History of Computer Science (Notes)

The Abacus, 3000 B.C.
Invented in the Middle Eastern area

Napier Bones, 1617
Bones marked with special scales to simplify arithmetic by using addition for multiplication and subtraction for division.
It set the stage for the slide rule.

Slide Rule, 1622
William Oughtred
Allows sophisticated mathematical calculations
Used till 1970

Numerical Calculating Machine, 1642
Blaise Pascal.
Works similar to the old car odometers and could perform addition and subtraction.
Multiplication was performed with repeated additions.

Jacquard's Loom, 1805
Joseph Jacquard invents flexible cards that are punched with information to program how cloth will be weaved.
It was one of the first examples of programming.

Analytical Machine, 1833
Charles Babbage
Instructions from a sequence of punched cards.
First general purpose computing machine.
He is considered 'The Father of Computers'

Programming, 1842
Countess Ada Lovelace designed programs that work for Babbage's analytical machine.
Today's modern languages are based on ideas she came up with.
Considered 'The Mother of Programming'.

Tabulating Machine, 1884
Herman Hollerith
Invents machine that records statistics for the U.S. Bureau of census.
Founded IBM

Differential Analyzer, 1925
Vannevar Bush, a professor at MIT
Builds a large scale computing machine capable of sophisticated mathematical computations.

ABC, 1940
First electronic digital computer
John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry

Z3, 1941
Konrad Zuse (German)
Calculating machine capable of automatic computations during World War II.

Colossus, 1941-1944
Developed in England
Decrypt the secret code message of German communication during Word War II.

Mark I, 1944
Relay-based computer
Grace Hopper becomes the first programmer

ENIAC, 1946
First functionally useful fully-electronic computer. -Two stories tall, weighs 80 tons, contains 19,000 vacuum tubes, and programmed by walking inside the computer.

Mark II, 1947
On September 9, 1947 this computer stopped working.
A technician found and removed moth from one of its relays. This was the first computer bug.

UNIVAC I, 1951
World's first commercially available computer. -Became famous when it correctly predicted the results of the 1952 presidential election.

IBM 701, 1953
IBM starts to sell the first computer with a stored computer program.
Uses vacuum tubes and called a first-generation computer.

FORTRAN, 1954
Language nvented by John Backus at IBM.
First commercially successful programming language and is designed for engineers and mathematicians.

Integrated Circuit, 1958
Jack Kilby, of Texas Instruments
Invents the planar transistor
Turning point between the expensive computers of the past, and the cheaper modern computers

Video Games, 1958/1962
First was called Tennis for Two.
It was created by William Higinbotham and played on a Brookhaven National Laboratory oscilloscope.
Since this did not use an actual computer monitor, some give credit to SpaceWar written by Stephen Russell in 1962.

COBOL, 1959
The business programming language
Based on the design of Grace Hopper.

IBM 360, 1964
First series of compatible computers.
A program created on one computer can be transported and used on another, compatible computer.

BASIC, 1964
Tom Kurtz and John Kemeny
create language later to be the first programming language for personal computers.

Pascal, 1969
Niklaus Wirth
Creates language designed for teaching computer science

Altair, 1975
First personal computer.
It is created by Ed Roberts and Bill Yates.
The computer costs $397.00 and has storage for 256 bytes.

Apple Computer, 1977
Becomes the first commercially successful personal computer.

Tandy/Commodore, 1977
Commodore and Tandy start selling personal computers.
Require a television interface to view computer operations.
The Tandy RadioShak computer has its own CRT (monitor).

VisiCalc, 1979
Dan Bricklin
Spreadsheet program, becomes the first wide spread software to be sold.

WordStar, 1979
By MicroPro
Becomes the most popular word processing software program in the late seventies and eighties.

IBM PC, 1981
IBM
A computer with a monochrome monitor and two floppy drives.
Entry into the personal computer market gives the personal computer a serious image

MS-DOS, 1981
IBM doesn't create its own operating system for the personal computing market, but instead tries to out-source it
Microsoft, an unknown little company, agrees to create the operating system

COMPAQ (Portability and Compatibility), 1982
The first portable computer.
The 28 pound computer was the size of a small suitcase
9 inch monitor and a couple of floppy drives.
First computer to be 100% compatible with an IBM PC.

Macintosh, 1984
Apple
The first commercially successful computer with the mouse/windows technology

Laptop PCs, 1991
Most PC vendors start to sell laptop PCs.
Early laptops all have monochrome monitors and lack the power and memory storage of desktop computers.

Windows 3.1, 1992
Microsoft's first major windows software seller.
Windows type interface, but it is based on the DOS operating system.

Windows 95, 1995, U.S.
Microsoft introduces operating system similar to the Macintosh computer.