystems offers a workstation that uses the RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) microprocessor

Apple offers the Apple Macintosh II, Macintosh SE, and its new HyperCard technology

DEC releases the Vaxstation 2000, MicroVAX 3500 and 3600 workstations to the market

Aldus brings desktop publishing to the IBM PC and PC compatible market with the release of PageMaker for that platform

Cray Research produces a $20 million super computer, the Cray Y-MP

AT&T announces plans to work with Sun Microsystens to develop a new version of UNIX

IBM, DEC, HP, Apollo, and other major computer companies respond to AT&T’s announcement by creating the not-for-profit organization Open Software Foundation. Its purpose was to create royalty-free UNIX operating systems and software

NeXT introduces a workstation computer that uses rewritable optical discs as its primary form of data storage

The Morris computer worm spreads through the Internet and overloads thousands of computers, forcing them to crash and shut down

Intel unveils its new 80486 microprocessor as well as the I860 RISC coprocessor chip. The chips feature over one million transistors

Poqet unveils the first sub-notebook, the Poqet PC, which is a pocket-sized computer with an MS-DOS compatible operating system

Grid produces the GridPad, a laptop that uses a touch-sensitive pad. The pad also recognizes a person’s handwriting

Compaq introduces the LTE and LTE/286. These computers are battery-powered notebooks that include a hard drive and floppy disk

EISA-based PCs, the first of their kind, are available

The first computers that are 80486-based are unveiled

The Motorola 68040 microprocessor is introduced

The high performance RISC Station 6000 workstations are announced by IBM

A fault-tolerant VAX computer is introduced by Digital Equipment

Microsoft Windows 3.0 is introduced

The PS/1, a computer designed for home and home office use begins to ship from IBM

The first web hosting server connects with a web browser client over the Internet

NCR switches from a proprietary mainframe to systems based on Intel 486 and microprocessors and their successors

Microsoft, IBM, Tandy, and AT&T, among others announce hardware and software specifications for multimedia platforms

Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD, announces it has created a competitor to the Intel 386 chips. It is called the AMD 386 microprocessor

Most PC vendors unveil Notebook PCs

The Advanced Computing Environment (ACE) is launched by 21 companies headed by Compaq. Its purpose is to create standards for PCs and workstations that are higher end

Microsoft is investigated by the Federal Trade Commission over business practices

The 486SX, which is a more affordable 486 chip, is introduced by Intel

The UNIX operating system Solaris is announced by SunSoft, a subsidiary of Sun Microsystems

OS/2 Version 2.0 is released by IBM. Over 1M units are shipped

Microsoft Windows 3.1 is introduced and results in the shipping of nearly 10M units

Compaq becomes a price trendsetter with the announcement of several new lines of PCs, an ultimately successful strategy

The RISC-based Alpha is announced as the next generation computer by Digital Equipment

Windows for Workgroups is introduced by Microsoft

Intel announces that it will change the name of their next microprocessor from 589 to Pentium

Novell’s NetWare 4.0 is revealed

Notes 3.0 is announced by Lotus

The first of the PowerPC microprocessors are shipped by Motorola

Windows NT is unveiled by Microsoft

The shipping of Pentium-based systems begins

Apple’s first Personal Digital Assistant called the Newton MessagePad is shipped

A family-oriented PC for the home called the Presario is introduced by Compaq

The FTC probe of Microsoft comes to an end with no action taken

After 10 years as Apple’s chairman, John Sculley is forced to resign

Microsoft at Work (MAW) along with the Plug and Play initiatives are outlined by Microsoft

PowerPC chip based workstations are debuted by IBM

IBM’s OS/2 for Windows upgrade is announced

Shipping begins of Macintosh computers that use the PowerPC

The clock-tripling microprocessor called 486DX4 is introduced by Intel