Blaise
Pascal developed a mechanism called the Pascaline
to calculate with 8 figures and carrying of 10's, 100's, and 1000's etc. In honor
to his scientific contributions the name Pascal has been given to a programming
language, as well as to many mathematical concepts.
Elisha
Gray and Alexander
Graham Bell both independently designed devices that could transmit speech
electrically (the telephone). Both men rushed their designs to the patent office
within hours of each other but Alexander Graham Bell patented
his telephone first.
1910s - 1960s
[1911
Jun 15]
In operation
since 1888, IBM (International Business
Machines) is incorporated. IBM (Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation) was
originally founded by Thomas
Watson. In the decades that will follow, IBM will become the leader in PC
production and innovations.
[1917]
Gilbert
S. Vernam and Major
Joseph Mauborgne invent the One-time pad, which considered the most secure
encryption algorithm ever devised and is the only one that can be called a perfect
encryption scheme.
[1936]
Alan
Turing, considered the father of computer science, introduces the Turing machine.
The Turing machine is an abstract machine introduced to give a mathematically
precise definition of algorithm or 'mechanical procedure'.
[1945
Sep 9]
The first 'computer
bug' is found when a moth is found trapped between relay points of the Mark II
Aiken Calculator while it is being tested at Harvard University. The operators affixed
the moth to the computer log with the entry: "First actual case of bug being
found".
The
Bell
103 becomes the first commercial modem. Made by AT&T the modem boasted
data rates up to 300 bits per second.
[1963]
Dartmouth College incorporates the introduction to the
use of computers as a regular part of their Liberal Arts Program.
[1963]
ASCII
(American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is created by Robert
Bemer. ASCII consists of 128 unique strings of ones and zeros and permits
machines from different manufacturers to exchange data.
[1963]
The
computer mouse is invented by Douglas
Engelbart. The first
mouse was bulky and used two gear wheels perpendicular to each other: the
rotation of each wheel was translated into motion along one axis in the plane.
[1964]
Thomas
Kurtz and John
Kemeny create BASIC
(Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) computer programming language
as an easy-to-learn language for their students at Dartmouth College.
[1965]
Ted
Nelson coins the term hypertext, which refers to text that is not necessarily
linear
Intel is founded by Robert
Noyce, Gordon
Moore and Andy
Grove. They decided to call their company INTegrated ELectronics or 'Intel'
for short. Intel will later become known for designing and manufacturing microprocessors
and specialized integrated circuits.
[1969]
The
ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) originates the Arpanet (Advanced Research
Projects Agency Network), a service designed to provide efficient ways to communicate
for scientists. Bolt Beranek and Newman
who won an ARPA contract to design and build a network of Interface Message Processors
(IMPS) which act as gateways to other mainframes. Within a few days of delivery
machines at UCLA and Stanford link up for the first time and Arpanet is founded.
Later the network expands to four
nodes (networks) consisting of the University of California Los Angeles, University of California Santa
Barbara, University of Utah
and the Stanford Research Institute.
This system would evolve to be known as the Internet or the Information Super
Highway.
[1969]
CompuServe time-sharing service is founded and later becomes
the first online service to offer electronic mail capabilities.
[1969]
Intel makes the announcement of a much larger RAM
(Random Access Memory) chip which boasts of a 1KB capacity.
[1969]
Bell
Labs (AT&T) drops out of the MULTICS (Multiplexed Information and Computing
Service) project. A system which was supposed to support 1000 online users can
barely handle three. Out of the ashes grows the most influential operating system
in history, UNIX. Ken
Thompson, Dennis
Ritchie and others start working on UNIX at Bell Labs. UNIX is a portable,
multi-task and multi-user computer operating system designed with the goal of
allowing several users to access the computer simultaneously. Ken Thompson writes
the first version of UNICS for the PDP-7
(Programmed Data Processor) in one month while his wife is on vacation. He allocates
one week each to the operating system functions: the kernel, the shell, the editor,
and the assembler. He does this on a machine with 4K of 18 bit words. UNICS is
a pun on MULTICS and stands for Uniplexed Information and Computing Services.
The name is changed to UNIX which is not an acronym. This version of UNIX is in
assembly
language.
[1969]
The
first computer hackers emerge at MIT (Massachusetts Institute
of Technology). They borrow their name from a term to describe members of a model
train group at the school who "hack" the electric trains, tracks and switches
to make them perform faster and differently. A few of the members transfer their
curiosity and rigging skills to the new mainframe computing systems being studied
and developed on campus.
[1969]
Joe
Engressia (The Whistler, Joybubbles and High Rise Joe), while a mathematics student
at University of South Florida
in the late 1960s, discovers that he could whistle into a pay telephone the precise
pitch --the
2600-cycle note, close to a high A-- which would trip phone circuits and allow
him to make long-distance calls at no cost. Joe, who is blind, will later become
known as the father of phreaking. Phreaking is a slang term for the action of
making a telephone system do something that it normally should not allow.
AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) is founded by Jerry
Sanders. AMD is a manufacturer of integrated circuits and would later become
the second-largest supplier of x86 compatible processors.
1970s
[1970]
DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) introduces the famous
PDP-11
(Programmed Data Processor) which is considered to be one of the best designed
minicomputers ever and many of the machines are still used today. Some of the
best computer hackers in the world cut their teeth on -11's.
[1971]
The
UNIX command finger is released by Les
Earnest. The finger program (command) is used to find information on other
users who are on the network.
[1971]
Vietnam
vet John
Draper (Cap'n Crunch) learns that a toy
whistle given away inside Cap'n Crunch cereal generates a 2600-hertz
signal, the same high-pitched tone that accesses AT&T's long-distance switching
system. Draper builds a blue
box that when used in conjunction with the whistle and sounded into a phone
receiver allows phreakers (phone hackers) to make free calls.
[1971]
The
first email
program written by Ray
Tomlinson and used on Arpanet (Internet). Tomlinson of Bolt Beranek and Newman, contracted
by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) to create the Arpanet, selects
the @ symbol to separate user names in email as the first email messages are sent
between computers.
UNIX
computer operating system is rewritten in C
programming language which in essence will open the door for porting to other
chipsets.
[1972]
The
NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications)
developes the telnet
application which is used for remote logins to other computers.
[1973]
Number
of Arpanet (Internet) users is estimated at 2,000.
[1973]
Gary
Kildall begins development of CP/M
(Control Program/Monitor) operating system. Gary would later be called 'The Man
Who Could Have Been Bill Gates'. The legend goes like this: One fateful day in
the summer of 1980, three buttoned-down IBMers called on a band of hippie programmers
at Digital Research Inc. located in Pacific Grove, Calif. They hoped to discuss
licensing DRI's industry-leading operating system, CP/M. Instead, DRI founder
Gary Kildall blew off IBM to gallivant around in his airplane, and the frustrated
IBMers turned to Bill
Gates for their operating system (MS-DOS).
[1973]
Intel’s chairman Gordon
Moore publicly reveals the prophecy that the number of transistors on a microchip
will double every year and a half. This revelation will later be known as Moore’s
Law and will hold true for more than twenty years.
[1973]
With
60 MBytes of storage, IBM introduces the model
3340
Winchester sealed hard disk drive, the predecessor of all current hard disk
drives.
[1973 Feb 7]
FTP
(File Transfer Protocol) is introduced
which makes the transfer of files between networked computers a standard.
The
first major shell was the Bourne shell (sh) which was named after its inventor
Stephen
Bourne. The shell is a program that presents an interface to various operating
system functions and services. The shell is so called because it is an outer layer
of interface between the user and the kernel of the operating system.
[1975]
Bill
Joy develops the C shell (csh) and the infamous Vi
text editor. The shell is a program that presents an interface to various operating
system functions and services. The shell is so called because it is an outer layer
of interface between the user and the kernel of the operating system.
Homebrew
Computer Club has its first meeting. The members were a group of computer
enthusiasts who discussed the Altair,
often regarded as the first personal computer and many of the members would later
become today's computer visionaries. Some of the members included Adam
Osborne, Steve
Jobs and Steven
Wozniak.
