Computer History Timeline

1200

1617

1450

1687

Chinese Abacus

Napier's bones

Gutenberg press

Principia Mathematica - Isaac Newton

1801

1811

1826

1830

1842

1843

1864

1877

1884

1885

1887

1888

1888

1888

1890

1891

1898

Jacquard loom

Luddites riot

Photography (Niepce)

Babbage Analytical Engine designed

FAX (Alexander Bain)

Morse's telegraph installed between Philadelphia and Washington

Maxwell electromagnetic wave theory becomes basis for radio wave propagation

Edison invents phonograph

Nipkow (Germany) devises scanner for scanning and transmitting images

CRT (Cathode Ray Tube)

Edison patents motion picture camera

Edison and Dickson design Kinetoscope - (motion pictures from successive photos on a cylinder)

Berliner invents gramophone

Oberlin Smith publishes basics of magnetic recording

Hollerith introduces an automated punch-card driven tabulation device for the Census Bureau

Dickson uses Edison's kinetograph to record motion pictures

Poulsen invents the Telegraphone, the first magnetic recording device

1905

1905

1906

1923

1926

1926

1927

1927

1928

1929

Fleming electron tube

Einstein's Theory of Relativity

de Forest develops Audion vacuum tube amplifier

Zworykin develops Iconoscope at Westinghouse

First television (J.L. Baird)

1st teleconference - between Washington and New York

Philo Farnsworth invents fully electronic TV (First all electronic TV is made by RCA in 1932)

Motion picture film standardized at 24 fps

Hollerith introduces the 80-column "punch card"

BBC begins broadcasting

1930

1931

1936

1938

1939

1941

1941

1945

1946

1948

1947

1949

1949

Philo Farnsworth receives patents for transmitting images by electronic means

1st stereo recordings

the Magnetophone is 1st true magnetic tape recorder

Valensi proposes color TV

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard design the Audio Oscillator

First U.S. regular TV broadcast

1st TV commercial (for Bulova watches)

Whirlwind computer project starts at MIT

ENIAC computer built at University of Pennsylvania

cable TV is installed

Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain of Bell Labs invent transistors ("transfer resistance")

John Whitney enters first International Experimental Film Competition in Belgium

Williams tube (CRT storage tube); Whirlwind computer built; core memory developed by Wang of Harvard

1950

1950

Cybernetics and Society - Norbert Weiner (MIT)

Ben Laposky uses oscilloscope to display waveforms which were photographed as artwork

1951

Graphics display on vectorscope

...