See also :
Chronology of communication before electricity,
A Chronology of Communication from electricity to electronics,
A Convoluted History of Early Telecommunications.
1941- Konrad Zuse constructs first fully operational
binary computer for the German Experimental Dynamics
Institute (GEDI), the
Z3. His first two prototypes are
electromechanical with stored- program capability.
Magnetic recording tape developed
soon after.
1943- British Department of Communications and the
Foreign Office construct
Colossus, with the help of
Alan Turing
to
decipher the German
ENIGMA electromechanical encoders which were
Allies main hope at shortening
World War II. Turing had published in 1936,
at age 24, a paper entitled "On
Computable Numbers" which had established some of the foundations Digital Stored Program
computing. Development of
ENIAC
begins, for use in calculating missle
trajectory projections.
1944- Harvard
Mark I (a.k.a. the
IBM Sequenced Controlled Calculator) unveiled by Howard Aiken. Aiken, in '36, had
been writing his dissertation on the
physics of
vacuum tubes, when he read Turing's paper on the possibilities offered by a
Turing machine.
Colossus also
under development.
1945- The first modern stored memory computer is designed by
Johann von
Neumann,
John Presper Eckert, and
John Maucly. Maucly is later targeted during the
Communist trials led by Senator
John McCarthy, and he ends up on
the
blacklist.
1946- Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania complete
ENIAC, a
room-sized computer consisting of 10,000 high-speed
vacuum tubes.
1947- The
transistor is invented at
Bell Telephone Laboratories.
1948- Dennis Gabor, a Hungarian-born scientist, invents
holography; in 1971
he receives the
Nobel Prize for his invention.
Claude Shannon publishes his "A mathematical theory of communication", seen
as the founding work of
information theory, which establishes models for
noise,
distortion and
error correction in
information technology.
1949- In the U.S., there are 1,000,000
television receivers in use. The
10,000,000 mark is passed in 1951, and the
50,000,000 mark eight years later. Other developed nations reach these
levels of penetration soon after.
1951- UNIVAC constructed by
Remington- Rand, 46 of the machines are sold.
1952- The first numerical control machine tool is demonstrated at
MIT.
c. 1952- The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (
SAGE) system for U.S. air
defense is developed at
MIT. It is the first computer
network. That same year,
Grace Murray Hopper, working with
John
Presper Eckert and
John Maucly on
the
UNIVAC project, writes the first
complier software. Thomas Watson Jr. becomes president of
IBM and launches all-out
push
into computer markets.
UNIVAC is used to predict the results of the presidential election on a live
CBS news special; the
prediction is correct.
1954- Color television
broadcasting in the United States, several years
after the first experimental broadcasts; the technology
is adopted in Japan in 1960. The
microprocessor is developed.
c. 1957- First fully automated guidance system used on missiles.
USSR launch
Sputnik (with
Laika the dog).
Seymour Cray establish
Control Data
Corporation to build a
supercomputer for scientific use.
1958 - Bell develops the first
modem for
data transmission. The US launches
Explorer, and so the
Space
Race has begun.
Texas Instruments
begins developing the
integrated circuit.
1960- The Haloid
Xerox Company introduces the plain-paper copier, based on
a process invented by Chester F. Carlson. The
photocopier rapidly revolutionizes office practices and makes carbon paper
outdated.
Laser technology develops.
c. 1960- Libraries begin to use on-line public access catalogs (
OPAC),
which begin to replace card catalogues.
1961- The publication of Merriam-Webster's Third International
Dictionary
creates a furor in the United States when the
dictionary is charged with abandoning prescriptive judgments of correctness
in favor of neutral linguistic description. The first programmable industrial
robot installed, for unloading of
parts at die-casting operation.
1962- Western Union introduces the
telex to the United States. The first
modem introduced in the United States
marketed by the
American Telephone & Telegraph Company (
AT&T). Theoretical foundation for
packet switching laid down by
Rand Corporation
researcher
Paul Baran in his paper "On Distributed Communications Networks."
1962- The first communication satellite,
Telstar, is put into orbit for use
by American companies. The first trans-Atlantic
television broadcast is made in this year.
1963- ATT offers push-button dialing to its consumers.
ZIP code standards instituted to facilitate local sorting
and delivery of
post in United States. On November 24, accused presidential assassin
Lee Harvey Oswald is being transferred to a jail cell
when he is fatally
shot by
Jack Ruby. The assassination is witnessed by millions of people on live television.
MIT develops
time sharing
of computer resources.
1964 - Marshall McLuhan publishes
Understanding Media.
IBM develops first
word processor, the
TapeSelectric.
c. 1965- The basis of
virtual reality technology emerges in simulators that
teach pilots how to fly planes by using head-mounted
displays with tracking systems. Ted Nelson develops
hypertext idea for linking documents.
1966- ASCII (the American Standard Code for Information Exchange) is
established as a standard data-transmission code that
converts characters into seven-digit
binary numbers.
1968- Douglas Engelbart demonstrates first computer
mouse,
hypertext, and
WYSIWYG ("What you see is what you get")
display of text. The
British Library and
Library of Congress collaborate on a new
system of cataloging library collections,
Machine-Readable Cataloging Project, known since its revision in 1968 as
MARC II. Garmish International Software Conference in Germany addresses what is termed the
Software Crisis, following the
failure of
IBM OS/360 -
software engineering and
structured design methodology are established.
1969- The Department of Defense establishes the
Arpanet, predecessor of the
Internet with four
host machines.
Sony Corporation introduces the videocasette recorder.
Telnet program written.
First 1
Kb RAM chip.
c. 1970- American banks introduce electronic teller machines.
UNIX developed at
Bell, by 1985 it runs on 300,000
machines worldwide. The phrase
'
information superhighway' is coined in The Nation magazine, though at the time they were referring to
cable TV
infrastructure.
1971- Introduction of the
laser printer, which makes possible high quality
computer graphics and
desktop publishing.
ARPANET now consists of 15 nodes.
1971- The
Intel corporation introduces the world's first
microprocessor,
which combines the electrical functions once performed
as many as 500,000 transistors on a single chip. Ray Tomlinson writes early email programs
SNDMSG and
CRYNET.
1972- Introduction of
C, the first widely adopted general-purpose high-level
programming language.
Xerox introduces the
Alto, the first computer with a bit-mapped
screen, windows, and a mouse, which becomes the
model for
Apple Macintosh and other personal computers. The first
electronic mail system introduced. 40 nodes now on
ARPANET,
Intel develops 16
KB chip.
Atari releases
Pong- which is
sweet.
1973- The grocery industry adopts
Universal Product Code, making possible
the use of bar codes for pricing and inventory.
control. Robert Metcalfe outlines
LAN and
Ethernet architecture in his doctoral thesis at Harvard; he founds
3Com Inc.
in 1979.
1976- Steve Jobs and
Steve Wozniak found
Apple Computer Inc., the first
company devoted to selling personal computers. The spacecraft
Viking 1 orbits Mars and relays photographs of the
Martian landscape to Earth.
BASIC released by
Microsoft.
1977- Apple and
Radio Shack introduce the first widely successful
pre-assembled personal computers,
Apple II and
Tandy TRS-80.
Commodore PET also released, which sells for $600 US. (1st
'puter I played with).
IBM follows with its PC
in 1981.
RSA encryption proposed by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, the first
public key scheme, based on
the work of Whitfield Diffie and
Martin Hellman in 1975. First computer
BBS is being tested in Chicago.
1979- The
Xerox Corporation introduces
Ethernet software, which becomes the
standard computer intercommunications network. First
MUD is established by two computer students at
Essex University.
Laserdisc players first hit market. MicroNet goes on-line, which will later morph into
CompuServe.
Compact disc players
developed and
cellular phones first marketed.
1982- RSA Data Security Inc. established. The Gannet company begins publishing USA Today, the United States'
first national, general-interest newspaper. Introduction of the spreadsheet program
Lotus 1-2-3, the "killer
application" that ensures wide popularity of personal computers.
TCP/IP developed at the technical standard for
remote
network connectivity. Hayes Microcomputers sells the Smartmodem 300,
IBM sells a 64K
RAM machine for $3000.
Disney
releases
TRON.
AT&T broken up by US court order.
1984- Apple
Macintosh and
GUI interface are unleashed upon the world.
William Gibson coins
'cyberspace' in
Neuromancer. 2400
baud modem costs $850. 1000 nodes now on
ARPANET.
1985- The
IRS initiates computerized auditing of tax returns. Lucasfilm's
Habitat for the
Commodore 64 becomes
the first graphical online game
environment.
The WELL on-line community is established and has 5000 members by 1991, when it switches to the Internet.
1989- Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues at
CERN create the first
Web
browser, based on the HyperText Transfer Protocol
(
HTTP), which standardizes communication between
server and
client. Robert T. Morris, from
Cornell University spreads
the first Internet
worm program
which disables 6,000
host computers, 10% of the entire network at the time. The same year,
Kevin Mitnick is convicted of
computer fraud after hacking into
DEC and copying software.
1990- Start of the project of mapping the location of all genes on every
chromosome in human beings, the
Human Genome
Project. Developement of the
WWW begins at
CERN in
Geneva, Switzerland using
URL,
HTTP and
HTML.
1991- The Cable News Network (
CNN) is created in by
Ted Turner. The network
gains worldwide attention for its
around-the-clock coverage, much of it broadcast from Iraq, of the
Persian
Gulf War.
Phil Zimmerman distributes
PGP fearing a US Senate Bill which may ban the software in the US.
Linus Torvalds
from
Helsinki begins work on
Linux.
Gopher browser software put in use.
1993- Marc Andreessen and others at the University of Illinois release
Mosaic, a graphical Web browser that becomes widely
popular and is the model for browsers from
Netscape and
Microsoft.
Domain name registration established. Bill Clinton
introduces
Clipper Chip and
key-escrow proposals. The next year,
Matt Blaze busts the
Clipper Chips encryption, forcing the government to abandon
it.
1995-First major domain name lawsuit after
Sprint registers MCI.com.
Open-source Apache server software becomes
the most popular in the world.
Release of Disney's
Toy Story, the first full-length
computer-generated feature film.
Yahoo now well-established.
Kevin Mitnick, after three years on the run for computer
crime, is arrested and sentenced to three
years in prison.
1996- Microsoft co-founder
Bill Gates becomes the world's richest
person. In the U. S., the
Telecommunications Act of 1996 authorizes subsidies
for information technology to libraries and schools, but also accompanies the
Communications Decency Law, which the Supreme
Court soon rejects as
unconsitutional.
Digital Copyright Treaty is signed by members of the
World Intellectual Property Organization
The provision of
universal access the
Internet becomes a policy goal a
number of nations.
1997- The IBM computer
Deep Thought defeats world champion
Gary Kasparov in
a chess match. The World Wide Web site for the Mars
Pathfinder space probe receives
220 million hits when it publishes pictures of the
mission, a total that far exceeds
NASA's expectations. Major new libraries are opened in London, Paris, and New York
containing extensive computational facilities.
1998- XML proposed as
HTML sucessor.
Starr Report into the
Lewinsky Scandal is released on-line.
Linux
goes all the rage. The on-line
bookseller
Amazon.com becomes the world's largest book
retailer as measured by
market capitalization. The
Internet craze sends the stocks in other Internet-related businesses to
unprecedented highs.