History of computers

 1937:

Called the “Model K” Adder because he built it on his “Kitchen” table, this simple demonstration circuit provides proof of concept for applying Boolean logic to the design of computers, resulting in construction of the relay-based Model I Complex Calculator in 1939. That same year in Germany, engineer Konrad Zuse built his Z2 computer, also using telephone company relays.

 

                             
                               

                     1939:

David Packard and Bill Hewlett found their company in a Palo Alto, California garage. Their first product, the HP 200A Audio   Oscillator, rapidly became a popular piece of test equipment for engineers. Walt Disney Pictures ordered eight of the 200B model to test recording equipment and speaker systems for the 12 specially equipped theatres that showed the movie “Fantasia” in 1940.

 

1940:

In 1939, Bell Telephone Laboratories completes this calculator, designed by scientist George Stibitz. In 1940, Stibitz demonstrated the CNC at an American Mathematical Society conference held at Dartmouth College. Stibitz stunned the group by performing calculations remotely on the CNC (located in New York City) using a Teletype terminal connected to New York over special telephone lines. This is likely the first example of remote access computing.

 

 

1941:

Built as an electro-mechanical means of decrypting Nazi ENIGMA-based military communications during World War II, the British Bombe is conceived of by computer pioneer Alan Turing and Harold Keen of the British Tabulating Machine Company. Hundreds of allied bombes were built in order to determine the daily rotor start positions of Enigma cipher machines, which in turn allowed the Allies to decrypt German messages. The basic idea for bombes came from Polish code-breaker Marian Rejewski's 1938 "Bomba."

 

 

:1944

Designed by British engineer Tommy Flowers, the Colossus is designed to break the complex Lorenz ciphers used by the Nazis during World War II. A total of ten Colossi were delivered, each using as many as 2,500 vacuum tubes. A series of pulleys transported continuous rolls of punched paper tape containing possible solutions to a particular code. Colossus reduced the time to break Lorenz messages from weeks to hours. Most historians believe that the use of Colossus machines significantly shortened the war by providing evidence of enemy intentions and beliefs. The machine’s existence was not made public until the 1970s.

 

1948:

University of Manchester researchers Frederic Williams, Tom Kilburn, and Geoff Toothill develop the Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), better known as the Manchester "Baby." The Baby was built to test a new memory technology developed by Williams and Kilburn -- soon known as the Williams Tube – which was the first high-speed electronic random access memory for computers. Their first program, consisting of seventeen instructions and written by Kilburn, ran on June 21st, 1948. This was the first program in history to run on a digital, electronic, stored-program computer.

 

 

 

1949:

While many early digital computers were based on similar designs, such as the IAS and its copies, others are unique designs, like the CSIRAC. Built in Sydney, Australia by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research for use in its Radio physics Laboratory in Sydney, CSIRAC was designed by British-born Trevor Pearcey, and used unusual 12-hole paper tape. It was transferred to the Department of Physics at the University of Melbourne in 1955 and remained in service until 1964.

 

1955:

A commercial version of Alan Turing's Pilot ACE, called DEUCE—the Digital Electronic Universal Computing Engine -- is used mostly for science and engineering problems and a few commercial applications. Over 30 were completed, including one delivered to Australia. 

 

1977:

Sold complete with a main logic board, switching power supply, keyboard, case, manual, game paddles, and cassette tape containing the game Breakout, the Apple-II finds popularity far beyond the hobbyist community which made up Apple’s user community until then. When connected to a color television set, the Apple II produced brilliant color graphics for the time. Millions of Apple IIs were sold between 1977 and 1993, making it one of the longest-lived lines of personal computers. Apple gave away thousands of Apple IIs to school, giving a new generation their first access to personal computers. 

 

1981:

The C64, as it is better known, sells for $595, comes with 64 KB of RAM and features impressive graphics. Thousands of software titles were released over the lifespan of the C64 and by the time it was discontinued in 1993, it had sold more than 22 million units. It is recognized by the 2006 Guinness Book of World Records as the greatest selling single computer of all time.

 

1992:

Apple's Macintosh Portable meets with little success in the marketplace and leads to a complete redesign of Apple's line of portable computers. All three PowerBooks introduced featured a built-in trackball, internal floppy drive, and palm rests, which would eventually become typical of 1990s laptop design. The PowerBook 100 was the entry-level machine, while the PowerBook 140 was more powerful and had a larger memory. The PowerBook 170 was the high-end model, featuring an active matrix display, faster processor, as well as a floating point unit. The PowerBook line of computers was discontinued in 2006. 

2009:

Apple introduces their first ultra notebook – a light, thin laptop with high-capacity battery. The Air incorporated many of the technologies that had been associated with Apple's MacBook line of laptops, including integrated camera, and Wi-Fi capabilities. To reduce its size, the traditional hard drive was replaced with a solid-state disk, the first mass-market computer to do so.

 

 

2012:

The iPad combines many of the popular capabilities of the iPhone, such as built-in high-definition camera, access to the iTunes Store, and audio-video capabilities, but with a nine-inch screen and without the phone. Apps, games, and accessories helped spur the popularity of the iPad and led to its adoption in thousands of different applications from movie making, creating art, making music, inventory control and point-of-sale systems, to name but a few.