Timeline of Computing

From BenningtonWiki

600s - Indian mathematician Brahmagupta invents zero.
825 - Arabic mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī writes "On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals."
1200s - Ramon Llull tries to codify the universe.
1703 - Gottfried Leibniz toys with logic.
1837 - Charles Babbage imagines a machine that can be programmed.
1854 - George Boole formalizes binary algebra.
1936 - Alan Turing and Alonzo Church formalize the concepts of algorithm and machine computation.
1937 - Claude Shannon writes his master's thesis "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits."
1937 - Konrad Zuse builds the Z1.
1939 - The Atanasoff-Berry Computer is completed at Iowa State College.
1941 - Zuse builds the Z3.
1944 - Zuse builds the Z4, first real computer EVER.
1944 - Howard Aiken builds the Harvard Mark I at IBM and Harvard.
1945 - John von Neumann writes the "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC."
1945 - Konrad Zuse develops the first abstract computer language, "Plan Calculus."
1946 - John Mauchly and Presper Eckert build the ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania.
1947 - Harvard Mark II is built. First Turing-complete computer built in the US.
1947 - Turing, on Britain's efforts: "We are trying to build a machine to do all kinds of different things simply by programming rather than by the addition of extra apparatus."
1947 - William Shockley, Walter Brattain, and John Bardee demonstrate the transistor.
1948 - F.C. Williams and T. Kilburn build the Manchester Mark I.
1948 - Claude Shannon writes "The Mathematical Theory of Communication." The bit is born.
1949 - Mauchly, Eckert and von Neumann build the EDVAC at the University of Pennsylvania.
1951 - First commercial computers are built: the Lyons Electronic Office, the Rand UNIVAC I.
1952 - Grace Hooper develops the first compiled language "A-0".
1955 - J.H. Felker builds the first fully transistorized computer, TRADIC, at AT&T Labs.
1957 - John Backus develops the FORTRAN language for the IBM 704. God is declared INTEGER.
1958 - Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce invent the integrated circuit.
1958 - NEC builds Japan's first electronic computer, the NEAC 1101.
1960 - John McCarthy develops the LISP language.
1962 - MIT students Slug Russell, Shag Graetz, and Alan Kotok write "SpaceWar!"
1963 - Ivan Sutherland develops "Sketchpad" for his MIT doctoral thesis.
1963 - ASCII codified.
1964 - Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny create the BASIC language at Dartmouth College.
1967 - Seymour Papert designs the LOGO language for children.
1969 - Kenneth Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at AT&T develop the UNIX operating system.
1969 - The internet begins as a link between four universities in the US.
1970 - Niklaus Wirth develops the Pascal language.
1971 - Federico Faggin designs the Intel 4004, the first microprocessor.
1971 - Ray Tomlinson sends the first email.
1972 - Dennis Ritchie develops the C programming language.
1972 - Alan Kay develops the Smalltalk language.
1972 - Nolan Bushnell sells Pong, the first commercial video game. It's a hit.
1975 - Ed Roberts builds and sells the first hobbyist personal computer, the Altair 8800.
1977 - Apple begins selling the Apple II, Commodore the PET, and Radio Shack the TRS-80. Personal computing takes off.
1977 - Bill Joy releases the first Berkeley Software Distribution of Unix.
1981 - IBM begins selling the IBM Personal Computer (PC).
1981 - 213 computers on the internet.
1983 - Bjarne Stroustrup develops the C++ language at Bell Labs.
1984 - Apple Computer begins selling the Macintosh.
1985 - cmu.edu, purdue.edu, rice.edu and ucla.edu are the first registered domain names.
1989 - Tim Berners-Lee invents HTML at CERN. The World Wide Web is born.
1990 - Microsoft releases Windows 3.0, the first version of Windows to catch on.
1991 - James Gosling develops the Java language at Sun Microsystems.
1991 - Linus Torvalds begins work on the Linux kernel.
1995 - Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto (松本行弘) writes the Ruby language.

[edit] Comparison of early computers

year	machine	conditional branching	programming	self-modifying	indirect addressing	numeric representation	fixed or floating point	implementation
1937	Zuse Z1		soft			binary	floating	mechanical
1939	Atanasoff-Berry		hard			binary	fixed	electronic
1941	Zuse Z3		soft			binary	floating	electromechanical
1944	Zuse Z4	yes	soft			binary	floating	electromechanical
1944	Harvard Mark I		soft			decimal	fixed	electromechanical
1946	ENIAC	partially	hard			decimal	fixed	electronic
1947	Harvard Mark II	?	soft			decimal	fixed	electromechanical
1948	Manchester Mark I	yes	soft	yes		binary	fixed	electronic

Ramon Llull would've loved this.