A Very Brief History of Computers

For a more detailed history, see any of the following Web pages:

• "Chronology of Historical Events in Computing".
• "CGI Historical Timeline"
  • Has other good links at the end of the page
• "A Brief History of Computing--Complete Timeline"
• "History of the Internet and WWW"

1832

Charles Babbage, Analytical Engine (programmable, never built);
Ada Byron Lovelace, first computer programmer

1936

Alan Turing develops what is now known as the Turing-machine model of computation.

1940

John Atanasoff & Clifford Berry: ABC electronic computer (not programmable)

1942

The Colossus computer helps the British crack German codes;
Turing works on this project

1946

John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly: ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator)
-- first fully electronic programmable computer

1950

UNIVAC (descendant of ENIAC) does US census;

• first commercially marketed computer

The Turing Test" is published: Can computers think?

1952

UNIVAC predicts, on live TV, that Eisenhower will win presidential election

1953

IBM 701 on sale

1962

Spacewar: first video game

1975

first personal computer (Altair; build-it-yourself)

1977

Apple II

1981

IBM PC

1984

Macintosh

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1986

Most of this year's freshmen students born around this year.

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late 1980s

Internet (network of networks)

1991

World-Wide Web

1993

first Web browser (Mosaic)

1997

50 million Web users; 15 million Internet host computers;
Deep Blue (a computer) beats Kasparov (the human, world chess champion).

1998

Google launched.

1999

Napster created.

2000

The Y2K crisis.