From 1900 to 1952

1903: Nikola Tesla, a Yugoslavian who worked for Thomas Edison, patents electrical logic circuits called gates or switches.

1911: Computer-Tabulating-Recording Company is formed through a merger of the Tabulating Company (founded by Hollerith), the Computing Scale Company, and the International Time Recording Company, later followed by merger into International Business Machines.

1912: Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) is formed.

1914: Thomas J. Watson becomes President of Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company.

1921: Czech word robot is used to describe mechanical workers in the play R.U.R. by Karel Capek.

1924: Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company changes its name to International Business Machines.

By 1925 much of the early work in computing theory had been lost, or was never sufficiently recorded, therefore considerable computational knowledge was re-discovered during the next two decades.

1925: Vannevar Bush, builds a large scale analog calculator, the differential analyzer, at MIT.

1927: First public demonstration of television. Radio-telephone becomes operational between London and New York.

1927: Powers Accounting Machine Company becomes the Tabulating Machines Division of Remington-Rand Corp.

1928: A Russian immigrant, Vladimir Zworykin, invents the cathode ray tube (CRT).

1931: First calculator, the Z1, is built in Germany by Konrad Zuse.

1933: First electronic talking machine, the Voder, is built by Dudley, who follows in 1939 with the Vocoder (Voice coder).

1936 - Konrad Zuse, Berlin, Germany, Zuse-1 begin developing a relay calculator using binary arithmetic.

1936: Englishman Alan M. Turing while at Princeton University formalizes the notion of calculable ness and adapts the notion of algorithm to the computation of functions. Turing's machine is defined to be capable of computing any calculable function.

1937: George Stibitz builds the first binary calculator at Bell Telephone Laboratories.

1938: Hewlett-Packard Co. is founded to make electronic equipment.

1938 - Helmut Schreyer and Zuse, perform the first Z-1 calculation and begin Z-2.

1939 - Stibitz develops a large scale electro-mechanical Complex Number Calculator for Bell Labs. A year later the Bell Labs Model I is the first computing machine connected remotely via telephone lines to another device. World War II is the impetus for much advancement in automatic calculation and computing.

The need for code encryption/decryption, ballistics & firing calculations and navigation tables drive the efforts.

1939: First Radio Shack catalog is published.

1939: John J. Atanasoff designs a prototype for the ABC (Atanasoff-Berry Computer) with the help of graduate student Clifford Berry at Iowa State College. In 1973 a judge ruled it the first automatic digital computer.

1940: At Bell Labs, George Stibitz demonstrates the Complex Number Calculator, which may be the first digital computer.

1940: First color TV broadcast.

1940: Remote processing experiments, conducted by Bell Laboratories, create the first terminal.

1941: Atanasoff visits IBM only to hear that "IBM sees no future in electronic computing."

1941: Konrad Zuse builds the Z3 computer in Germany, the first calculating machine with automatic control of its operations.

April 9, 1943 proposal paper - John William Mauchly and John Presper Eckert, under guidance from John Brainerd, Dean of the Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, begin development of the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator - ENIAC computing machine on behalf of the US Army, Ballistic Research Laboratory.

John von Neuman visits Mauchly & Eckert and later develops paper on their work.

1944: Team at Bletchley Park, England, builds a decryption machine, Colossus, based on the U.S. ENIGMA machine used earlier. Colossus is used in planning for D-Day and plays critical role in Allies success.

Team includes Alan Turing. and M.H.A. Neuman

Existence of Colossus is kept secret until 1970.

Decryption algorithms are kept secret even longer.

1944 Harvard University - Mark I - first large scale general purpose electro- mechanical calculator. Conceived by Howard Aiken and implemented by IBM researchers. The machine, sponsored by the Navy, is also known as the IBM Automatic Sequence Control Calculator (ASCC).

Program is not internally stored but driven by paper tape.

1944 Grace Murray Hopper, later known as the ‘First Lady of Computing’, joins Aiken at Harvard. She is the third programmer assigned to the Mark I.

1944: Colossus Mark II is built in England.

1944: Mark I (IBM ASCC) is completed, based on the work of Professor Howard H. Aiken at Harvard and IBM. It is a relay-based computer.

1945: John von Neumann paper describes stored-program concept for EDVAC.

1945 September 9, 1945, 3:45 P.M. - Grace Hopper, working in temporary, windows-open, W W I building at Harvard University, finds and removes a 'computing problem' from the relay switches of the Mark II. It is a large moth smashed in Relay # 70 on Panel ‘F’. From that point forward, fixing compute problems becomes known as 'debugging.'

Arthur C. Clarke publishes his work "Extra-Terrestrial Relays" describing the use of geostationary satellites to provide worldwide communications. The telecommunications satellite is conceived.

1946: Binac (Binary Automatic Computer), the first computer to operate in real time, is started by Eckert and Mauchly; it is completed in 1949.

1946: ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), with 18,000 vacuum tubes, is dedicated at the University of Pennsylvania. It was 8 by 100 feet and weighed 80 tons. It could do 5,000 additions and 360 multiplications per second.

1946: Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation is formed as the Electronic Control Co. to design a Universal Automatic Computer (Univac).

1946: Term bit for binary digit is used for first time by John Tukey.

1947: Alan M. Turing publishes an article on Intelligent Machinery which launches artificial intelligence.

1947: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is formed.

1948: EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) is developed at the University of Cambridge by Maurice V. Wilkes.

1948: IBM introduces the 604 electronic calculator.

1948: IBM builds the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC), a computer with 12,000 tubes.

1948: Transistor is invented by William Bradford Shockley with John Bardeen and Walter H. Brattain.

1949: EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) supports the first tests of magnetic disks.

1949 An Wang, Harvard, patents the concept of core memory (single wire, delay line technology)

1949: Jay Forrester uses iron cores as main memory in Whirlwind. Forrester patent is issued in 1956.

1949: Claude Shannon of MIT builds the first chess playing machine.

1949: Hiroshi Yamauchi takes over as president of Japanese domestic playing card company. The company’s name is Nintendo.

1949 : First UNIVAC computer is delivered to the US Census Bureau. Initially over budget and late, 46 more are eventually built. Stores 12,000 digits in random access mercury-delay lines.

1950: Remington-Rand acquires Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp.

1950: SEAC (Standards Eastern Automatic Computer) is delivered to the National Bureau of Standards.

1951: December 26, The National Machine Accountants Association (NMAA) was founded and chartered in Chicago, Illinois. This group was the precursor to DPMA.

1951: First Joint Computer Conference is held.

1951 Howard Aiken's Mark II is delivered to the Naval service Weapons Center. First full scale machine to feature drum memory. Mark II is the first computer pictured on the cover a magazine (TIME).

1951 Coronado Corporation changes its name to Texas Instruments, Inc.

1951: Maurice Wilkes, Stanley Gill and David Weaver realize the difficulties of programming a computer and develop the concept of subroutines as well as the first textbook on programming computers.

1951: IEEE Computer Society is formed.

1951: UNIVAC I is installed at the Bureau of Census using a magnetic tape unit as a buffer memory.

1951: Wang Laboratories, Inc. is founded by An Wang in Boston.

1951: Whirlwind computer becomes operational at MIT. It was the first real-time computer and was designed by Jay Forrester and Ken Olsen.

1952: The first annual NMAA convention was held in Minneapolis.

1952 Grace Hopper, presents a paper on "The Education of the Computer" and describes the concept of compilers and the language translators.

1952: Fred Gruenberger writes first computer manual.

1952: IBM introduces the 701, its first electronic stored-program computer.

1952: Nixdorf Computer is founded in Germany.

1952: Remington-Rand acquires Engineering Research Associates (ERA).

1952: RCA develops Bizmac with iron-core memory and a magnetic drum supporting the first database.

1952: A fake UNIVAC front panel is used for the televised CBS election coverage. Actual connection is to Remington-Rand in Phil, PA. The UNIVAC predicts the outcome with 5% of the vote in just one hour after the polls close. An Eisenhower landslide

1952 G.W. Dummer, British radar expert, proposes electronic equipment be manufactured as a solid block - no interconnecting wires. Prototype fails and he receives little support for research.

1952: U.S. Department of Justice sues IBM for monopolizing the punched-card accounting machine industry.  

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