| Concepts : History – a timeline of mostly technology related events | |
| From - The Past, The Present & The Future | |
Musings by Genisys Consultant, Nigel |
| 6500BC | The wheel is invented in Sumaria | |
| 3800BC | Mesopotamia develops cartography (maps), subdivides the circle into 360° | |
| 3500BC | Shadow Clock. An obelisk - with markings on the ground to delineate time | |
| 3200BC | Black ink appears in Egypt | |
| 2500BC | Cuneiform Script Alphabet developed by Sumarians | |
| 1500BC | The Sundial | |
| 0225BC | The Astrolabe | |
| 0045BC+ | Romans wrangle over dates. The Julian calendar is introduced. 8th, 9th & 10th months get relegated by 2 places. New additions named after Julius and Augustus. | |
| 0190 | The Abacus appears in China | |
| 0429 | The Vandals invade North Africa - and enter the Dictionary | |
| 0700 | The sand filled hourglass. Block printing develops in India | |
| 1300 |
The use of weights to effect a mechanical clock with an 'hourly' bell chime… Hour & Minute hands arrive later. Accuracy plus or minus 2 hours per day. | |
| 1400 |
The Coiled Spring & Escapement clock 'Moveable type' invented in Korea | |
| 1446 | Engraving of Christ with Crown of thorns, on metal become the worlds first 'printing plate'. | |
| 1455 | The Gutenberg Bible - the first printed book. | |
| 1581 | Galileo discovers the pendulum effect. (Time consistent regardless of arc length) | |
| 1587 | Mary Queen of Scots executed by Queen Elizabeth - Convicted by decryption of messages. | |
| 1590 | Compound microscope is invented by Zacharias Janssen in the Netherlands | |
| 1593 | Galileo develops the first thermometer | |
| 1605 | Hans Lippershey of the Netherlands develops the telescope | |
| 1609 | Galileo Galilei creates the astronomical telescope | |
| 1614 | John Napier discovers logarithms | |
| 1633 |
Inquisition forces Galileo to recant his belief in Copernican theory. (The bureaucracy doesn't want the Earth to revolve around the Sun. ) | |
| 1642 | Blaise Pascal invents the first Digital calculator. | |
| 1643 | Evangelista Torricelli invents the barometer | |
| 1653 | Peter Borel develops the first formula for invisible ink | |
| 1656 | The pendulum clock | |
| 1714 |
British Parliament offers a cash reward for the invention of a seaworthy clock (following the loss of a fleet foundered on the Isles of Scilly in 1707) |
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| 1761 |
John Harrison succeeds in producing a clock that will work at sea and is swindled by bureaucrats who block payment of the prize money. |
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| 1765 | Steam engine invented by James Watt | |
| 1798 | First lithograph is made by Aloys Senefelder | |
| 1800s | Eli Terry develops clock pattern parts enabling mass production & exchange parts for repairs. | |
| 1801 | Joseph Marle Jacquard develops the 'punched card' - programming for weaving machines | |
| 1816-27 | Joseph Nicephore Niepce develops the first paper negative and the first photograph | |
| 1829 | Braille invented by Louis Braille | |
| 1835 | Charles Babbage starts on the first "analytical engine" in the UK | |
| 1837 | The telegraph is invented by Samuel F. B. Morse & Alfred Vail in the US | |
| 1839 | The vulcanization process that creates rubber is discovered by Charles Goodyear in the US | |
| 1840 | First postage stamp created in the UK | |
| 1846 | Sewing machine is created by Elias Howe in the US | |
| 1852 |
Great Britain implements 'Greenwich mean Time' Elisha G. Otis invents a safety device making passenger elevators viable. Leon Foucault invents the Gyroscope |
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| 1854 | George Boole forwards Symbolic & Logical reasoning… Boolean Logic, the basis for manipulation of binary numbers. | |
| 1858 | The first telegraph cable spans the Atlantic Ocean - and works for a few days. | |
| 1867 | Christopher Sholes and Carlos Glider develop the first typewriter in the US. ( Although William Austin patented one in 1929 ) | |
| 1868 | First traffic signal is built by JP Knight in the UK | |
| 1869 | Ives W. McGaffey develops the vacuum cleaner | |
| 1876 | Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone in the US | |
| 1877 | Thomas A. Edison develops the gramophone and phonograph | |
| 1882 | William Burroughs quits being a bank clerk, to develop a practical adding machine. | |
| 1883 | First man-made fibre invented by Sir Joseph Swann in the UK | |
| 1884 |
Edward Butler creates the motorcycle in the UK Lewis E. Waterman creates the fountain pen in the US |
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| 1885 | Karl Benz develops the first automobile with an internal combustion engine | |
| 1884 | World delegates agree International time zones | |
| 1888 | George Eastman is father of the modern camera | |
| 1889 | Herman Holleriths' electric tabulating system wins data processing competition | |
| 1890 | American population census uses the Hollerith system | |
| 1893 | Thomas Edison develops the 'modern movie' | |
| 1895 |
Guglielmo
Marconi transmits the first radio signal Wilhelm Roentgen develops X-rays First lie-detector test developed by Cesare Lombroso |
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| 1899 | Valdermar Poulsen of Denmark develops the first tape recorder | |
| 1900 | The Paper clip is patented | |
| 1903 | Orville and Wilbur Wright invent the airplane | |
| 1911 |
Holleriths Tabulating Machine Company merges with two others to become CTR (The Calculating, Tabulating & Recording Company) |
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| 1914 | Mary Phelps Jacob first patents the brazierre | |
| 1914-8 | World War 1 acts as a catalyst to switch from pocket watches to wrist watches. | |
| 1916 | First successful use of sonar by Paul Langevin and M Chilowski | |
| 1917 | Russian Bolshevik Revolution | |
| 1921 |
Treaty of Versailles levies huge reparations against Germany and its allies Karel Capek coins the word Robot - derived from a Czech word meaning forced labour. |
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| 1924 | T.J.Watson renames CTR to International Business Machines - IBM | |
| 1936 | Jet propulsion engine by Sir Frank Whittle in the UK and Hans von Ohain in Germany | |
| 1937 | Chester F. Carlson first patents his ideas for xerography | |
| 1938 |
Krystallnacht (Crystal Night) - referring to smashed windows - in Germany. The state promotes anti-Semitism along with the removal of most other undesirables like the sick , infirm, Gypsies and homeless: Many Jews have their homes ransacked, are detained, injured or murdered in the ensuing riots. Czechslovakia is lost to the Nazis in a gesture of "appeasement" by the British and French William Hewlett & David Packard start business in garden garage Konrad Zeus develops an electro-mechanical binary computer |
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| 1939 | Germany invades Poland: Britain and France declare war on Germany: World War II. | |
| 1940 | The first copy machine is developed from Carlson's patent | |
| 1945 |
Atomic bomb developed in Los Alamos US by J. Robert Oppenheimer et al Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: World War II ends. Vannevar Bush proposes hypertext |
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| 1947 |
Holograph is invented in the UK by Dennis Gabor Microwave oven created by Percy Spencer in the US Edwin Land invents the Polaroid camera |
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| 1948 | Invention of Transistor ("Transfer Resistor") at Bell Labs. | |
| 1949 | Jay Forrester at MIT launches the first 'real-time' computer. (as opposed to batch processor) | |
| 1950 | Remington Rand buys the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation | |
| 1950s | Electronic Quartz crystal vibrators re-define accuracy capability of timepieces | |
| 1952 | British Radar technician forwards the concept of multiple components etched on a block. | |
| 1953 | The J Lyons company put LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) into service | |
| 1954 | Texas Instruments (TI) start commercial production of Transistors. | |
| 1955 | Fibre optics invented by Narinder Kapamy in the UK | |
| 1956 |
IBM produce the first Hard Disk Fuji Photo Film Co. develops a 1700 valve computer for lens design calculations |
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| 1957 |
Burroughs supplies the Atlas Missile Guidance computer Russia launches the Sputnik 1 - starting the 'Space Race'. |
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| 1958 | Bell develop the Data Phone enabling binary data to travel by phone line. | |
| 1959 | TI & Fairchild both announce the invention/s of an Integrated Circuit | |
| 1960 |
DEC (Digital Equipment Company) build first Mini-computer Theo Maiman develops first laser, Paul Baran at Rand Corp. develops Packet Switching technology Frank Rosenblatt builds the Perceptron at Cornell University… A computer that can learn by trial & error through a neural network. DEC introduces the PDP-1 : The first commercial computer with a monitor & keyboard |
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| 1961 |
Fairchild produces first commercial Integrated Circuit George Devol patents the first Robotic Device, built later by Unimation. |
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| 1962 |
Bell Labs develop software program for synthesizing music Stanford & Purdue Universities establish first Computer Science departments. Telstar communications satellite is launched enabling transatlantic television Joseph Weizenbaum develops the 'Eliza' psychological analyst software program - aimed at passing the Turing Test. |
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| 1963 |
The American National Standards Institute agrees the ASCII code. The SAGE defense system is deployed costing about 58 billion dollars. |
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| 1964 |
Airline reservations go on-line as a result of IBMs Sabre project. Seymour Cray at CDC launches a 9 megaflops system - the first 'supercomputer'. Doug Engelbart invents the Mouse. |
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| 1965 | Kemeny & Kurtz release BASIC | |
| 1966 | Bell Labs announce invention of Magnetic bubble memory | |
| 1967 |
IBM makes the first floppy disk. 8 inch, one sided - read only. The Atomic Clock … (based on Caesium 133 oscillations. Accurate to 1 second in 1.4 million years) |
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| 1968 |
IBM gets
patent on first Dynamic Random Access Memory (RAM) Burroughs launches the first computers based on integrated circuits Intel is Incorporated Rand Corp. presents a decentralised communications network concept to ARPA. |
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| 1969 |
Xerox demonstrate the concept of using a laser beam to produce print images Bell Labs begins development of Unix US Defense department commissions ARPANet with UCLA, SRI UC Santa Barbara and University of Utah as the first operational nodes. (So, in 1969 there were 4 organisations on the Internet") |
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| 1970 |
Xerox opens the Palo Alto Research Centre - Xerox PARC Plessey Telecommunications invent the 'Bar Code' in the UK Liquid crystal display (LCD) invented by Hoffmann-LaRoche in Switzerland The Daisywheel printer makes its debut. |
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| 1971 |
Intel starts production of the first programmable chip for Busicom of Japan - the 4004 (The first run in 1970 failed). Then the first (4 bit) microcomputer chipset - the MCS-4 'Silicon Valley' first mentioned in print - in 'Electronic News'. Ray Tomlinson sends the first network email message. |
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| 1972 |
Intel produces the 8008 chip & the MCS-8 microcomputer chipset, followed by the 8080. Nolan Bushnell forms Atari due to the success of his 'pong' computer video game. DEC launches the PDP-11 - on which Paul Allen & Bill gates later run an 8080 emulator to develop BASIC for Ed Roberts MITS Altair. |
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| 1973 |
IBM produces an 8" two-sided read/write floppy disk R2E in France produce the first non-kit commercial microcomputer. Bob Metcalfe invents Ethernet at Xerox PARC Gary Kildall develops CP/M microcomputer operating system Alan Kay develops the 'Office Computer', with Graphics, Icons and a Mouse. |
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| 1974 |
Ed Roberts creates an 8080 based microcomputer kit to sell for $500 Paul Allen & Bill Gates reckon they can write a version of BASIC for it… |
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| 1975 |
and it works. Altair Basic is the first microcomputer programming language. The 'Homebrew Computer Club' has its' first meeting in Gordon Frenchs' Garage Paul Allen & Bill Gates found 'Micro-Soft'. The Worlds first retail Computer store opens - selling the MITS Altair & components. Frederick Brooks (IBM) - "The Mythical Man-Month" shows that increasing the time & effort involved in communication & collaboration, adding people to a project only works up to a point. |
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| 1976 |
Steve Wozniak & Steve Jobs launch the Apple 1. Gary & Dorothy Kildall found Intergalactic Digital Research |
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| 1977 |
Commodore launches the Chuck Peddle designed 'Pet' computer. Tandy launch the TRS-80 |
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| 1978 | Wordstar the first microcomputer word processing application comes to market for any system running on the Digital Research (Gary Kildall) CP/M operating system. | |
| 1979 |
The cellular telephone goes on test in Chicago & Japan Visicalc, the first microcomputer spreadsheet is launched for the Apple II |
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| 1980 |
Adam Osborne launches the Osborne 1, the first portable computer. Wayne Ratcliff releases dBase, the first widely used microcomputer database application IBM buys a version of DOS from Microsoft - after finding Gary Kildall 'Gone flying' when they called. |
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| 1981 |
Victor Computers launch the first 16bit microcomputer, a Chuck Peddle design labelled the Victor 9000. Clearly more advanced, cheaper and better value than the IBM PC which followed shortly afterwards, it was nevertheless swamped by IBMs market dominance and the fact that, unusual for IBM - it made the internal bus specification public, encouraging much of the industry to supply add-on equipment, and inherently ensuring their support. The IBM PC is launched. Corporate America stops denigrating the microcomputer. |
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| 1982 |
ACT (Later Apricot) in the UK launch the Victor 9000 as the Sirius 1. With IBM delaying release of its' PC for 18 months after the launch in America, Sirius moves ACT towards its period of having up to 30% of the UK market - and a significant turnover in the rest of Europe. The IBM PC itself never did take a large share of the UK market, but compatibility with it enabling use of the myriad add-ons became a minimum requirement, killing off anything on the market that wasn't. |
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| 1999 | The Caesium Fountain Atomic Clock. Accurate to 1 second in 20 million years - precisely. |