| 1939/43 | Mark I (Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator). Built by Howard Aiken &
IBM. 1st general purpose electromechanical(rather than electronic) automated
calculating machine. The first working realization of Babbage's
concept of a universal computer.
Turing develops a machine for Enigma decryption at Bletchley Park, England - key to the ending of World War II. |
| 1943/6 | Eniac, University of Pennsylvania, Eckert & Mauchly- 1st electronic computer (eliminated the need for mechanical moving parts) |
| |
| 1947/9 | Edsac, Cambridge University (Dr. Maurice Wilkes). Based on the premises of Dr. John Von Neumann (Princeton University) & Edvac - the 1st stored program computer(could store operating instructions, as well as data, in computer rather than building them into the hardware) |
| 1950's | Large computer companies, such as IBM & Univac developed first
commercially available computers. First model (early Univac) was
sold to the Census Bureau.
Major Application Software Languages - Fortran (John Bacchus and IBM) and Cobol (Grace Murray Hopper) 1956 Sputnik and the launch of the Space Age |
| 1960's | Vietnam War / Space exploration |
| 1969 | ARPANET nodes (advanced research project) - at UCLA, Stanford and UCSB |
| 1970's | Growth of micro technology and of networking between University computers |
| 1980/1 | USENET established at Duke University & Univ. of North Carolina. Bitnet also - mid 80's |
| 1986 | NSFNet & Supercomputer Centers |
| 1989 | 100,000 hosts on NSFNet / Internet |
| 1990 | No More ARPANET |
| 1991 | WWW - Tim Berners-Lee (MIT, CERN) |
| 1994 | Communities begin to be wired for Internet
Commercial access - Growth of Internet Service Providers Computer Information Services such as AOL offer Internet |
| 1994 | Netscape - Marc Andreesson (Univ. of Illinois Supercomputer Center) |