Milestones in the History of the Computer
(1826-1950)
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Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
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"It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculations which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used." Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) |
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The ENIAC, 1946, The world's first electronic digital computer: Two items: The first technical paper, and the first detailed technical description and photograph of the ENIAC.
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Charles Babbage, 1826, "On a Method of Expressing by Signs the Action of Machinery": "The most powerful formal method of describing switching systems until Boolean algebra was applied to the problem" (Hyman). |
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William Stanely Jevons, 1879, "On the Mechanical Performance of Logical Inference": Jevons's `logical piano' was the first machine to perform calculations at superhuman speed. |
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The Transistor, 1948, considered the most important invention of the information age: Four items: The first announcement, the first technical descriptions (two articles) and the famous semiconductor issue from Bell Labs exploring applications. |
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Alan Turing, 1950, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence": "He was in no doubt that one day computers would be able to
think" (ODS). |