By:Doneville Prescott
1st period Multimedia
 Charles Babbage invented the
concept of a programmable
computer in about 1856.

In 1981, International Business Machines Corp.
entered the personal computer market, and was
welcomed as a competitor, rather slyly, by
Apple. IBM's PC boasted a disk operating
system that became an industry standard.
Hewlett-Packard had launched its first PC in
1980. The early '80s were to be dominated by
microcomputer expansions -- and by a torrid
pace of start-ups.
 Hewlett-Packard is Founded. David Packard and Bill
Hewlett found Hewlett-Packard in a Palo Alto,
California garage. Their first product was the HP 200A
Audio Oscillator, which rapidly becomes a popular
piece of test equipment for engineers. Walt Disney
Pictures ordered eight of the 200B model to use as
sound effects generators for the 1940 movie “Fantasia.”
 Konrad Zuse began work on Plankalkul (Plan
Calculus), the first algorithmic
programming language, with an aim of
creating the theoretical preconditions for
the formulation of problems of a general
nature. Seven years earlier, Zuse had
developed and built the world´s first
binary digital computer, the Z1. He
completed the first fully functional
program-controlled electromechanical
digital computer, the Z3, in 1941. Only
the Z4 — the most sophisticated of his
creations — survived World War II.
 IBM´s Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator
computed scientific data in public display near the
company´s Manhattan headquarters. Before its
decommissioning in 1952, the SSEC produced the
moon-position tables used for plotting the course of
the 1969 Apollo flight to the moon. Speed: 50
multiplications per second Input/output: cards,
punched tape Memory type: punched tape, vacuum
tubes, relays Technology: 20,000 relays, 12,500 vacuum
tubes Floor space: 25 feet by 40 feet Project leader:
Wallace Eckert
 MIT´s Whirlwind debuted on Edward R. Murrow´s "See It Now"
television series. Project director Jay Forrester described the computer as a
"reliable operating system," running 35 hours a week at 90-percent utility
using an electrostatic tube memory. Start of project: 1945 Completed: 1951
Add time: .05 microseconds Input/output: cathode ray tube, paper tape,
magnetic tape Memory size: 2048 16-digit words Memory type: cathode
ray tube, magnetic drum, tape (1953 - core memory) Technology: 4,500
vacuum tubes, 14,800 diodes Floor space: 3,100 square feet Project
leaders: Jay Forrester and Robert Everett
 LEO
 England´s first commercial computer, the Lyons Electronic Office, solved
clerical problems. The president of Lyons Tea Co. had the computer,
modeled after the EDSAC, built to solve the problem of daily scheduling
production and delivery of cakes to the Lyons tea shops. After the success
of the first LEO, Lyons went into business manufacturing computers to
meet the growing need for data processing systems.
 Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp. invented
the resistor-transistor logic (RTL) product, a
set/reset flip-flop and the first integrated circuit
available as a monolithic chip.
 The first e-mail is sent. Ray Tomlinson of
the research firm Bolt, Beranek and
Newman sent the first e-mail when he
was supposed to be working on a different
project. Tomlinson, who is credited with
being the one to decide on the "@" sign
for use in e-mail, sent his message over a
military network called ARPANET. When
asked to describe the contents of the first
email, Tomlinson said it was “something
like "QWERTYUIOP"”
 Sony introduced and shipped the first 3 1/2" floppy
drives and diskettes in 1981. The first significant
company to adopt the 3 1/2" floppy for general use was
Hewlett-Packard in 1982, an event which was critical in
establishing momentum for the format and which helped
it prevail over the other contenders for the microfloppy
standard, including 3", 3 1/4", and 3.9" formats.
 The Iomega Zip Disk is released. The
initial Zip system allowed 100MB to be
stored on a cartridge roughly the
size of a 3 ½ inch floppy disk. Later
versions increased the capacity of a
single disk from 100Mbytes to 2GB.
www.computerhistory.org/ti
meline
inventors.about.com/library/blcoindex.htm
http://weburbanist.com/2020
http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en