Sources
Wilhelm Schickard makes his "Calculating Clock".
Blaise Pascal makes his "Pascaline".
Sir Samuel Morland, of England, produces a non-decimal adding machine.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz designs his "Stepped Reckoner".
Charles Earl Stanhope makes a multiplying calculator similar to Leibniz's.
Mathieus Hahn also makes a successful multiplying calculator.
J. H. Mueller conceives the idea of what came to be called a "difference engine".
Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar makes his "Arithmometer".
Charles Babbage starts building his difference engine.
Babbage and Clement produce a prototype segment of the difference engine.
George Scheutz, of Stockholm, produces a small difference engine in wood.
Babbage conceives, and begins to design, his "Analytical Engine".
Babbage's difference engine project is officially canceled.
Scheutz and his son produce a 3rd-order difference engine with printer.
Babbage designs an improved, simpler difference engine.
The Scheutzes complete the first full-scale difference engine.
The first two Tabulating Machines are sold.
Babbage produces a prototype section of the Analytical Engine's mill and printer.
Charles Babbage dies.
Ramon Verea invents a calculator with an internal multiplication table.
A committee concludes that the Analytical Engine is impossible.
A multiplying calculator enters mass production.
Dorr E. Felt (1862-1930), of Chicago, makes his "Comptometer".
Felt invents the first printing desk calculator.
US Census results are tabulated using Hollerith punch card tabulators.
William S. Burroughs (1857-1898) starts the office calculator industry.
1900...
Henry Babbage completes the mill of his father's Analytical Engine.
First flip-flop circuit design.
E. Wynn-Williams constructs a binary digital counter.
International Business Machines introduces the "IBM 601" punch card machine.
George Stibitz constructs a demonstration 1-bit binary adder using relays.
Alan M. Turing publishes a paper on "computable numbers".
Shannon publishes a paper on the implementation of symbolic logic using relays.
Zuse completes a prototype mechanical binary programmable calculator, the Z1.
Zuse and Schreyer begin work on the "V2" (later " Z2").
John V. Atanasoff and Clifford Berry complete a prototype 16-bit adder.
Williams and Stibitz complete a calculator with complex numbers.
Zuse is released from the army and completes the Z2.
Atanasoff and Berry complete a calculator for simultaneous linear equations.
Zuse completes the "V3" (later "Z3").
Howard H. Aiken and his team complete the "ASCC Mark I".
Max Newman, Wynn-Williams, and their team complete the "Heath Robinson".
Williams and Stibitz complete the "Relay Interpolator".
Tommy Flowers and his team at Bletchley Park complete the first "Colossus".
Zuse almost completes his first full-scale machine, the "V4".
Zuse invents a programming language called Plankalkuel.
John von Neumann describes what is later known as a von Neumann computer.
The ENIAC is completed.
The ENIAC is revealed to the public.
Aiken and his team complete the " Harvard Mark II".
First actual case of bug being found.
Magnetic core memory is patented.
The magnetic drum memory is independently invented by several people.
Wallace Eckert of IBM, with his team, completes the "SSEC".
Newman, Freddie C. Williams, and their team complete their "Mark I".
The ENIAC is improved, using ideas from Clipper and Metropolis.
IBM introduces the "IBM 604".
Jay W. Forrester and his team at MIT construct the "Whirlwind".
Forrester conceives of magnetic core memory as it is to become common.
The Manchester Mark I acquires a secondary memory.
Maurice Wilkes (1913-) and his team complete the "EDSAC".
Presper Eckert and Mauchly complete the "BINAC" for the US Air Force.
Aiken's team completes the "Harvard Mark III".
A group at the National Physical Laboratory, England, complete the "Pilot ACE".
Zuse's Z4 is finally completed and goes into service at the ETH Zurich.
Hartree estimates 3 computers will suffice to handle all calculations in England.
Ferranti Ltd. completes the first commercial computer, yet another "Mark I".
Eckert and Mauchly complete the first "UNIVAC".
Thompson, Simmons, and their team complete the "LEO I".
Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992) invents the modern concept of the compiler.
The EDVAC is finally completed.
The IBM "Defense Calculator", later renamed the "701", enters production.
Grace Murray Hopper implements the first compiler, the "A-0".
Packet-switching networks
ACM Symposium on Operating Principles
Network presentation to the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)
ARPANET commissioned by DOD for research into networking
First Request for Comment (RFC): "Host Software" by Steve Crocker
Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and others discover a "little-used PDP-7 in a corner".
Store and Forward Networks
ALOHAnet developed by Norman Abrahamson, U of Hawaii
15 nodes (23 hosts) in the Inernet
First Unix version.
Demonstration of ARPANET between 40 machines.
InterNetworking Working Group (INWG) created.
First international connections to the ARPANET: England and Norway
Unix V4 rewritten in C
Operational management of Internet transferred to DCA (now DISA)
BBN opens Telenet
Unix V6 is first version of Unix widely available outside Bell Labs.
uucp (unix-to-unix copy) developed at AT&T Bell Labs
THEORYNET created at U of Wisconsin
Computer Science Department
research computer network established.
Unix V7 released.
BITNET, the "Because Its Time (There) NETwork"
CSNET (Computer Science NETwork) comes into being.
INWG establishes TCP/IP as the protocol suite for ARPANET.
Name server developed at U of Wisconsin.
CSNET/ARPANET gateway put in place
ARPANET split into ARPANET and MILNET.
Desktop workstations and local networks.
Berkeley releases 4.2BSD incorporating TCP/IP
Unix System Development Lab is created.
Domain Name Server (DNS) introduced.
# of hosts breaks 1,000
NSFNET created
Cleveland Freenet (start of NPTN) comes on-line
NSF signs agreement to manage the NSFNET backbone
1000th RFC: "Request For Comments reference guide"
# of Internet hosts breaks 10,000
# of BITNET hosts breaks 1,000
Internet worm burrows through the Net
# of Internet hosts breaks 100,000
NSFNET backbone upgraded to T1
RIPE (Reseaux IP Europeens) formed by European service providers.
ARPANET ceases to exist
First relay between a commercial electronic mail carrier (MCI Mail)
and the Internet
Electronic Frontier Foundation is founded by Mitch Kapor
Commercial Internet eXchange (CIX) Association, Inc. formed.
WAIS released by Thinking Machines Corporation
Gopher released by University of Minnesota
Internet Society is chartered
World-Wide Web released by CERN
# of hosts breaks 1,000,000
NSFNET backbone upgraded to T3
InterNIC created to provide specific Internet services
US White House comes on-line:
Internet Talk Radio begins broadcasting
Businesses and media take notice of the Internet
Communities begin to be wired up to the Internet
US Senate and State of California provide information servers