Computer history

By race5144

  • Francis Bacon invents the Baconian Cipher

    Francis Bacon invents the Baconian Cipher
    Francis Bacon invents the Baconian Cipher, a device that used A's and B's to encode messages.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon%27s_cipher

  • Birth of the word "computer"

    The word "computer" was first recorded as being used in 1613 and was originally used to describe a person who performed calculations or computations. The definition of a computer remained the same until the end of the 19th century when it began referring to a machine that performed calculations.
    http://www.computerhope.com/history/1600.htm

  • Napiers Bones

    Napiers Bones
    John Napier introduced a system called "Napiers Bones," made from horn, bone or ivory the device allowed the capability of multiplying by adding numbers and dividing by subtracting.

  • Pascaline

    Pascaline
    Frances Blaise Pascal invents a machine, called the Pascaline, that can add, subtract, and carry between digits.

  • Punch Cards

    Punch Cards
    An early form of punch cards begin to be used in textile looms.

  • Telegraph

    Telegraph
    The first telegraph is built.

  • Semaphore Line

    Claude Chappe invents a semaphore line, a method of communicating over long distances.

  • Punch Cards

    Frances Joseph-Marie Jacquard completes his fully automated loom that is programmed by punched cards.

  • Arithometer

    Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar creates the "Arithometer", the first reliable, useful, and commercially successful calculating machine. The calculator could not only add but also subtract, multiply, and divide.

  • Silicon

    Silicon
    Baron Jons Jackob Berzelius discovers silicon (Si), which today is the basic component of an integrated circuit (IC).

  • First Photograph

    The earliest known surviving photograph is taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1825 of a view of a courtyard from his window.

  • Telegraph Type Device

    Harrison Dyar becomes the first person in the United States to invent a Telegraph type device.

  • Punch Cards

    S. Korsakov uses punch cards for the first time to store and search for information.

  • Morse Code

    Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail begin developing a code (later called Morse code) that used different numbers to represent the letters of the English alphabet and the ten digits.

  • phonograph

    The phonautograph (phonograph) is patented March 25, 1857 by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. The device was capable of transcribing sound to a medium.

  • Trans Atlantic Cable

    The first successful Trans-Atlantic cable is laid from Ireland to Newfoundland.

  • telephone

    Scottish-Canadian-American Alexander Graham Bell is often credited as inventing the telephone makes the first call March 10, 1876.

  • Light bulb

    Thomas Edison demos incandescent electric light bulb that lasts 13 1/2 hours October 21, 1879.

  • edison effect

    American Thomas Edison discovers the Edison effect, where an electric current flows through a vacuum.

  • AC electricity

    On May 1, 1893 Nikola Tesla helps power the worlds first fair powered by AC electricity in Chicago.

  • Tabulating machine

    Herman Hollerith starts the Tabulating Machine Company, the company later becomes the well-known computer company IBM (International Business Machines).

  • switch

    Nikola Tesla patents electrical logic circuits called "gates" or "switches".

  • Triode

    Lee De Frost files patent #879,532 on January 29, 1907 for the vacuum tube triode. This is later used as an electronic switch in the first electronic computer.

  • television

    Philo Taylor Farnsworth becomes the first person to successfully transmit a TV signal on September 7, 1927.