Computers: A Chronological Timeline

ShaanHaider.com COMPUTERS A CHRONOLOGICAL TIMELINE 1940s FIRST GENERATION hp 1939|Hewlett-Packard is founded in California Their first product was the popular HP 200A Audio Oscillator, used as sound effects generators for Walt Disney Pictures movie "Fantasia. 1940| Complex Number Calculator (CNC) Designed by researcher George Stibitz and completed by Bell Tele- phone Laboratories. 1941 | Z3 computer/Bombe The Z3 was built by German engineer Konrad Zuse in complete iso- lation from developments elsewhere. The Bombe was used to decrypt Nazi Military communications 1942| Atanasoff-Bery Computer (ABC) The ABC was designed and built by Professor John Vincent Atanasoff and graduate student Cliff Berry at lowa State College 1943| Project Whirlwind/Relay Interpolator Project Whirlwind was a simulator to train bomber crews. The Relay Interceptor assisted in testing its M-9 Gun Director. 1944| Harvard Mark-1/Colossus The Harvard Mark-1 was a room-sized, relay-based calculator. The Colossus was designed to break the complex Lorenz ciphers used by the Nazis during WWII. 1945 | "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC" Outlined the architecture of a stored-program computer, which would lead to the mainstream computers we know today. 1946| ENIAC/AVIDAC The ENIAC improved by 1,000 times on the speed of its contempo- raries. 1948| IBM SSEC The Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator produced the moon- position tables used for plotting the course of the 1969 Apollo flight to the moon. 1949| EDSAC/Manchester Markl The first practical stored-program computer. The Manchester Mark I computer functioned as a complete system using the Williams tube for memory. 1950s 2ND GEN: TRANSISTORS 1950| ERA 1101/SEAC/ Pilot ACE - ERA 1101 was the first commercially produced computer. SEAC was the first computer to use all-diode logic. Alan Turing's philosophy directed design of Britain's Pilot ACE 1951|MITWhirlwind The first computer with a reliable OS, running 35 hours a week at 90-percent utility using an electrostatic tube memory. 1951 | LEO/UNIVACI Leo, England's first commercial computer, solved clerical problems. UNIVAC I, used by U.S. Census Bureau, was the first commercial com- puter to attract widespread public attention. 1952| MANIAC Based on John von Neumann's IAS computer at the Institute for Ad- vanced Studies in Princeton, NJ. 1953| IBM 701 IBM shipped its first electronic computer, the 701. 1954| IBM 650 The IBM 650 magnetic drum calculator established itself as the first mass-produced computer, selling 450 in one year. 1956| MIT TXO The first general-purpose, programmable computer built at MIT with transistors. 1958| SAGE Semi-Automatic Ground Environment - linked hundreds of radar stations in the United States and Canada in the first large-scale com- puter communications network. 1958 | NEAC 1101 Japan's NEC builds the country's first electronic computer 1959| IBM STRETCH IBM's 7000 series mainframes were the company's first transistor- ized computers. 1960s 3RD GEN: MICROPROCESSOR 1960|DEC PDP-1 The precursor to the minicomputer. 1961| IBM 1401 The 1401 mainframe replaced the vacuum tube with smaller, more reliable transistors and used a magnetic core memory. 1962| LINC (Laboratory Instrumentation Computer) The first real time laboratory data processing machine. 1964| IBM System 360 A family of six mutually compatible computers and 40 peripherals that could work together. 1964|CDC 6600 The fastest computer of its time performed up to 3 million instruc- tions per second - three times faster than the IBM Stretch. 1965 | DEC PDP-8 The first commercially successful minicomputer. 1966| ILLIAC IV The first large-scale array computer. 1966| HP-2115 Hewlett-Packard entered the general purpose computer business with its HP-2115. 1968| Nova The Nova is introduced, with 32 kilobytes of memory, for $8,000. 1968| Apollo Guidance Computer The Apollo Guidance Computer made its debut orbiting the Earth on Apollo 7. 1970s 4TH GEN: MICROCOMPUTER 1971 | Kenback 1 The first personal computer, advertised for $750 in Scientific Ameri- can. 1972|HP-35 The HP-35 was a fast, extremely accurate electronic slide rule with a solid-state memory similar to that of a computer. 1973|TVTypewriter/Micral The first display of alphanumeric text on an ordinary television set. The Micral was the earliest commercial, non-kit personal computer based on a micro-processor. 1974|Xerox Alto / Scelbi 8H The first work station with a built-in mouse for input. The first commercially advertised U.S. computer based on a micro- processor 1975 |MITS Altair /Tandem-16 The Altair was based on Intel's 8080 microprocessor, and ran on BASIC. The Tandem was the first fault-tolerant computer, for online transac- tion processing. 1976| Applel/Crayl Steve Wozniak designed the Apple l, later selling it with Steve Jobs. The Cray I was the first commercially successful vector processor. 1977|Commodore PET The Commodore Personal Electronic Transactor was the first of sev- eral personal computers released in 1977. 1977| Apple ll/TRS-80 The Apple Il became an instant success when released in 1977. The TRS-80 was Tandy Radio Shack's first desktop computer. 1978|VAX 11/780 The VAX 11/780 had the ability to address up to 4.3 gigabytes of virtual memory, 100 times the capacity of most minicomputers. ELEL 1979| Atari 400 and 800 Atari introduces the Model 400 and 800 Computers with gaming abilities, 1980s RISE OF MICROCOMPUTERS 1981 | IBMPC/Osbornel IBM introduced its PC, igniting a fast growth of the PC market. Adam Osborne releases the first portable computer, the Osborne I, which weighed 24 pounds and cost $1,795. 1982|Cray XMP /Commodore 64 The Cray XMP almost doubled the Os of competing machines. The C64 sold for $595 came with 64KB of RAM and featured impres- sive graphics, it eventually sold for 22 million units by 1993. 1983| Apple Lisa The first personal computer with a graphical user interface. 1983|Compaq PC Compaq introduced first PC clone that used the same software as the IBM PC. 1984| Apple Macintosh Apple launches the first successful mouse-driven computer with a graphic user interface. 1984| IBMPC Jr. IBM released its PC Jr. and PC-AT. The PC Jr. failed but the PC-AT proved to be several times faster than original PC. SYSTEM1.0 1985 | Amiga 1000 Commodore's Amiga 1000 sold for $1,295 dollars (without monitor) and had surpassed audio and video capabilities of other PCs. WINDOWS 1.0 1986|Connection Machine Daniel Hillis of Thinking Machines Corp. develops the concept of massive parallelism in the Connection Machine. 1987 | IBM PS/2 IBM introduced its PS/2 machines, which made the 3 1/2-inch floppy disk drive and video graphics array standard for IBM computers. SYSTEM 5.0 1988| NEXT The first personal computer to incorporate a drive for an optical stor- age disk and object-oriented languages to simplify programming. SYSTEM 6.0 1990s PERSONAL COMPUTERS 1990| Macintosh Ilifx/Amiga 3000 Based on a 40 MHz version of the 68030 the llfx achieved 10 MIPS. Commodore releases the Amiga 3000, the first 32-bit Amiga. 3.0 1991|CDTV Commodore release the CDTV, an Amiga multimedia appliance with CD-ROM drive but no floppy drive. SYSTEM 7.0 1992| PowerPC 601 The PowerPC 601was the first generation of PowerPC processors. 1993| P5 Pentium Intel releases the P5-based Pentium processor, with 60 and 66 MHz versions. intel. pentium- 1994 | Pentium Processor 100 MHz Intel releases the 100 MHz version of the Pentium Processor. 1995| Sony Playstation Sony releases its first PlayStation - To date, over 100 million have been sold. 1996 | Toshiba Libretto Toshiba's Libretto was the smallest PC compatible computer to be released. 1997 | Pentium 2/Deep Blue intel inside The Pentium Il featured a larger on-chip cache as well as an expanded instruction set. pentium || IBM's Deep Blue is the first computer to beat Garry Kasparov at chess. 1998| İMac Apple announces the iMac. OS 8.0 1999| PowerMac G4/AMD Athlon 750 MHz The PowerMac G4 by Apple is powered by Motorola's G4 chip. AMD releases an Athlon clocked at 750 MHz. OS 9.0 2000s MOBILE COMPUTING 2000|1 GHz Pentium and Athlon / Playstation 2 AMD and Intel release chips clocked at 1 GHz. Sony releases the PlayStation 2. ME /2000 2001 | Mac OS X/Windows XP/Linux 2.4.0 OS New versions of the three major operating systems are released. OS X 10.0 XP 2002| Blackberry RIM releases the first BlackBerry smartphone. Jaguar 10.1 2003 | PowerPC G5/Athlon 64 Apple releases the PowerPC G5. AMD releases the Athlon 64. Panther 10.3 2004|NVIDIA GeForce 6800 NVIDIA releases GeForce 6800, showing more than 100% increase in productivity compared with the fastest card on the market. Tiger 10,4 2005 | Pentium D/ Athlon 64 X2/Microsoft XBOX 360 Intel and AMD release their first dual-core 64-bit desktop processors. Microsoft releases the Xbox 360. (intel) 2006|Macbook Pro/Intel Core 2/Playstation 3/Wii The MacBook Pro, their first dual-core Intel based mobile computer. Sony and Nintendo release the PS3 and Wii, respectively. Core 2 Leopard 10.5 Vista 2007 | iPhone / ASUS Eee PC The first iPhone was introduced by Apple. The first ASUS Eee PC introduces the netbook category of laptops. SAE 2008| HTC Dream /Google Android The HTC Dream is released - the first commercially available phone to run the newly released Android operating system by Google. 2010|iPad Apple releases the iPad, a tablet computer that bridges the gap be- tween smartphones and laptops. Snow Leopard 7 10.6 Sources: http://www.islandnet.com/-kpolsson/comphist/ http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/tcategory=cmptr Techking POWERED Y TESTKING ShaanHaider.com