The History of Computing

Introduction

I like to present my students with a timeline, showing the development of computing, to put their studies into an historical perspective. The following is a collection of key events that I have collected over the last few years. I have used a variety of sources including some good Internet pages and whilst I have tried to be accurate, if you spot any errors, please let me know!

1623 Schlckard's Calculating Clock A 6-digit adding machine.

1644-5 Blaise Pascal's "Pascaline" Not as good as Schlckard's, but it establishes the idea of a computing machine.

1674 von Leibiz's "Stepped Reckoner" Able to multiply, answers up to 16 digits long, not always reliable.

1775 Charles, 3rd Earl Stanhope Makes a successful multiplying calculator.

1770-6 Mathius Hahn Also makes a successful multiplying calculator.

1786 J H Mueller Comes up with the idea of the "Difference Engine".

1820 Charles de Colmar's "Arithmometer" The first mass-produced calculator.

1822 Charles Babbage Starts trying to build a difference engine.

1836 Charles Babbage Designs his "Analytical Engine".

1843-53 Scheutz and Scheutz Complete the first difference engines, both include printers.

1890 Herman Hollerith Produced punch card tabulators to help process the US census results.

1892 William Burroughs (US) Invents a machine that starts the office calculator industry.

1937 Alan Turing (UK) Publishes his paper on "computable numbers".

1938 Konrad Zuse (Berlin) Makes a prototype mechanical, programmable calculator.

1942 Atanasoff and Berry (US) Build a calculator with 300 bits of memory and a clock speed of 60Hz.

1943 Colussus Alan Turing and team build the Colussus decryption machine.

1946 ENIAC Eckert and Mauchly (US) build the first electronic programmable calculator. Weights 30 tons, covers 1000 sq ft and consumes around 190kW. Clock speed 100kHz, capable of 6000 additions per second.

1948 Transistor invented

1948 Mark I Newnam and Williams at Manchester University (UK) complete the first computer with stored program capability. It uses CRT memory.

1949 EDSAC Wilkes and team (Cambridge University, UK) build the first non-prototype stored program computer. It used paper tape I/O.

1952 EDVAC John von Neuman and team (US) built a stored program computer first described in von Neuman's famous 1945 report.

1958 Integrated circuit developed

1964 DEC PDP-8 Mini Computer

1965 Commercial timesharing begins in the UK

1969 ARPANET Started by the US Dept. of Defense for research into networking.

1971 i4004 Intel's microprocessor launched

1972 Burrough's ATM (Automatic Teller Machine) appears

1973 First international connections to ARPANET

1974 i8080 The first general purpose microprocessor.

1978 i8086 A 16-bit microprocessor.

1978 Commodore Pet introduced With 8K RAM, cassette deck and 9" monitor.

1978 Microsoft Bill Gates and Paul Allen found their software company.

1980 Sinclair ZX-80 computer The first computer for under £100.

1981 The first 32 bit microprocessors

1981 DOS 1 The original PC operating system.

1982 The first BBC micro produced

1984 DOS 3

1984 Apple Macintosh launched

1985 i80386 launched

1989 i80486 launched

1990 Windows 3.0 launched

1991 Anatoly Karpov beaten at chess by a computer

1991 World Wide Web WWW released by CERN.

1993 Pentium chip launched

1993 DOS 6 launched

1995 Windows95 launched

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