Computer-A history

ENIAC( Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems.^]

ENIAC was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory. When ENIAC was announced in 1946 it was heralded in the press as a “Giant Brain”. It boasted speeds one thousand times faster than electro-mechanical machines, a leap in computing power that no single machine has since matched. This mathematical power, coupled with general-purpose programmability, excited scientists and industrialists. The inventors promoted the spread of these new ideas by teaching a series of lectures on computer architecture.

The ENIAC’s design and construction was financed by the United States Army during World War II. The construction contract was signed on June 5, 1943, and work on the computer began in secret by the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering starting the following month under the code name “Project PX”. The completed machine was announced to the public the evening of February 14, 1946 and formally dedicated the next day at the University of Pennsylvania, having cost almost $500,000 (nearly $6 million in 2010, adjusted for inflation). It was formally accepted by the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps in July 1946. ENIAC was shut down on November 9, 1946 for a refurbishment and a memory upgrade, and was transferred to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland in 1947. There, on July 29, 1947, it was turned on and was in continuous operation until 11:45 p.m. on October 2, 1955.

ENIAC was conceived and designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania.^[9] The team of design engineers assisting the development included Robert F. Shaw (function tables), Chuan Chu (divider/square-rooter), Thomas Kite Sharpless (master programmer), Arthur Burks (multiplier), Harry Huskey (reader/printer) and Jack Davis (accumulators).

Computer History Year/Enter	Computer History Inventors/Inventions	Computer History Description of Event
1936	Konrad Zuse – Z1 Computer	First freely programmable computer.
1942	John Atanasoff & Clifford Berry ABC Computer	Who was first in the computing biz is not always as easy as ABC.
1944	Howard Aiken & Grace Hopper Harvard Mark I Computer	The Harvard Mark 1 computer.
1946	John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly ENIAC 1 Computer	20,000 vacuum tubes later…
1948	Frederic Williams & Tom Kilburn Manchester Baby Computer & The Williams Tube	Baby and the Williams Tube turn on the memories.
1947/48	John Bardeen, Walter Brattain & Wiliam Shockley The Transistor	No, a transistor is not a computer, but this invention greatly affected the history of computers.
1951	John Presper Eckert & John W. Mauchly UNIVAC Computer	First commercial computer & able to pick presidential winners.
1953	International Business Machines IBM 701 EDPM Computer	IBM enters into ‘The History of Computers‘.
1954	John Backus & IBM FORTRAN Computer Programming Language	The first successful high level programming language.
1955 (In Use 1959)	Stanford Research Institute, Bank of America, and General Electric ERMA and MICR	The first bank industry computer – also MICR (magnetic ink character recognition) for reading checks.
1958	Jack Kilby & Robert Noyce The Integrated Circuit	Otherwise known as ‘The Chip’
1962	Steve Russell & MIT Spacewar Computer Game	The first computer game invented.
1964	Douglas Engelbart Computer Mouse & Windows	Nicknamed the mouse because the tail came out the end.
1969	ARPAnet	The original Internet.
1970	Intel 1103 Computer Memory	The world’s first available dynamic RAM chip.
1971	Faggin, Hoff & Mazor Intel 4004 Computer Microprocessor	The first microprocessor.
1971	Alan Shugart &IBM The “Floppy” Disk	Nicknamed the “Floppy” for its flexibility.
1973	Robert Metcalfe & Xerox The Ethernet Computer Networking	Networking.
1974/75	Scelbi & Mark-8 Altair & IBM 5100 Computers	The first consumer computers.
1976/77	Apple I, II & TRS-80 & Commodore Pet Computers	More first consumer computers.
1978	Dan Bricklin & Bob Frankston VisiCalc Spreadsheet Software	Any product that pays for itself in two weeks is a surefire winner.
1979	Seymour Rubenstein & Rob Barnaby WordStar Software	Word Processors.
1981	IBM The IBM PC – Home Computer	From an “Acorn” grows a personal computer revolution
1981	Microsoft MS-DOS Computer Operating System	From “Quick And Dirty” comes the operating system of the century.
1983	Apple Lisa Computer	The first home computer with a GUI, graphical user interface.
1984	Apple Macintosh Computer	The more affordable home computer with a GUI.
1985	Microsoft Windows	Microsoft begins the friendly war with Apple.