A Brief History
of Computers
Some useful sites:
http://www.pwc.k12.nf.ca/~brickett/ppt/history2/sld001.htm
A Guide to Cyberspace
http://www.studyweb.com/computers/
The
Computer Museum
Aids to
human computation
- Sticks
and stones; the abacus
Early Pioneers
- Napier
(1550-1617) & logarithms
- Blaise
Pascal's (1623-1662) computing machine
- Leibnitz's
(1647-1716) computing machine
The Story of Charles Babbage (1791-1871) click here for
another Babbage link
- His
ideas were ahead of the technology
- Generally
given credit as the inventor of the programmable computer (the
"difference engine" and the "analytical engine")
- Ada, Countess
of Lovelace,
is generally considered the world's first programmer. She was
instrumental in Babbage's work and career.
- You
can check out his brain at the Hunterian Museum of the Royal
College of Surgeons.
The Story
of the 1890 U.S.A. Census
- The
American Way: Hold Competition!
- Herman
Hollerith won and formed the Computing, Tabulating, and
- Recording
Company in 1911, a company which grew into the International
Business Machines Corporation (aka IBM).
Alan Turing
- Publishes
"On Computable Numbers" in 1936
Konrad Zuse
- A German
whose ideas were not embraced by Adolph Hitler in WWII.
Howard Aiken
- Using
Babbage's notes he produced the Harvard Mark I.
The Influence of World
War II
- Colossus:
a machine produced to crack the German secret codes
John Mauchly and J. Preper
Eckert Create ENIAC in 1947
John Von Neuman contributes the idea of the stored program
The Invention of the Transistor
The Invention of the integrated
circuit in 1960
Ted Hoff of Intel Corporation
was first to fit an entire computer "brain" on a single
chip in 1969.
The history of the personal computer
- 1975
- Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Microsoft
- 1976
- Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak found Apple and release Apple
I
- 1977
- Apple II (16K Ram) for $1298, Tandy's TRS-80, Commodore PET
- 1978
- Speak and Spell
- 1979
- Hayes first modem
- 1980
- Commodore VIC-20 (first million selling computer)
- 1981
- IBM introduces IBM-PC
- 1982
- Commodore 64, Radio Shack's TRS-80
- 1983
- Apple's Lisa, Apple IIe, IBM-PC jr.
- 1984
- Apple Macintosh, $2495 (1 floppy drive - no HD - 128K RAM),
Apple IIc
- 1986
- Apple IIGS
- 1987
- Apple Macintosh SE
- 1988
- Steve Jobs and NeXT
- etc.