History of Computers and Programming

1801

The Jacquard loom

Invented by Joseph Marle

A mechanical, automated loom with changeable punched cards that controlled the operation of the loom. The punched card was later used by Charles Babbage as a method for storing programs for the Analytic Engine.

1842

First Computer Programmer

Ada Lovelace translated an article about Charles Babbage's proposed Analytic Engine. In her notes, she describes an algorithym that is cited as the first computer program, making her the first computer programmer. She theorized that the computer could, one day, play music and chess. A U.S. Department of Defense computer language, is named in her honor, Ada.

1874

QWERTY Keyboard

The invention of the QWERTY keyboard was responsible for the majority of computer languages ever created. The arrangement was set based on an analysis of keys likely to cause jams and designing the QWERTY board to separate likely offenders, like T and H.

1989

Electric Tabulating System

Herman Hollerith developed the idea of the electric tabulating system, a machine that could read data. Hollerith also used punched cards, known as a Hollerith card, after experimenting with paper tape. He also invented the tabulator and keypunch machines which form the basis for information processing.

1896

Tabulating Machine Company

Herman Hollerith founded Tabulating Machine Company which later became IBM.

1906

Plugboard

Herman Hollerith developed a plugboard or control panel, that allowed the machine to perform different tasks without being reconstructed.

1937

Binary Code

Claude Shannon's theseis on tranlating text into mathematical code was the foundation for the first fully operational electromechanical computer, Zuse's 1941 Z3.

1937

Atanasoff-Berry Computer

ABC was developed in 1937 but not tested until 1942. The first digital computer which was designed to solve linear equations. Although it was not programmable, it did use binary arithmetic, regenerative memory, parallel processing and separate memory.

1942

Colossus

The Colossus machines were the first programmable, electonic digital computers. The Colossus machines were designed to break and read encrypted German messages. Used in WW11.

1949

The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator, or EDSAC, was the first practical stored-program electronic computer. On May 6, 1949, EDSAC ran its first program: calculating a table of squares and a list of prime numbers.

1957

Fortran

FORmulaTranslation was created by John Backus. This is the oldest language still in use. It was developed to perform high-level scientific, mathematical, statistical computations. It is typically more user-friendly than low-level programming languages. Fortran is still used today in aerospace, automotive industries, government, and research institutions.

1959

COBOL

COmmon Business Oriented Language is behind the majority of business transaction systems running credit card processing, ATMs, telephone and cell calls, hospital systems, government, automotive systems, and traffic signal systems. The COBOL development team, lead by Dr. Grace Murray Hopper, set out to create a uniform, user-friendly language for business transactions.

1961

Spacewar

The first computer game programmed by Steve Russel. It is a two-player game where two spaceships affected by the gravity of a star, fire missiles, unaffected by gravity, at each other. Each spaceship has limited aammunition and fuel. It took roughly 200 man-hours to complete. It was written on a DEC Interactive mini computer.

1964

Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

BASIC was developed by students at Dartmouth College to be a simplified language for those without a strong technical or mathematical background. A modified version, written by Bill Gates and Paul Allen became Microsoft's first product. It was sold to M.I.T.S. for the Altair. Basic has over 2 million lines of code in use. In 1975 there were only 4,000.

1969

First Edition of the manual for C programming language

C

Dennis Ritchie deveped at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system. It was named "C" because its features were derived from an earlier language called "B". C had become powerful enough that most of the Unix kernel was rewritten in C - one of the first operating system kernels implemented in a language other than assembly. LINUX today is based on C.

1970

PASCAL

The language was named for Blaise Pascal, credited for inventing the first adding machine in 1641. Niklaus Wirth created Pascal as a teaching tool and it grew into widespread commercial use.

1974

The Internet

First use of the term "internet" by Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn. Together they invented the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), the fundamental communication protocols at the heart of the Internet.

1976

Ethernet Cable

Invention of the Ethernet cable by Bob Metcalfe while at Xerox PARC. Metcalfe and others finalized an open Ethernet standard in 1980, and by 1985 it had become and IEEE standard.

1981

CSNET

National Science Foundation creates Computer Science NETwork. Its purpose was to extend networking benefits, for computer science departments at academic and research institutions that could not be directly connected to ARPANET (Department of Defense network), due to funding or authorization limitations.

1983

The Internet Activities Board (IAB) is created by Vint Cerf.

1983

C++

From Bell Labs, Bjarne Stroustrup modified the C language to C++ and created what many consider the most popular programming language ever. It's been listed in the top ten programming languages since 1986 and achieved Hall of Fame status in 2003. C++ is used by MS Office, Adobe PDF Reader and Firefox.

1983

Virus

Fred Cohen designed a hidden program that could infect a computer, copy itself, and then infect other computers through the use of a floppy disk. The program was benign and meant only to prove that it was possible.

1987

PERL

Larry Wall, a UNIX programmer, created PERL after attempting to extract data for a report and finding UNIX couldn't perform the operations he needed. Practical Extraction Report Language was described by its inventor as a language for "getting your job done." PERL is used by Craigslist.

1990

Advanced Network and Services

ANS is formed by Merit, IBM, and MCI to develop high speed networking.

1991

PYTHON

Monty Python was the inspiration for the name of this language. Guido Van Rossum developed Phthon to fix problems in the ABC language and continues to serve as its lead designer. PYTHON is used by Google Search, YouTube and NASA.

1992

Internet Society

Internet Society is formed and World Wide Web is released.

1993

RUBY

Yukihiro "matz" Matsumoto name Ruby for July's birthstone. He developed the language by blending parts of his favorite languages, Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp.

1995

PHP

Rasmus Lerdorf developed PHP to replace a set Perl scripts used to maintain his personal home page. Today, PHP has grown into an integral part of web architecture running on over 20 million websites. PHP is used by Facebook.

1995

JAVA

A team of Sun Microsystems developers lead by James Gosling, created Java to run set top boxes for interactive television. Java now runs on over 1.1 billion PCs worldwide and many websites can't function without it. Java is used by the 2004 Mars Rovers.

1995

Javascript

Java and Javascript are unrelated and have very different semantics. JavaScript was originally developed by Brendan Eich of Netscape under the name Mocha. JavaScript uses syntax influenced by that of C.

1999

Wi-Fi

Wireless internet access, Wi-Fi, is standardized.

2005

Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails was extracted by David Heinemeier Hansson from his work on Basecamp, a project management tool by 37signals. Hansson first released Ruby on Rails as open source in July 2004, but did not share commit rights to the project until February 2005. It is now on a version 3.0.7 and has more than 1,800 contributors.