History of Commercial Computer

Date	Inventor	Device	Details
c.3000 B.C	Babylonians	Abacus	Simple counting and calculating aid. Thought to have first been invented around this time
c.1200 A.D	unknown	Chinese abacus	In widespread use in China by this time (according to textbook)
c.1600	unknown	Japanese abacus	In widespread use in Japan by this time (according to textbook)
c.1600	John Napier	Napier’s Bones	Multiplication and division tool based on logarithms
1621	William Oughtred	Slide Rule	Similar in purpose and function to Napier’s Bones.  Based on logarithms also.  Popular up until the 1960’s.
1623	Wilhelm Schickard	Shickard’s Calculator	Interlocking geared wheels.  Not much known about it.
1642	Blaise Pascal	Pascaline	Could add, subtract, multiply and divide.
1673	Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz	Leibniz Calculator	Similar to Pascaline.  A mechanical calculating device.
1801-1804	Joseph Jacquard	Jacquard Loom	Weaving machine that could be “programmed” with punched cards.
1820	Thomas deColmar	deColmar’s Arithometer	First mass-produced mechanical calculator
1822-1833	Charles Babbage	Difference Engine	(Never completed) Steam powered. For calculating large tables of numbers for astronomy and engineering.  Would have had > 4000 gears levers and wheels.
1834	Charles Babbage	Analytical Engine	(Never completed) Embodied many of ideas of modern computers: memory, programmable processor, input/output capabilities.  Was to use punched cards, probably got that idea from Jacquard.  Ada Lovelace (daughter of the poet Lord Byron) also contributed and is considered the world’s first programmer.
1890	Herman Hollerith	Hollerith Tabulating Machine	Punched card tabulating machine created to tabulate results of the 1890 US Census. He incorporated as “The Tabulating Machine Company” which later became “International Business Machines” (a.k.a. IBM)
1937-1942	John V. Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry	Altanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)	First computer prototype to use vacuum tubes instead of mechanical switches. Also used the binary number system like a modern computer.
~1942-1945	Konrad Zuse	Z3	A binary computer.  Based on electromechanical relay switches.  But working under the Nazi regime in Germany, his work was unknown until much later.
1939	Howard Aiken (IBM sponsored)	Harvard Mark I	Electromechanical relay computer with many moving parts.  Used decimal number system.
1943	A British team incl. Alan Turing	COLLOSUS	Electronic device made to decode encrypted ENIGMA messages.  Made with vacuum tubes and based on binary arithmetic.
1943-1945	John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert	ENIAC	General purpose computer.  Vacuum tubes.  Designed to calculate trajectory tables for the US Army, but wasn’t finished until shortly after the war.  Programmed via switches and patch cables.
1951	Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp.	UNIVAC	First commercially successful digital computer.  Vacuum tubes.  Also used magnetic tape for storage.  Took punched cards too.  Remington-Rand is the corp that actually marketed and sold UNIVAC, because Eckert-Mauchly ran out of money.
Late 1950’s	Various	Various	“Second generation computers”, based on transistors.
1965	RCA	RCA Spectra 70	One of the first “Third Generation Computers” based on integrated circuits (IC)
1965	IBM	IBM 360	Another of the first “Third Generation Computers”. Based on IC technology.
1965	Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC)	PDP-8	First commercially successful minicomputer (also IC-based)
1971	Ted Hoff (INTEL)	Intel 4004	First “Fourth Generation Computer”, i.e. first microprocessor. That is, the first complete processor on a single chip built using integrated circuit technology.  Followed by 8008, 8085, 8080, 8086,8088,80286,80386,80486, 80586 (a.k.a “Pentium), Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium IV.
1974	Motorola	6800	Early predecessor of processor first used in Macintosh computers, the 68000.
1976	Zilog	Z80	Based on Intel’s 8080, versions still used today in embedded computing tasks.
1974	Jonathan A. Titus	Mark-8	Early hobbyist personal computer
1975	Ed Roberts	MITS Altair	First truly commercial hobbyist microcomputer.
1977	Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs	Apple I	Another early microcomputer kit for hobbyists.
1978	Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs	Apple II	Early personal computer with color graphics and actually useful software (VisiCalc)
1981	IBM	IBM PC	Predecessor of the most popular personal computer platform in use today.
1983	Apple Computer	Lisa	First commercial personal computer with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) based on ideas from Xerox PARC research lab.
1984	Apple Computer	Macintosh	First commercially successful computer with a GUI