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1098 BCE
Abacus
Earliest known calculating device. Slate with numeral frame. Photo credit- Smithsonian -
Slide Rule
Mechanical analog device invented by William Oughtred. Used for mathematical calculations before calculators were invented. -
Charles Babbage
An English mathematician credited with creating the first automatic digital computer. -
Ada Lovelace
Wrote the first algorithm for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, making her the first computer programmer. -
Alan Turing
Introduced the "Turing Machine", a model for how computers could process data. He was known as the father of modern computing. -
ENIAC
ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, is a general purpose electronic digital computer. -
Harvard Mark I
Developed by Howard Aiken, in collaboration with IBM. It was his first fully functional computer. -
Transistors
Used to amplify or switch electrical signals. Replaced inefficient vacuum tubes. Used in machines like the ENIAC. -
Grace Hopper
Hopper was involved in the creation of UNIVAC, the first all-electronic digital computer. She also invented the first computer compiler, a program that translates written instructions into codes. -
IBM 701
IBM's first computer, the 701, was introduced. It was designed for scientific work and research. -
Steve Wozniak
Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I as his personal computer. It was well received and Wozniak and Steve Jobs decided to manufacture it. -
Apple I
Apple I, one of the very first microcomputers, manufactured and released for sale to general public. Sold for $666.66 -
Apple II
Apple II released. Owners had the option to trade their Apple I for an Apple II. -
GUI and Xerox Star
GUI innovation occurs at the Xerox Corporation’s Palo Alto (California) Research Center (PARC). A computer workstation called Xerox Star uses a technique called “bit mapping” in which everything on the computer screen is a picture. Bit mapping welcomed the use of graphics and allowed the computer screen to display exactly what would be output from a printer. -
World Wide Web
The development of the World Wide Web begins by Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues. -
Smartphone prototype
A prototype of the first smartphone named “Angler” was invented by Frank James Canova. -
Web Browser Released
Text-based web browser released to public. Web gives users access to mass media and content—via the deep web, the dark web, and the commonly accessible surface web. -
First Smartphone
The final version named “Simon Personal Communicator” was developed by IBM and released to the market by BellSouth in 1994. -
Google
Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked from their dorm rooms at Stanford where they built a search engine that used links to determine the importance of individual pages on the World Wide Web. They called this search engine Backrub. Thankfully, they renamed it Google! -
iPhone
First iPhone invented by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. It was a touchscreen mobile phone with an iPod, camera and Web-browsing capabilities. -
Alexa
Alexa debuts in Amazon's Echo. Virtual assistant compatible with smart devices. Alexa has more than 130,000 skills to assist with! -
Chat GPT
AI Chatbots are artificial intelligence programs that generates dialogue. Chat GPT was created by Open AI. It uses machine learning algorithms to process and analyze large amounts of data to generate responses to user inquiries. It is able to understand human language as it is spoken and written. You can type in a question, and it will easily give you an understandable answer. -
Autonomous Vehicles
Tesla, currently is a Level 3 automation, with plans for further development. Automation at stage 3 enables a vehicle to operate autonomously, but a human driver must actively monitor conditions and immediately take control of the vehicle when the system alerts them.