To commemorate the 50th year ofmodern computing and the Computer

Society, the timeline on the followingpages traces the evolution of computingand computer technology.

Timeline research by Bob Carlson, Angela Burgess,and Christine Miller.Timeline design and production by Larry Bauer.We thank our reviewers: Ted Biggerstaff, GeorgeCybenko, Martin Campbell-Kelly, Alan Davis,Dan O’Leary, Edward Parrish, and Michael Williams.

Timeline of Computing History

4000 B.C. — 1300

About 79 A.D. The “AntikytheraDevice,” when set correctlyaccording to latitude and day ofthe week, gives alternating 29- and 30-day lunar months.

250-230 B.C. The Sieve of Eratosthenes is used to determineprime numbers.

3000 B.C. The abacus is invented in Babylonia.

About 1300 The more familiar wire-and-bead abacus replaces the Chinesecalculating rods.

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4000-1200 B.C.Inhabitants ofthe first knowncivilization inSumer keeprecords ofcommercialtransactions onclay tablets.

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1612-1614 John Napier uses the printeddecimal point, devises logarithms, anduses numbered sticks, or Napiers Bones,for calculating.

1622 William Oughtredinvents the circularslide rule on the basisof Napier’s logarithms.

1623 William (Wilhelm)Schickard designs a“calculating clock” witha gear-driven carrymechanism to aid inmultiplication of multi-digit numbers.

1642-1643 Blaise Pascal creates a gear-drivenadding machine called the “Pascalene,” thefirst mechanical adding machine.

1666 In England,Samuel Morland produces amechanical calculator that can addand subtract.

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1786 J.H. Mueller envisions a“difference engine” but cannotget the funds to build it.

1674 Gottfried Leibniz builds the“Stepped Reckoner,” a calculator usinga stepped cylindrical gear.

1801 A linked sequence of punchedcards controls the weaving of patternsin Joseph-Marie Jacquard’s loom.

1774 Philipp-Matthaus Hahn builds andsells a small number of calculatingmachines precise to 12 digits.

1777 The third Earl of Stanhopeinvents a multiplying calculator.

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1811 — 1822

1811 Luddites destroymachinery that threatensto eliminate jobs.

1822 Charles Babbagebegins to design andbuild the DifferenceEngine.

1820 The ThomasArithmometer, basedon Leibniz’ stepped-drum principle, isdemonstrated to theFrench Academy of Science. It becomes thefirst mass-producedcalculator and sells formany years.

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1829 — 1838

1829 William Austin Burt patentsan awkward butworkable typewriter,the first writingmachine in America.

1838 In JanuarySamuel Morseand Alfred Vaildemonstrate elements of the telegraph system.

1834-35 Babbage shifts his focus todesigning the Analytical Engine.

1832 Babbage andJoseph Clement produce a portion of the Difference Engine.

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1842 — 1854

1842-43 Augusta Ada,Countess of Lovelace,translates LuigiMenabrea’s pamphleton the AnalyticalEngine, adding herown commentary.

1847-49 Babbage completes 21 drawings forthe second version of the Difference Engine but does not complete construction.

1844 SamuelMorse sends atelegraph message fromWashington toBaltimore.

1854 George Boole publishes “An Investigation of the Laws of Thought,” describing a system for symbolic andlogical reasoning that will becomethe basis for computer design.

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1858 — 1882

1876-1878 BaronKelvin builds aharmonic analyzer and tide predictor.

1876 AlexanderGraham Bellinvents andpatents the telephone.

1882 William S. Burroughsleaves his bank clerk’s jobdetermined to invent anadding machine.

1861 A transcontinentaltelegraph line connects theAtlantic and Pacific coasts.

1858 Atelegraphcable spansthe AtlanticOcean forthe firsttime andprovidesservice fora few days.

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1889 — 1901

1901 Thekeypunchappears andchangesvery littleover thenext halfcentury.

1896 Hollerith establishes the Tabulating Machine Company.

1895 GuglielmoMarconi transmitsa radio signal.

1893 The firstfour-function calculator isinvented.

1889 Herman Hollerith’s Electric Tabulating Sys-tem outperforms the competition and in the fallis selected for use in the 1890 census.

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1904 — 1911

1906 Lee de Forest adds a third valve tocontrol current flow to Fleming’s diode tocreate the three-electrode vacuum tube.

1911 Hollerith’s Tabulating Machines Co. andtwo other companies combine to form C-T-R—Calculating, Tabulating, and Recording Co.

1911 Dutchphysicist KamerlinghOnnes at LeidenUniversity discovers superconductivity.

1908 British scientistCampbell Swintondescribes an electronicscanning method andforeshadows use of thecathode-ray tube for television.

1907 Gramophone musicconstitutes the first regular radiobroadcasts from New York.

1904 John A. Fleming patents the diode vacuum tube, setting the stagefor better radio communication.

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1912 The Instituteof Radio Engineers,which will eventuallymerge with otherorganizations toform the IEEE, is established.

1912 — 1924

1915 Use of microchips is foreshadowed asphysicist Manson Benedicks discovers thatthe germanium crystal can be used toconvert alternating current to direct current.

1924 T.J. Watsonrenames CTRto IBM andpopularizes the“Think” slogan hecoined at NationalCash Register.

1920-1921 The word “robot” (derived fromthe Czech word for compulsory labor) is firstused by Karel Câpek in his play RUR (Rossum’sUniversal Robots).

1919 Eccles and Jordan, US physicists,invent the flip-flop electronic switchingcircuit critical to high-speed electroniccounting systems.

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1930 The DifferentialAnalyzer, devised byVannevar Bush and colleagues at MIT, solvesvarious differentialequations.

1927 — 1934

1928 The quartz crystalclock makes possibleunprecedented time-keeping accuracy.

1927 Herbert Hoover’s faceis seen on screen during the first demonstration of television in the US. Accompanying voice transmission uses telephone wires.

1929 Color television signals are successfullytransmitted.

1934 In Germany, KonradZuse seeks to build a bettercalculating machine thanthose currently available.

1931 Reynold B. Johnson, a high school teacher inMichigan, devises a way toscore multiple-choice testsby sensing conductive pencil marks on answersheets. IBM later buys thetechnology.

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1935 — 1937

1937 Claude Shannonpublishes the principles for anelectric adder to the base two.

1936 Konrad Zuse realizesthat programs composedof bit combinations can be stored, and he files apatent application in Germany for theautomatic execution ofcalculations, including a“combination memory.”

1935 IBM introduces notonly the 601 multiplyingpunch-card machine butalso an electric typewriter.

1937 George Stibitz developsa binary circuit based onBoolean algebra.

1937 Howard Aiken submits to IBM a proposal for a digital calculating machine capable ofperforming the four fundamentaloperations of arithmetic andoperating in a predeterminedsequence.

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1937— 1939

1937 John Vincent Atanasoffspends the winter devising theprinciples for an electronic-digital computer.

1937 AlanTuring’spaper “OnComputableNumbers”presents theconcept ofthe Turingmachine.

1938 William Hewlett andDavid Packard form Hewlett-Packard in a garage in Palo Alto,California.

1939 Working from October through November,John Vincent Atanasoff, with help from graduatestudent Clifford E. Berry, buildsa prototype electronic-digital computer that uses binary arithmetic.

1938 Zusecompletes the Z1electromechanicalbinary computerand refines thedesign with theZ2.

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1943 In December, Colossus, a British vacuum tube computer, becomes operational at Bletchley Park through the combined efforts of AlanTuring, Tommy Flowers, and M.H.A. Newman. It is considered the first all-electronic calculating device.

1940 — 1944

1941 Zuse completes the Z3, the first fully functional program-controlled electromechanical digital computer.

1940 Konrad Zuse completes the Z2, whichuses telephone relays instead of mechanicallogical circuits.

1943 On May 31, 1943, con-struction begins on theENIAC at the Moore Schoolof Electrical Engineering inPhiladelphia.

1944 The Harvard Mark I (a.k.a. IBMAutomatic Sequence Controlled Calculator [ASCC]), produced byHoward Aiken, is dedicated at HarvardUniversity on August 7, 1944.

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1945

1945 Zuse’s Z4 survivesWorld War II and helpslaunch postwar devel-opment of scientificcomputers in Germany.

1945 By spring ofthe year, ENIAC isup and running.

1945 J. Presper Eckert and JohnMauchly sign a contract to build theEDVAC (ElectronicDiscrete VariableAutomaticComputer).

1945 John vonNeumann introduces the concept of a storedprogram in a June 30draft report on the EDVAC design.

1945 In July, Vannevar Bush’s AsWe May Think is published in theAtlantic Monthly.

1945 Working on a prototype of the Mark II,in the summer Grace Murray Hopper finds thefirst computer “bug,” a moth that had causeda relay failure.

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1946

1946 The American Institute ofElectrical Engineers establishes aSubcommittee on Large-Scale Calculating Devices—the origin of today’s IEEE Computer Society.

1946 Alan Turing publishes a report on his design for ACE (Auto-matic Computing Engine), featuringrandom extraction of information.

1946 ENIAC, designed by J. PresperEckert and John Mauchly, is unveiledat the University of Pennsylvania onFebruary 14.

1946 ArthurBurks, HermanGoldstine, andJohn vonNeumann write“Preliminary Discussion of theLogical Design of an Electronic Computing Instrument.”

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1947 In July, Howard Aiken and his teamcomplete the Harvard Mark II.

1947 — 1948

1947 On December 23, Bell Labs management is informed by John Bardeen and WalterBrattain that along with William Shockleythey have developed the first transistor.

1947-48 The magneticdrum memory is introduced as a datastorage device forcomputers.

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1948 On June 21, the Manchester Mark I, or“baby” machine, becomes the first operationalstored-program digital computer. It used vacuum tube, or valve, circuits.

1948 Claude Shannon publishes“A MathematicalTheory of Communication,”formulating themodernunderstanding ofthe communicationprocess.

1948 Richard Hamming devises a way to find and correct errors in blocks of data. The Hamming code is subsequently used incomputer and telephone switching systems.

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1948 — 1950

1950 The Pilot ACE is completed atEngland’s National Physical Laboratoryand runs its first program on May 10.

1949 TheWhirlwindcomputer,constructedunder theleadership ofJay Forrester atMIT to be thefirst real-timecomputer, isplaced in serviceduring the thirdquarter. Itcontained 5,000vacuum tubes.

1949 EDSAC (Electronic Delayed StorageAutomatic Computer), a stored-programcomputer built by Maurice Wilkes atCambridge University, England, performsits first calculation on May 6.

1949 Short Order Code, developed byJohn Mauchly, is thought to be the first high-level programming language.

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1948 The SSEC (SelectiveSequence Electronic Calculator),using both electronics and relays,is dedicated on January 24.

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1950-1951

1950 The Standards WesternAutomatic Computer (SWAC), builtunder Harry Huskey’s leadership, isdedicated at UCLA on August 17.

1950 Alan Turing publishes an article in the journal Mindestablishing the criteria for the Turing Test of machineintelligence.

1950 Remington Rand buysthe Eckert-Mauchly ComputerCorporation.

1951 The first Univac I is delivered tothe US Census Bureau in March.

1951 Jay Forrester files a patentapplication for the matrix corememory on May 11.

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1951-1952Grace Murray Hopperdevelops A-0, the first compiler.

1951 David Wheeler,Maurice Wilkes, andStanley Gill introduce sub-programs and the “Wheelerjump” as a means toimplement them.

1951 William Shockley invents thejunction transistor.

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1951 Maurice Wilkes originates the concept of micro-programming,a techniqueproviding an orderly approachto designing a computer system’s control section.

1951 Betty Holbertoncreates a sort-mergegenerator, apredecessor of the compiler.

1952 John von Neumann’s IAS bit-parallelmachine is completed in June for theInstitute ofAdvanced Studiesat Princeton,New Jersey.

1952

1952 Illiac I is builtat the University ofIllinois, Urbana-Champaign; Ordvacis built by the USArmy. Both usevon Neumannarchitecture.

1952 The EDVAC runs its firstproduction program on January 28.

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1952 The IBM701—the DefenseCalculator—is introduced inDecember.

1952 Thomas Watson Jr.becomes president of IBM.

1952 On television, a Univac Ipredicts the outcome of the presidential election and expandsthe public consciousnessregarding computers.

1952 The Institute of RadioEngineers initiates the Transactionsof the I.R.E. Electronics Groupon Electronic Computers, apredecessor to theIEEE Transactions on Computers.

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1953 Kenneth Olsen uses Jay For-rester’s ferrite-core memory tobuild the Memory Test computer.

1953 — 1954

1953 The IBM650, known asthe MagneticDrum Calculator,debuts andbecomes thefirst mass-producedcomputer.

1953 After several years of development,LEO, a commercial version of EDSAC builtby the Lyons Company in the UK, goesinto service.

1954 Earl Masterson’s Uniprinter, or lineprinter, developed for computers, executes600 lines per minute.

1954 TexasInstrumentsintroduces thesilicon transistor,pointing the wayto lowermanufacturing costs.

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1954 — 1957

1957 John Backus andcolleagues at IBM deliverthe first Fortran (formulatranslator) compiler toWestinghouse.

1956-57 IBM introduces and begins installing the RAMAC (random-access method of accounting and control) for hard disk data storage.

1956 A Univac with transistors and designedfor commercial use isintroduced.

1956 Fuji Photo Film Co. inJapan develops a 1,700-vacuum-tube computer forlens design calculations.

1954 The Univac1103A becomes thefirst commercialmachine with a ferrite-core memory.

1956 John McCarthy andMarvin Minsky chair ameeting at DartmouthCollege at which the concept of artificial intelligence is developed.

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cc Hello, world.c

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1957

1957-1958 Gordon Moore, RobertNoyce, and others found FairchildSemiconductor.

1957 Control Data is incorporated on July 8.

1957 John McCarthy forms MIT’sArtificial Intelligence Department.

1957 Russia launches Sputnik I into orbit onOctober 4, and the “space race” begins.

1957 Japan’s Electrotechnical Laboratory develops a transistorcomputer, the ETL Mark III, that uses130 transistors and 1,700 diodes.

1957 The Atlas Guidance Computer fromBurroughs, one of the first computers usingtransistors, helps control the launch of theAtlas missile.

1957 Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.develops the Musasino-1, the first parametroncomputer. It uses 519 vacuum tubes and 5,400parametrons—logic elements based on theprinciple of parametric excitation andinvented by Eiji Goto in 1954.

1958

1958 Bell’s development of the modem data phone enables telephonelines to transmit binary data.

1958 At Texas Instruments, Jack Kilbydevelops a prototype semiconductor ICwhile Robert Noyce works separatelyon ICs at Fairchild Semiconductor.

1958 Digital Equipment Corp. isfounded.

1958 The Whirlwind projectis extended to produce an airtraffic control system.

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1959 John McCarthy develops Lisp (listprocessing) for artificial intelligenceapplications.

1959 In June, Japan’s first commercial transistor computer, NECCorp.’s NEAC 2201, is demonstratedat an exhibition in Paris.

1959 The Committee onData Systems Languages(Codasyl) is formed to createCobol (Common BusinessOriented Language).

1959 Xerox introduces the firstcommercial copy machine.

000100 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.000200 PROGRAM-ID. HELLOWORLD.000300 DATE-WRITTEN.02/05/96 21:04.000400* AUTHOR JOHN JONES000500 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.000600 CONFIGURATION SECTION.000700 SOURCE-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL.000800 OBJECT-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL.000900001000 DATA DIVISION.001100 FILE SECTION.001200100000 PROCEDURE DIVISION.100100100200 MAIN-LOGIC SECTION.100300 BEGIN.100400 DISPLAY “ ” LINE 1 POSITION 1 ERASE EOS.100500 DISPLAY “HELLO, WORLD.” LINE 15 POSITION 10.100600 STOP RUN.100700 MAIN-LOGIC-EXIT.100800 EXIT.

000100 IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.000200 PROGRAM-ID. HELLOWORLD.000300 DATE-WRITTEN.02/05/96 21:04.000400* AUTHOR JOHN JONES000500 ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.000600 CONFIGURATION SECTION.000700 SOURCE-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL.000800 OBJECT-COMPUTER. RM-COBOL.000900001000 DATA DIVISION.001100 FILE SECTION.001200100000 PROCEDURE DIVISION.100100100200 MAIN-LOGIC SECTION.100300 BEGIN.100400 DISPLAY “ ” LINE 1 POSITION 1 ERASE EOS.100500 DISPLAY “HELLO, WORLD.” LINE 15 POSITION 10.100600 STOP RUN.100700 MAIN-LOGIC-EXIT.100800 EXIT.

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1959 UNESCO sponsors thefirst major internationalcomputer conference.

1959

1959 On July 30, Robert Noyce and GordonMoore file a patent application for integratedcircuit technology on behalf of the FairchildSemiconductor Corp.

1959 Jack Kilby atTexas Instrumentsdesigns a flip-flop IC.

1959 General Electric produces theGE ERMA to process checks in abanking application via magneticink character recognition.

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1960 At Cornell University, Frank Rosenblattbuilds a computer—the Perceptron—that canlearn by trial and error through a neural network.

1960 The Livermore Advance Research Computer(LARC) by Remington Rand is designed for scientific work and uses 60,000 transistors.

1960 In November, DEC introduces thePDP-1, the first commercial computerwith a monitor and keyboard input.

1960 Working at Rand Corp.,Paul Baran develops thepacket-switching principle fordata communications.

BEGINFILE F (KIND=REMOTE);EBCDIC ARRAY E [0:11];REPLACE E BY “HELLO WORLD!”;WHILE TRUE DO

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1960 Standardsfor Algol 60 areestablishedjointly byAmerican andEuropean computer scientists.

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1961 Fernando Corbató at MITdevelops a way for multipleusers to share computer time.

1961 Georg C.Devol patents arobotic device,which Unimationsoon markets asthe first industrialrobot. It is firstused to automatethe manufacture ofTV picture tubes.

1961 IBM’s 7030, orStretch, computer iscompleted and runsabout 30 timesfaster than the 704,leading to furtherexploration ofsupercomputing.

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1962-1963

1962 Atlas, considered the world’smost powerful computer, isinaugurated in England on December7. Its advances include virtual memoryand pipelined operations.

1962 The Telstar communicationssatellite is launched on July 10 andrelays the first transatlantic televisionpictures.

1962 H. Ross Perot founds ElectronicData Systems, which will become theworld’s largest computer service bureau.

1962 Stanford and Purdue Universitiesestablish the first departments ofcomputer science.

1962 Max V. Mathews leads a BellLabs team in developing software thatcan design, store, and edit synthesizedmusic.

1962 The first video game is invented by MITgraduate student Steve Russell. It is soonplayed in computer labs all over the US.

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1963 On the basis of an idea of AlanTuring’s, Joseph Weizenbaum at MITdevelops a “mechanical psychiatrist”called Eliza that appears to possessintelligence.

1963 At theUniversity ofCalifornia,Berkeley,Lotfi Zadehbegins workon fuzzylogic.

1963

1963 In January, Ivan Sutherland intro-duces Sketchpad, leading to the consol-idation of computer graphics.

1963 The SAGE system for military defense isfully deployed at a total project cost of about $8billion. Many of its technological advances provebeneficial to the entire computer industry.

1963 The Institute of RadioEngineers and the AmericanInstitute of Electrical Engineersmerge to form the IEEE.

1963 TheAmericanNational StandardsInstituteaccepts ASCII7-bit code forinformationexchange.

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1964

1964 IBM’s seven-year-long Sabre project,allowing travel agents anywhere to make airline reservations, is fully implemented.

1964 IBM announces the System/360“third-generation” line of computers.

1964 Basic (Beginner’sAll-Purpose SymbolicInstruction Code) isdeveloped at Dartmouthby John Kemeny andThomas Kurtz. It spawnsmany variations.

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1964 Doug Engelbartinvents the mouse.

1964

1964 IBMdevelops acomputer-aided designsystem.

1964 With a speed of9 megaflops, ControlData Corp.’s CDC 6600,designed by SeymourCray, claims the title of first commercially successful supercomputer.

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1965 Maurice Wilkesproposes the use of acache memory on thebasis of an idea byGordon Scarott.

1965 DEC debuts the first minicomputer, the PDP-8, which used transistor circuitrymodules.

1965 J.A. Robinson developsunification, the underpinningof logic programming andimportant to many of today’sprogramming technologies.

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1965 At the University ofBelgrade, Rajko Tomovicmakes one of the earliestattempts to develop anartificial limb with a senseof touch.

1965 Project MAC, a large collaborativetime-sharing project, leads to the Multicsoperating system.

1967 — 1968

1967 Fairchild introduces its3800 8-bit ALU chip.

1967 Ole-Johan Dahl and KristenNygaard at the Norwegian ComputingCentre complete a general-purposeversion of the language Simula, thefirst object-oriented language.

1968 A conference sponsored by the NATOScience Committee addresses the “software crisis” and introducesthe term “software engineering.”

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1967 Donald Knuth writes about algorithms and data structures as entities separate from the programsthey are used in.

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1967 At Texas Instruments, Jack Kilby,Jerry Merryman, andJames Van Tasselinvent a four-functionhandheld calculator.

1968 Edsger Dijkstra writes about the harmful effects of the gotostatement, and interest in structured programming burgeons.

1968

1968 Robert Noyce, AndyGrove, and Gordon Mooreestablish Intel, which isincorporated on July 18.

1968 The first computers toincorporate integrated circuits—the B2500 and B3500—are introduced by Burroughs.

1968 The Seymour Cray-designedCDC 7600 supercomputer achieves40-megaflops performance.

1968 A Federal Information Processing Standard encouragesuse of the six-digit data format(YYMMDD) for information interchange, sowing the seeds of the “Year 2000 Crisis.”

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1968 The Rand Corp. presents adecentralized communicationsnetwork concept to ARPA.

1969 — 1970

1969 Bell Labs withdraws fromProject MAC, which developed Multic, and begins to develop Unix.

1969 The RS-232-C standard isintroduced to facilitate data exchangebetween computers and peripherals.

1969 The US Department of Defensecommissions Arpanet for researchnetworking, and the first four nodesbecome operational at UCLA, UCSanta Barbara, SRI, and the Universityof Utah.

1970 Winston Roycepublishes “Managingthe Development ofLarge SoftwareSystems,” whichoutlines the waterfalldevelopment method.

1970 Shakey,developed at SRIInternational, isthe first robot touse artificialintelligence tonavigate.

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1970 Unix is developed at Bell Labs by Dennis Ritchie and Kenneth Thomson.

1970

1970 RCA’s MOS (metal-oxidesemiconductor) technologypromises cheaper and smaller ICs.

1970 Xerox establishes the Palo AltoResearch Center at Stanford Universityfor computer research.

1970 The floppy disk andthe daisywheel printermake their debut.

1970 E.F. Codd describes therelational model.

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1970 The Computer Group Newsbecomes Computer, a monthlymagazine for all Computer Societymembers.

1971

1971 David Parnasdescribes theprinciple ofinformation hiding.

1971 Niklaus Wirth developsPascal, a predecessor to Modula-2.

1971 TheIEEE ComputerGroupbecomes theIEEE ComputerSociety.

1971 The team of Ted Hoff,S. Mazor, and F. Fagindevelops the Intel 4004microprocessor—a“computer on a chip.”

1971 Don Hoefler writes a series of articles for ElectronicNews called “Silicon Valley USA,” using in print the namethat had been adopted to describe the area.

1971 Ray Tomlinsonof Bolt Beranekand Newmansends the firstnetwork e-mailmessage.

Program Hello (Input, Output);

BeginWriteln (‘Hello World!’);

End.

http://www.latec.edu/~acm/HelloWorld.shtml

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1972 Dennis Ritchiedevelops C at BellLabs, so namedbecause its predecessor wasnamed B.

1972

1972 Nolan Bushnell’s Pongvideo game is so successfulthat he founds Atari.

1972 Intel’s 8008, the first 8-bit microprocessor, appearsbut is soon replaced by the8080.

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1972 Smalltalk isdeveloped byXerox PARC’sLearning ResearchGroup, based largely on the ideas of Alan Kay.

1972 Hand-held calculators becomepopular, making the slide rule obsolete.

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1972 In Wimbledon,England, anexperimentalcomputerized axialtomography imagerfinds a brain tumorin a patient.1972 Analytic complexity theory develops

the idea of NP-completeness, showingthat a large class of computing problems,such as the “traveling salesman problem,”may be computationally intractable.

1972 Wang, VYDEC,and Lexitron allintroduce word pro-cessing systems.

1972 DEC’s PDP 11/45 is introduced, its circuitry encased in chips.

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1972 Alain Colmerauer at the University ofMarseille develops Prolog, which popularizeskey logic programming concepts.

http://www.latec.doc/~acm/HelloWorld.shtml

% HELLO WORLD Works with Sbp (prolog)

hello :-printstring (“HELLO WORLD!!!!”)

printstring ([])printstring ([H|T]) :- put (H), printstring (T).

1973 Researchers at Xerox PARCdevelop an experimental PC calledAlto that uses a mouse, Ethernet,and a graphical user interface.

1972 — 1973

1973 Alan Kay develops a forerunnerof the PC. His “office computer,” basedon Smalltalk, employs icons, graphics,and a mouse.

1972 SteveWozniak buildsa “blue box”tone generatorto make freephone callsand sells themin the dorm atUC Berkeley.

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1973 Work begins on theTransmission Control Protocol at a Stanford University laboratoryheaded by Vinton Cerf.

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1973 — 1974

1973 Through a technique called large-scale integration, 10,000 componentsare placed on a 1-sq-cm chip.

1973 John Vincent Atanasoff is recognizedas the creator of the modern computerwhen a federal judge invalidates Eckertand Mauchly’s ENIAC patent.

1974 A 4-KbitD-RAM chipbecomescommerciallyavailable.

1974 An article inRadio Electronicsdescribes how tobuild a “personalminicomputer,”the Mark-8.

1974 In Stockholm,chess-playingcomputers engagein their firsttournament.

1973 Robert Metcalfe writes a memo on“Ether Acquisition,” which describes theEthernet as a modified Alohanet.

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1974 At Xexoc PARC,Charles Simonyiwrites the firstWYSIWYGapplication, Bravo.

1975

1975 IBM introducesthe laser printer.

1975 Michael Jackson describes amethod to treat a program’s structureas a reflection of a problem’sstructure, a precursor to the JacksonSystem Development method.

1975 Frederick Brooks writes The Mythical Man-Month, which describes softwaredevelopment as “the mortal struggle of great beasts inthe tar pits” and advises that adding more people to alate project only makes it later.

1975 John Cocke works on the 801 project at IBM to develop a minicomputer withthe yet-unnamedRISC architecture.

1975 The firstPC, an Altair8800, availableas a kit,appears on thecover of Popu-lar Electronicsin January.

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1976

1976 IBM develops theink-jet printer.

1976 The Cray-1 from Cray Research isthe first supercomputer with a vectorialarchitecture.

1976 OnTyme, the firstcommercial e-mail service,finds a limited marketbecause the installed baseof potential users is toosmall.

1976 Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniakdesign and build the Apple I , whichconsists mostly of a circuit board.

1976 Gary Kildall developsthe CP/M operating systemfor 8-bit PCs.

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1977 The Apple II isannounced in the springand establishes thebenchmark for personalcomputers.

1977

1977 Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniakincorporate Apple Computer on January 3.

1977 Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Microsoft,setting up shop first in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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1977 Several companiesbegin experimentingwith fiber-optic cable.

1977-1978

1977 PCs from Tandy and Commodore come with built-inmonitors and thus require notelevision hookup.

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1978 DEC introduces the VAX 11/780, a32-bit computer that becomes popular fortechnical and scientific applications.

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1978 — 1979

1978 Wordstar isintroduced andgoes on tobecome a widelyused wordprocessor withCP/M systemsand later on DOScomputers.

1978 Intel’s first 16-bitprocessor, the 8086, debuts.

1978 Tom DeMarco’s StructuredAnalysis and System Specificationpopularizes structured analysis.

1978 Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adelman proposethe RSA cipher as a public-keycryptosystem for enciphering digital transmissions.

1979 Benoit Mandelbrot continues hisresearch into fractals by generating aMandelbrot set, derived from z(n + 1) =z(n) * z(n) − (0).

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1979

1979 The first electronic spreadsheetprogram, Don Bricklin’s and Bob Franston’sVisiCalc, is unveiled on May 11 and proves tobe the “killer app” for early PCs.

1979 Motorolaintroduces the 68000chip, which will latersupport the Macintosh.

1979 Cellular telephones aretested in Japan and Chicago.

1979 Digital videodisksappear through theefforts of Sony andPhilips.

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1980After a long development period, the Adalanguage emerges. Developed by the US Department of Defense, it is designed for process control and embedded applications.

1980

1980 Wayne Ratliff develops dBaseII, the first version of a PC databaseprogram. It goes on to enjoy widemarket success.

1980 IBM selects PC-DOS from upstartMicrosoft as the operating system forits new PC.

with i_o; use i_o;procdure hello isbegin

put (“Hello World!”);end Hello;

1980 The Osborne 1 “portable” computer weighs 24 pounds and is the size of a small suitcase.

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1980-1981

1981 The open-architecture IBM PC is launched inAugust, signaling to corporate America that desktopcomputing is going mainstream.

1981 Japan grabs a big piece of thechip market by producing chipswith 64 Kbits of memory.

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1980 David A. Patterson atUC Berkeley begins usingthe term “reduced-instructionset” and, with John Hennessyat Stanford, develops the concept.

1981 Xerox introduces acommercial version of the Altocalled the Xerox Star.

1981 Barry Boehm devises Cocomo(Constructive Cost Model), asoftware cost-estimation model.

1982 Columbia DataProducts produces thefirst IBM PC “clone.”Compaq soon followswith its own version.

1982

1982 Time magazinenames the computer asits “Man of the Year.”

1982 John Warnockdevelops the PostScriptpage-descriptionlanguage and withCharles Geschke foundsAdobe Systems.

1982 Autodesk isfounded and ships thefirst version of AutoCADlater that year.

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1982 The Cray X-MP (two Cray-1 computers linked in parallel) provesthree times faster than a Cray-1.

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1982 — 1983

1982 In November, Compaq unveils anIBM-compatible portable PC.

1982 Japan launches its “fifthgeneration” computer project, focusingon artificial intelligence.

1982 Commercial e-mail service beginsamong 25 cities.

1983 A Josephson junction isdeveloped on the basis of BrianJosephson’s 1962 prediction, bringing higher speed and lowerpower dissipation to ICs.

1983 The IBM PC-XT heads for marketsuccess, while the PC Junior faces quickextinction.

1983 Completion of the TCP/IPswitchover marks the creation of theglobal Internet.

1983 By includinggraphics such aspie charts and bargraphs, Lotus 1-2-3 does for theIBM PC whatVisiCalc did forthe Apple II.

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1983 Thinking Machines Corp. andNcube are founded, providing aboost to parallel processing.

1983

1983 Though not destined for commercial success,Apple’s Lisa, launched in May, shows what can be donewith a mouse, icons, and pulldown menus.

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1983 At AT&T Bell Labs,Bjarne Stroustrup continueswork on C++, an OOextension to C.

1984

1984 MIDI (MusicalInstrument Digital Interface) standards are developed for interfacing computersand digital music synthesizers.

1984 The CD-ROM, introduced by Sonyand Philips, provides significantly greaterstorage capacity for digital data.

1984 Apple gives computer graphics aboost with its MacPaintprogram.

1984 In January, the Macintosh isunveiled with a publicity campaignthat includes an Orwellian-themed adduring the Super Bowl.

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Scientific perspective of change: Fluid-dynamics applications

1984 A motion picture, The Last Starfighter,uses extensive supercomputer-generatedgraphics.

1984

1984 NEC manufactures a256-Kbit chip, and IBMintroduces a 1-Mbit RAMchip.

1984 Motorola introducesthe MC68020 with 250,000transistors.

1984 Beginningin August,Intel’s 16-bit80286 chip,installed inIBM’s new PC AT, expandsdesktopcomputer capabilities.

1984 In Neuromancer, novelistWilliam Gibson coins the term“cyberspace.”

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1985

1985 The National Science Foundationestablishes fournational supercomputing centers.

1985 With thedevelopmentof Windows 1.0,Microsoft brings Macintosh-like features toDOS-compatible computers.

1985 Inmos introducestransputers, featuringconcurrent processingarchitecture.

1985 Supercomputer speeds reach 1 billionoperations per second with the release ofthe Cray 2 and Thinking Machines’ parallel-processor Connection Machine.

1985 The Omnibot2000 from TonyKyogo can move,talk, and carryobjects.

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1985 In October, Intelintroduces the 80386 chipwith 32-bit processing and on-chip memorymanagement.

1985

1985 Paul Brainard’s PageMakerbecomes the first PC desktop publishing program and is widelyused, first on the Macintosh andlater on IBM compatibles.

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PROCESS EVOLUTION

1986 — 1987

1987 Experimental 4-and 16-Mbit chips areintroduced.

1986 The four-processorCray XP performs 713 millionfloating-point operationsper second.

1987 Watts Humphrey(pictured) and WilliamSweet, of the SoftwareEngineering Institute,publish a “processmaturity framework,”which becomes the Capability Maturity Model, designed to help predicta developer’s ability to produce reliable software.

1986 An article in the WallStreet Journal helps to popularize theconcept and term CASE, forcomputer-aided software engineering.

1988

1988 Motorola’s 32-bit 88000 series ofRISC microprocessors offer processingspeeds of up to 17 million instructionsper second.

1988 Graduate student RobertMorris Jr. reveals the need forgreater network security byreleasing a worm program intothe Internet on November 2.

1988 Barry Boehm publishes adescription of the spiral modelof software development,which recognizes the need toincrementally build systems.

1988 Steve Jobs’ Next computer debuts but,despite advanced features, attracts too fewbuyers to compete in the market.

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1989 — 1990

1990 Microsoft introduces Windows 3.0in May, intensifyingits legal dispute with Apple over the soft-ware’s “look and feel” resemblance to theMacintosh operating system.

1989 Intel’s 80486 chip with1.2 million transistors isintroduced in April.

1989 Seymour Cray foundsCray Computer Corp. andbegins developing the Cray 3using gallium arsenide chips.

1989 Tim Berners-Lee proposesthe World Wide Web project toCERN (European Council forNuclear Research).

1989 The first set of SPECbenchmarks is released, facilitatingmachine performance comparisonsfor scientific computation tasks.

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1991 The Japanese Ministry of Trade andIndustry abandons its program to build afifth-generation computer and plansinstead for a sixth-generation computerto be based on neural networks.

1990 — 1991

1990 Berners-Lee writes the initialprototype for the World Wide Web,which uses his other creations:URLs, HTML, and HTTP.

1990 Hewlett-Packard and IBM bothannounce RISC-based computers.

1990 Intel’s i486 and iPSC/860, andMotorola’s 68040 become available.

1990 Scientists at Bell Labs demonstrate the first all-opticalprocessor on January 29.

1991 IBM, Motorola, and Apple’s PowerPCalliance is announced on July 30.

1990 Arpanet is officiallydecommissioned.

1991 Cray Research unveils the Cray Y-MP C90 with 16 processors and a speed of 16 Gflops. U

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1992 — 1993

1992 DEC introduces the first chipto implement its 64-bit RISC Alphaarchitecture.

1992 In March, the first M-bone audiomulticast is transmitted on the Net.

1992 After generatinggreat concern in earlyMarch, the Michelangelovirus results in little actualdamage.

1993 Apple releases the Newton, the first popular personal digital assistant. It usesa stylus pen, and the first generation suffersfrom poor handwriting recognition.

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1993 Intel’s Pentium isintroduced in March.

1993 — 1994

1993 Students and staff at the University ofIllinois’ National Center for SupercomputingApplications create a graphical user interfacefor Internet navigation called NCSA Mosaic.

1994 Leonard Adleman of the University of Southern Californiademonstrates that DNA can be used as a computing medium.

1994 Netscape’s first browserbecomes available in Septemberand creates a rapidly growing body of Web surfers.

1994 In April, Jim Clark and MarcAndreesen found Netscape Communications (originally Mosaic Communications).

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1995 — 1996

1996 The Intel PentiumPro is announced.

1996 The IEEE ComputerSociety celebrates its50th anniversary.

1995 Toy Story is thefirst full-length feature movie completely computergenerated.

1995 Windows 95 is launched onAugust 24 with great fanfare.

1995 The Javaprogramminglanguage, unveiledin May, enablesplatform-independent application development.“Duke” is the firstapplet.

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