Note: This is the June 17, 2006 capture of http://bentong.topcities.com/comp/misc/chipset.htm from the Wayback Machine. This was uploaded to the reloaded ISLESV.NET on June 22, 2023.
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3000 B.C. |
The abacus is developed in Babylonia. |
| A.D. 700-900 | Europeans begin using Hindu-Arabic math. |
| 9th c. | Buddhist text is first known printed book. |
| 11th c. | Movable type, decimal number system, musical notation. |
| 1600 | Hindu-Arabic math is in common use throughout Europe. |
| 1614 | John Napier introduces logarithms. |
| 1617 | Napier invents rods. |
| 1623 | Wilhelm Schickard invents the mechanical calculator. |
| 1630-1633 | William Oughtred and Richard Delamain introduce the slide rule. |
| 1644-1645 | Blaise Pascal completes his calculator. |
| 1672-1674 | Leibniz builds his first calculator. |
| 1801 | Joseph-Marie Jacquard develops a loom programmed by punched tape. |
| 1820 | The Arithmometer, the first commercial calculator, is introduced. |
| 1823 | Babbage begins Difference Engine project. |
| 1834 | Babbage starts designing the Analytical Engine. |
| 1847 | Boole publishes The Mathematical Analysis of Logic. |
| 1853 | Pehr and Edvard Scheutz complete their Tabulating Machine. |
| 1854 | Boole publishes The Laws of Thought. |
| 1875 | Frank Baldwin starts American calculator industry. |
| 1876-1878 | Kelvin builds his harmonic analyzer and tide predictor machines. |
| 1878 | Ramon Verea patents a calculator capable of direct multiplication and division. |
| 1885 | Dorr Felt devises the Comptometer, a key-driven adding and subtracting calculator. |
| 1889 | Felt’s Comtograph is introduced. It has a built-in printer. |
| 1890 | Herman Hollerith’s punch cards and tabulating equipment are used in the U.S. Census. |
| 1892 | William S. Burroughs introduces an adder-subtracter with a superior printer. |
| 1893 | The Millionaure, the first efficient four-function calculator, is invented. |
| 1900-1910 | Mechanical calculators become commonplace. |
| 1906 | Leed De Forest devises a three-electrode tube, or triode. |
| 1910-1913 | Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead publish Principia Mathematica. |
| 1911 | Hollerith Tabulating Machine Company merges into Computing-Tabulating-Recording Corporation (CTR). |
| 1914 | Thomas Watson, Sr. joins CTR. |
| 1919 | W. H. Eccles and F.W. Jordan publish a paper on flip-flop circuits. |
| 1924 | CTR becomes International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). |
| 1930 | Vannevar Bush completes his differential analyzer. |
| 1937 | Alan Turing publishes “On Computable Numbers.” |
| 1938 | Konrad Zuse finishes his Z1, the first binary calculating machine. |
| 1938 | Claude Shannon publishes “A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits.” |
| 1939 | Bell Labs buils the Complex Number Calculator. |
| 1941 | Zuse assembles Z3, the first electromechanical general-purpose program-controlled calculator. |
| 1942 | John V. Atanasoff and Clifford Berry’s electronic calculating machine, one of the first calculating devices with tubes, goes into operation. |
| 1943 | IBM-Harvard Mark I is completed. |
| 1943 | First Colossus code-breaking machine is installed at Bletchey Park. |
| 1944 | J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly conceive of the stored-program computer. |
| 1945 | ENIAC, the first fully functional electronic calculator, goes into operation in November. |
| 1945 | John von Neumann writes the “First Draft of Report of the EDVAC.” |
| 1945 | IBM becomes the largest business machine manufacturer in the United States. |
| 1946 | Arthur Burks, Herman Goldstine, and von Neumann write “Preliminary Discussion of the Logical Design of an Electronic Computing Instrument.” |
| 1946 | Von Neumann starts a computer project at the Institute for Advanced Study. |
| 1946 | Eckert and Mauchly establish the Electronic Control Company, America’s first computer manufacturer. |
| 1947 | Bell Labs invents the point-contact transistor. |
| Jan. 27, 1948 | IBM assembles the SSEC electromechanical computer, which runs a stored program. |
| June 21, 1948 | Manchester University’s Mark I prototype runs the first fully electronic stored program. |
| June 1949 | EDSAC, the first full-scale electronic stored-program computer, begins operating at Cambridge University. |
| August 1949 | BINAC, the first stored-program computer in America, is tested. |
| 1950 | Remington Rand buys the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation. |
| Feb. 1951 | The Ferranti Mark I, the first commercially manufactured computer, is installed at Manchester University. |
| March 1951 | The first UNIVAC is delivered to the Census Bureau. |
| 1951 | Whirlwind, the first real-time computer, is completed. |
| 1951 | William Shockley invents the junction transistor. |
| 1951 | Grace Hopper conceives of an internal program known as a compiler. |
| 1952 | Thomas Watson, Jr. becomes president of IBM. |
| 1952 | UNIVAC successfully predicts the outcome of the presidential election. |
| March 1953 | IBM delivers the 701, its first electronic computer, to Los Alamos. |
| 1953 | MIT conducts a successful full-scale test of Jay W. Forrester’s magnetic-core memory. |
| Dec. 1954 | IBM introduces the 650 medium-size computer. |
| 1955 | Remington Rand merges with Sperry Corp., forming Sperry Rand. |
| 1955 | Shockley establishes a semiconductor company in Mountain View, California. |
| 1956 | John McCarthy, an MIT computer scientist, coins the phrase “artificial intelligence.” |
| 1957 | IBM introduces FORTRAN, the first high-level computer language. |
| 1957 | Philco Corporation introduces the Philco 2000, the first commercially available transistorized computer. |
| 1958 | The first SAGE direction center goes into operation at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. |
| 1958 | Jack Kilby builds an integrated circuit ( IC ) at Texas Instruments in Dallas. |
| 1958 | Jean Hoerni devises the planar process of making transistors. |
| 1959 | Kurt Lehovec designs an IC whose components are isolated with pn junctions. |
| 1959 | Robert Noyce invents the planar IC, paving the way for the mass manufacture of reliable and efficient ICs. |
| 1961 | MIT develops the first computer time-sharing system. |
| 1961 | Texas Instruments builds the first IC computer. |
| 1963 | The Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) introduces the minicomputer. |
| 1963 | The Bell Punch Company offers electronic calculators using discrete components. |
| 1964 | IBM unveils the System/360, the first family of computers. |
| 1968 | Noyce and Gordon Moore establish Intel in Santa Clara, California. |
| 1968 | Intel introduces the first 1K random-access memory (RAM). |
| 1971 | Intel invents the micprocessor. |
| 1973 | The ENIAC patent is invalidated. |
| 1973 | IC computers become commonplace. |
| 1974 | An article describing the construction of a “personal minicomputer” appears in Radio-Electronics. |
| 1975 | The Altair computer premieres in Popular Electronics, inaugurating the personal computer industry. |
| 1977 | The Apple II is introduced. |
| 1981 | IBM enters the personal computer market with the PC. |