- 3000 B.C., abacus: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division
- 1642, Pascaline; addition (invented by Blaise Pascal at age 18)
- 1694, Gottfried Wilhem von Leibniz; extended the Pascaline to include multiplication
- 1769, Turk; the first 'computer' chess game?
- 1820, the arithometer by Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar; addition, subtraction, multiplication, division
- 1832, analytical engine by Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace; steam powered general purpose computing machine
- 1889, Tabulating Machine Company (now, IBM) by Herman Hollerith; general purpose computing -- tallied the U.S. Census in 6 weeks (as opposed to 7-10 years).
- 1994, Howard Aiken built first all electronic computer for the U.S. Navy -- the machine was 1/2 the length of a football field and contained 500 miles of wiring (operated at 5 instructions per second)
- 1944, Eniac; weighed 30 tons, drawing enough energy to dim the lights of Philadelphia when it was run (operated at 5000 instructions per second)
- 1944, John von Neumann introduced several important concepts that remain in modern-day computers: (1) stored programs and data; (2) conditional control transfer; (3) interrupt and resume execution; (4) central processing unit.
- The future?
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
 -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.
 -- Popular Mechanics, 1949
- 1956, IBM Stretch; transistors replaced vacuum tubes (operated at 50,000 instructions per second, cost: $3.5 million)
- ~1957, first programming languages are introduced (COBOL, FORTRAN), computers operating at 100,000 instructions per second
- 1958, Jack Kilby developed the integrated circuit allowing computers to get smaller, faster, cheaper (computers operating at 1-10 million instructions per second)
- 1970s; commercially available minicomputers (Commodore, Radio Shack, and Apple)
- 1980's; Atari, PacMan -- video games drove the demand for better and more affordable computers
- 1981, IBM PC
- 1984, Apple Macintosh (operating at 10-100 million instructions per second).
- The future?
There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
--Ken Olson, CEO, Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
- 1990s personal computers are operating at 1-2 GHz (1000 million to 2000 million instructions per second)
- if automobiles improved with the same rate as computers then our car would:
- cost: $4,000
- top speed: 60,000 mph
- seating: 10,000 people
- fuel efficiency: 20,000 mpg
- reliability: breaks every 70 years
- 1997, IBM's Deep Blue beat chess champion Gary Kasparov
- 2000, more computers are sold than televisions
- 2002, Microsoft revenues are 7.1 billion dollars/year
- 2000s, personal computers are operating at 2-4 GHz (2000 million to 4000 million instructions per second)
- Moore's Law: computer speed roughly doubles every 18 months!
- The future? (speed and access)
(Reference)
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