A Short History of Computers ?<B.C. The prototype "computer" - the human hand. Always the computer of last resort. Our hands form the basis of the decimal number system. Think what might have happened if we had 11 fingers!! ~30,000 B.C. Found at prehistoric sites all over Europe are bones with patterns of linear scratches. Inspection of these bones hint the sequences of scratches were typically made with different tools, meaning perhaps they were not made all at once. The patterns seem to record the seasons and the phases of the moon. ~8,500 B.C. In the Middle East small clay tokens have been found. Their form look like the pictographic script developed by the Sumerians thousands of years later. The tokens are sometimes found in containers of clay, alluding that they were mortgages or contracts. The number system seemingly was based on powers of both 10 and 60. (Take a peek at your watch!) 2,500 B.C. Stonehenge and related monuments in Great Britain and Europe seem to have been developed so that certain stone alignments display rising and setting points of the moon, sun, and perhaps other bodies. 2000 B.C. The Sumerians invented "place value" notation (in base 60) and the concept of zero. These concepts were lost, and rediscovered by western civilization approximately 3,000 years later. The two ideas are important because try to calculate MDCCCLXXXX to the third power! 600 B.C. The abacus was used in China perhaps this early. The first models more than likely did not have beads on strings. In years to come both the Romans and Egyptians used similar mechanisms having the same principle. 80 B.C. In 1900, an encrusted piece of bronze was salvaged from an ancient Greek ship off the island of Andikithira. It was an engraved bronze plate with a complex gear train. The device computed the positions of the sun/moon and displayed them on its etched dials. 30 B.C. The Romans used a hodometer to measure distances. The device used a gearing system to count the revolutions of a wheel by showing the number of rotations on a dial or dropping pebbles into a box. The taximeter uses a similar idea. 850 AD Off the west coast of New Guinea on the island of Apraphul the remnants of ropes and pulleys have been found thought to be the first working digital computer ever constructed. It had AND gates, OR gates, inverters, memory, etc. 996 The invention of the mechanical clock. A clock is a counting device that computes time by counting events such as, teeth, electronic pulses, etc. 1300 Bankers used checkered tablecloths to count coins and compute interest. One still writes "checks". 1614 J. Napier invented logarithms, which allowed a person to multiply by adding and divide by subtracting. Later he built a "pocket calculator" (Napier's Bones) for multiplication and division based on his discovery. 1621 W. Oughtred, using Napier's logarithms, built the first slide rule, which were still in general use until 1972. 1623 W. Schnickard devised the first mechanical calculator which would add, subtract, multiply and divide. He sent drawings to astronomer J. Kepler, but the calculator was never built. 1642 Mathematician and philosopher B. Pascal invented and built his first cranked computing machine. It could only add and subtract. 1671 G.W. Leibniz invented a calculating machine which could add, subtract, multiply, divide and take square roots. It shows the advantages of binary over the decimal system for mechanical computers. 1680 The "rack and snail" striking mechanism for clocks was invented by E. Barlow. It would take one digital input, a stepped cam, and calculate one digital output, the number of strokes 1725 A loom which wove a pattern controlled by holes (digital control) in a continuous belt (stored program) was built by B. Bouchon. 1801 J. Jacquard developed a loom controlled by punched cards. The loom was the first device to use punched cards both to control a machine and to store a program. 1814 J.M. Hermann designed a mechanism which would measure the area under an irregular curve. This is the process mathematicians call "integration". 1822 C. X. Thomas created the first commercially successful calculating machine to add, subtract, multiply and divide. 1833 C. Babbage started work on the "Analytic Engine", which was to be able to evaluate any type of mathematical formula. It was to have a "store"(registers) to hold and send numbers and a "mill" (arithmetic unit) to crunch numbers. Its program was to be controlled by punched cards. Babbage died in 1871 and his machine was never completed. It would have been the first machine to have many of the capabilities we now recognize as a computer. 1845 Ada Lovelace (Countess of Lovelace) shows a complete understanding of computer programming principles a century before they were put into practice. She writes to Babbage "No one knows what . . . awful energy and power lie yet undeveloped in that wiry little system of mind." 1859 G. Boole published his Treatise on Differential Equations. Developed the idea of symbolic logic, now called Boolean algebra. (AND, OR, etc) 1867 Typewriter introduced. (Sholes) 1872 Lord Kelvin created an analog computer (named the "harmonic analyzer") that could predict tides years into the future. 1880 H. Hollerith and J. S. Billings invented a procedure to use punched cards for processing of the 1890 census data. The company Hollerith started is now known as IBM. 1884 The Comptometer, a key operated adding machine, was invented by D. E. Felt. The Linotype machine, which made lines of text by casting each one out of molten lead, was patented by O. Mergenthale. 1920 L. Torres y Quevedo showed his electromechanical digital calculator. 1927 V. Bush and colleagues at Massachusetts Institute of Technology fabricated the Product Integraph, an immense analog computer that took a team of five to control. It could solve second order differential equations. 1930 K. Zuse constructs in the 1930's a computer built of punched pieces of sheet metal and interlocking rods. 1939 J. V. Atanasoff builds the first electronic computer at Iowa State University at Ames. 1943 The first general use computer, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), was built at the University of Pennsylvania at a cost of $500,000. It incorporated over 18,000 vacuum tubes and was many times faster than any preceding machine. It was first programmed by unplugging and rearranging patchcords, later converted to punched cards. 1946 J. Von Neumann along with A.W. Burks and H.H. Goldstine published a paper which became a landmark for computer science, if not in the history of human thought. The paper presented designs for a parallel, stored-program computer. 1948 W. Shockley, J. Bardeen and W.H. Brattain conceived the transistor effect. 1951 J.P. Eckert and J. Mauchly presented their first UNIVAC to the U.S. Census Bureau. It was the first general purpose electronic computer purchased by the government. 1954 IBM launched the 705 data processing and 704 scientific computers. 1958 SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Evironment) was the largest computer in '58. It was faster than human operators at monitoring radar blips to watch for attacking Soviet supersonic bombers. 1959 IBM introduced the transistorized 1401 for data processing, and 1620 for scientific calculations. 1960 LINC, the first Minicomputer, the first tape drive, and the first CRT from Lincoln Labs. During the Sixties, Alan Kay coins the phrase "personal computer" for his FLEX machine. 1961 Paul Baran convinced the US Department of Defense on the idea of a failure-resistant communications method called packet switching. It was not adopted until the 1970's in Arpanet, the predecessor to the internet. 1962 First "personal computer" developed at Lincoln Labs. 1964 Kemeny and Kurtz develop BASIC programming language. F. Sinden, E. Zajac, K. Knowlton, and M. Noll at Bell Labs use the computer for animation. 1965 Integrated circuits were introduced. 1968 Windows, multiple raster monitors and interactive technology were demonstrated. D. Englebart invents the mouse. 1969 The four function "pocket" electronic calculator sold for $425. Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin landed on the moon, using computers with only sixty-four K of memory. Alan Kay doctoral thesis describes a theoretical personal computer. 1971 Intel introduced the 4004, the first microprocessor chip. It was used in point of sale terminals, industrial controllers, etc. 1970 Dennis Ritche and Kenneth Thomson develop UNIX at Bell Labs in New Jersey 1970 Norman Abrahamson develops ALOHnet, a shared radio network, for communication among the Hawaiian islands. ALOHAnet will become one source of Ethernet. 1970 Citizens and Southern National bank in Valdosta, Georgia, installs the forest automatic teller machine in the US. 1973 The first bit mapped graphics oriented monitor, Alto, forerunner to Xerox PARC's Star operating system. 1973 The term "microcomputer" appears in print for the first time, in reference to the French Micral computer. 1974 The 8080 microprocessor chip was introduced by Intel, the eight-bit processor which ushered in the micro computer revolution. It was followed shortly after by Mortorola's 6800 and MOS Technology's 6502. Control Data Corporation introduced error correcting codes, which sense false "blips" caused by cosmic rays, etc and automatically corrects them. 1974 Charles Simonyi of Xerox PARC writes Bravo, the first WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) program. 1975 The first production "personal" microcomputer, the Altair 8800, was introduced using the Intel 8080 chip. 1976 Steve Wozniak designs the Apple II. Zilog launched the Z80 microprocessor chip. Cray Research shipped the first Cray 1 Computer. It was the fastest computer in the world - 80 million floating operations per second. 1976 One of the first documented e-mail messages is sent in the U. K. by Queen Elizabeth II. 1976 Seymour Cray builds the Cray-1 supercomputer. 1977 The first personal computers made by Apple, Commodore, and Radio Shack went on sale. First color graphics in a microcomputer introduced by Apple Computer. Microsoft is founded. 1978 Taito of Japan develops the Space Invaders arcade game. 1979 Steve Jobs (then of Apple) visits Xerox PARC. VisiCalc (Bricklin), probably the most significant piece of business software of the 70's, was brought out by Personal Software. 1979 The first Comdex show is held in Las Vegas 1980 The "pocket computer" is inaugurated for less than $250. Its power is similar to ENIAC and it had more memory. 1980 Field testing of the French Mintel system begins. 1981 Intel introduced the first micromainframe computer. 1982 Walt Disney's movie "Tron" combines computer-generated images with live-action photography. 1983 In January, the computer is named 1982 "Machine of the Year" by time magazine. 1984 Apple introduces the 128k Macintosh. 1984 The DOC1 (Digital Optical Computer 1) was introduced by OptiComp Corp., Peter Guilfayle - founder, chief scientist and CEO. 1988 The short film "tin Toy" from Pixar becomes the first computer-animated film to win an Academy Award. 1990 Alan Huang of Bell Laboratories displays a prototype computer that uses light instead of electrical impulses to process data. The 2 foot square box includes a variety of lasers, lenses and prisms. It could count simple numbers and had no memory. To run a new program it had to physically be reconfigured. 1990 Tim Berners-Lee writes prototype software for the World Wide Web to make internet use easier for physicists at CERN (European Council for Nuclear Research) in Geneva. 1991 Scientists at Oxford University, working closely with their counterparts at the California Institute of Technology, report they have developed the silicon equivalent of a human nerve cell. 1993 The first programmable optical computer was developed by a joint venture between California State University and the University of Colorado headed by V. Heuring and H. Jordan. It had no static memory but worked on the concept of "just in time" computing. 1993 Researchers at NCSA, the National Center for Supercomputing at the University of Illinois, create Mosaic, a graphical user interface for the Internet. 1994 Jim Clark and Marc Andreesen found Netscape in April and release Netscape Navigator later in the year. 1995 Sun Introduces the Java programming language. 1995 "Toy Story" is the first computer-generated full-length movie. 1998 Roy Bakay developed a brain implant which allowed a paralyzed Georgia man to become the first human to control a computer using only his thoughts. More Computer History Sites: The Computer Museum History Center Article in Wired Magazine - "Modern Art: The computer museum is a past-forward tour through hardcore hardware. The ghosts in these machines keep moving - fast."