History of Computers by Adelle Gossman

1939 Hewlett-Packard is founded

30gossmana — 2024-09-05 14:56:45 UTC

David Packard and Bill Hewlett founded their company in a California garage, and their first product, the HP 200A Audio Oscillator, was a big hit. It became popular in the engineer business, and Walt Disney bought eight of the 200B model as well. They used it to test recording and speaker systems for the movie Fantasia.

1940 The Complex Number Calculator is finished

30gossmana — 2024-09-06 14:09:59 UTC

Bell Telephone Laboratories completed this calculator in 1939. It was later presented at a American Mathematical Society conference by scientist George Stibitz who designed the calculator. The AMC was impressed when he did calculations on the CNN (which was in New York City) by using a Teletype terminal.

1951 Ferranti Mark 1 sold

30gossmana — 2024-09-06 14:13:53 UTC

The title of “first commercially available general-purpose computer” probably goes to Britain’s Ferranti Mark 1 for its sale of its first Mark I, which was sold to Manchester University. The only other Mark 1 was sold to the University of Toronto due to a change in British government which lead to a lack of funding. It was also a refinement of the experimental Manchester Mark 1 computers.

1965 3C DDP-116 introduced

30gossmana — 2024-09-06 14:15:26 UTC

It was the world's first commercial 16-bit minicomputer and was designed by engineer Gardner Hendrie for the Computer Control Corporation. It was announced at the 1965 Spring Joint Computer Conference and afterward 172 total systems were purchased. Each of the basic sytems cost a very large sum of $28,500.

1971 Hewlett-Packard introduces the HP-35

30gossmana — 2024-09-06 14:17:22 UTC

Bill Hewlett made this a challenge for his inventors to make the calculator from a large desktop to a handheld that could fit in his shirt pocket, and they did. It had a solid-state memory and was marketed as “a fast, extremely accurate electronic slide rule” similar to a computer but all compacted into the HP-35. This calculator made Hewlett-Packard one of the most dominant companies in the handheld calculator market for over two decades.

1982 Commodore introduces the Commodore 64

30gossmana — 2024-09-06 14:20:51 UTC

The C64 comes with 64 KB of RAM and features good quality graphics for that time. Each system sold for %595, and over the years until it was discontinued in 1993 over 22 million systems were sold. This made 2006 Guinness Book of World Records for being the greatest single selling computer of all time.

1992 Intel Paragon is optional

30gossmana — 2024-09-06 14:23:10 UTC

The Paragon is a parallel supercomputer that uses 2,048 (later increased to more than four thousand) Intel i860 processors. It was based on the Touchstone Delta computer that was built by Intel at Caltech. In 1992 The Paragon was named the the fastest supercomputer in the world. These systems were used in many scientific areas.

2000 First camera phone introduced

30gossmana — 2024-09-06 14:24:55 UTC

The J-Phone J-SH04 was introduced by Japan's Bank and was the first camera digital phone. The camera had a 256-color display, and a max resolution of 0.11 megapixels. Photos were also able to be shared wirelessly and cameras became a significant part of most phones, and several countrie passed laws requiring them in phones.

2010 The Apple iPad is released

30gossmana — 2024-09-06 14:26:35 UTC

The iPad combined many of the iPhone's features all into a 9 inch screen with a high definition camera, and audio-video abilities. Apps, games, and accessories are what spurred the popularity of it, which lead to it being adopted by thousands of applications such as movie making, art creating, music creation, and so much more.