Brief History of Electronics / PC

1642

• Blaise Pascal introduces Pascaline Digital Adding Machine

1822

• Charles Babbage introduces the Difference Engine & later the Analytical Engine, a true general-purpose computing machine

1906

• Lee DeForest patents the Vacuum Tube Triode, used as an electronic switch in the first electronic computer

1936

• Konrad Zuse begins work on a series of computers, considered the first electric binary computers, using electromechnical switches and relays
• Alan Turing publishes "On Computable Numbers" a paper in which he conceives an imaginary computer called the Turing Machine, considered one of the foundations of modern computing

1937

• John V. Atanasoff begins work on the Atanasoff-Berry Computer officially credited as first electronic computer

1945

• John von Neumann writes "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC" which outlines the architecture of the modern stored-program computer

1946

• John Mauchly & J. Presper Eckert introduce ENIAC - an electronic computing machine.

1947

• William Shockley, Walter Brattain & John Bardeen successfully test the point-contact transistor, setting off the semiconductor revolution.

1949

• Maurice Wilkes assembles the EDSAC, the first practical stored-program computer.

1953

• IBM ships it's first electronic computer the 701.

1954

• Gordon Teal (Texas Instruments) perfects the silicon-based transistor, bring a tremendous reduction in costs.

1955

• Bell Laboratories announces the first fully transistorized computer, the TRADIC.

1956

• MIT researchers build the TX-0, the first general-purpose, programmable computer built with transistors.
• IBM - ushers in the era of magnetic disk storage, with shipment of a 305 RAMAC to Zellerbach Paper in San Francisco.

1958

• Jack Kilby (Texas Instruments) creates the first integrated circuit to prove that resistors and capacitators can exist on the same piece of semiconductor material.

1959

• IBM releases its 7000 series mainframes and are the company's first transistorized computer.
• Robert Noyce creates practical integrated circuit.  Allowing printing of conducting channels directly on the silicon surface.
• Bell Laboratories designs it's Dataphone, the first commercial modem, converting digital computer data to analog signals for transmission across it's long distance network.

1965

• Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) introduces the PDP-8, the first commercially successful minicomputer.

1969

• Department of Defense establishes four nodes on the ARPA network, in what will become the internet.
• The Unix operating system is conceived and implemented at AT&T's Bell Laboratories by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchies, Douglas McIlroy and Joe Ossanna.

1971

• Intel advertises first microprocessor, intel 4004
• Scientific American - advertises the KENBAK-1 for $750.00 USD, one of the first personal computers.
• Unix is released, entirely written in Assembly language.

1972

• Intel debuts the 8008 microprocessor

1973

• Robert Metcalfe (Xerox) devises the ethernet method of network connection.
• The Micral - the earliest non-kit personal computer based on a microprocessor, the Intel 8008.
• Dennis Ritchie rewrites Unix in the C programming language, except for the kernel and I/O.

1974

• Xerox designs the Alto.  The first workstation with a built in mouse for input.

1975

• Telenet, the first commercial packet-switching network and civilian equivalent of ARPA net.
• Popular Electronics features the Altair 8800 which is based on Intel's 8080 microprocessor.

1976

• Steve Wozniak designs the Apple I, a single-board computer
• Shugart Associates introduce the 5 1/4" floppy disk

1977

• Tandy Radioshack introduce the TRS-80
• Commodore introduces the PET (Personal Electronic Transactor)

1979

• Motorola introduces the 68000 microprocessor

1980

• Seagate Technology creates the first hard disk drive for microcomputers, the ST-506.

1981

• Xerox introduces the first personal computer with a graphical interface, called the Star.
• IBM introduces it's P.C (considered the Grandfather of modern P.C's)
• Sony debuts & ships the first 3 1/2" floppy disk drive.
• Phillips & Sony introduce the CD-DA (Compact Disc Digital Audio) format.
• Chase Bishop designs the first model of an electronic device and project "Interface Manager" (birth of Windows)

1983

• Apple releases Lisa.
• Richard Stallman announces and begins the GNU project.
• Microsoft announces Windows.

1984

• Apple launches Macintosh, with a mouse driven GUI

1985

• IBM releases PC-AT (Advanced Technology) 3x faster than original P.C
• s and is based on the Intel 286 chip.  The AT introduces the 16-Bit ISA Bus & is the computer on which all modern P.C's are based.
• Microsoft introduces an operating environment named Windows 1.0 as an add-on to MS-DOS.

1986

• Compaq announces desktop 386 first computer on the market to use Intel's 32-Bit 386 chip.

1987

• IBM introduces PS/2 machines, making 3 1/2" floppy disk drives & VGA video standard for P.C's.  PS/2 introduces microchannel architecture (MCA) bus, the first Plug N' Play bus for PC's.
• Andrew S. Tanenbaum releases MINIX, a Unix-like computer operating system based on microkernel architecture.
• Windows 2.0 is released.

1988

• Compaq and other P.C clone makers develop Enhanced Industry Standard Architecture (EISA) which unlike MCA, retains backward compatibility with the existing ISA Bus.

1989

• Intel releases the 486 (P4) microprocessor and also introduces the 486 motherboard chipsets.
• Richard Stallman writes and releases the GNU GPL.

1990

• Tim Berners-Lee (CERN) develops Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and with it, the WWW is born.

1991

• Linus Torvalds develops the Linux kernel.

1993

• Intel releases the Pentium (P5) processor with numbers having been changed to names due to trademarks.  Intel also releases "Complete" motherboards.

... and the list goes on !