Overview | Early | Calculating machines | Office automation |Automated
DP | General purpose computer
| The pace of change in computing technology is ever
increasing. To get to a stage where knowledge had advanced far enough to develop an
electronic machine took many centuries. This page deals with the efforts of many people to create a calculating machine. |
 |
500 B.C. The abacus is invented
80 BC Antikytheria Device. Probably not widely known since the device along with its inventor was lost in a shipwreck off the island of Antikytheria in the Mediterranean sea. It was a primitive planetarium, consisting of brass gears, axles, and sliding rings, and was used to locate the position of the stars. The existence of gears and axles showed the advanced technology of the time. With the rise of the Roman Empire these skills seem to have been lost for about 1700 years.
100 (AD) Paper invented
1458 John Gutenberg invents the printing press
1600 (approx) Napier’s bones, developed by John Napier (1550-1617), were rods that could perform multiplication.
1642 Blaise Pascal develops the mechanical calculator, to mechanise the work in his tax accountant office.
1676 Gottfreid Wilhelm von Leibnitz improves on Pascal's calculator
1801 Joseph Jacquard invents the automated loom "programmed" by punched cards
1820 Hahn, a German, built a practical variation of Leibnitz’s machine that could add, subtract, multiply and divide. Copies were used all over Europe and the United States. Desk calculators used up until the common used of the electronic calculator (1970’s), were direct descendants of Hahn’s machine.
1822 Charles Babbage develops the difference engine
1833 Babbage outlines plans for the Analytical Engine, a general purpose computer
1837 Samual Morse applies for a patient on his telegraph
1844 Morse transmits the first telegraph message
1867 Christopher Sholes begins his work on the typewriter.
1873 E. Remington & Sons acquires Sholes' typewriter and successfully markets it.
1876 Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone.
1878 James Ritty develops the cash register
1879 Thomas A Edison invents the incandescent light bulb
1885 Door E Felf develops a key-driven calculating machine
1890 Herman Hollerith develops an electromechanical tabulating machine to count the 1890 US census.
1896 Hollerith leaves the Bureau of the Census to form his own company. This firm eventually becomes IBM.
Gugleielmo Marconi invents the radio.
1911 Hollerith's successor at the Bureau of Census, James Powers, forms another company to sell punched card equipment. This firm eventually merges with Remington Rand.
1914 James F. Smathers invents the electric typewriter
Thomas Watson Sr., joins Hollerith's firm
1915 Coast to coast telephone communicatopn first takes place
1930 The electric typewriter becomes a commercial success.
1930 Vannevar Bush develops a large-scale mechanical computer at MIT
1937-38 George Stibitz and Samual Williams at Bell Labs develop a small electronic computer using telephone relays as the basic electronic component
1937-44 Howard Aiken develops an electromechanical computer at Harvard University
1939 John Vincent Atansoff and Clifford Berry of Iowa State College develop a small special-purpose vacuum tube computer
1941-45 Alan Turing and other British Scientists develop the Colossus, a large special-purpose electronic computer.
1943-46 J Presper Eckert Jr., and John William Mauchly develop the ENIAC, the first large general-purpose computer, at the University of Pennsylvania.
1944 John Von Neuman, working on the plans for the ENIAC's immediate successor, defines the basic computer architecture to be used for the next forty years
1946 Eckert and Mauchly form their own company to build and market the UNIVAC computer
1947 William Schockley, Walter Brattain, and John Bardeen invent the transistor at Bell Labs.
1950 The Whirlwind computer is built at MIT.
[Rev 14/10/97] 31/7/98 © 1996-97 V/2-Com (Verhaart), P O Box 8415, Havelock North, New Zealand.