One thing about history is that there's an awful lot of it about. The history pages on this website present a wide range of topics, but there's always so much more to discover. Thus, as we've run across nuggets of trivia over the last few years, we've squirrled them away, and now we present them to you as a suite of timeline tables...

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  • Timeline the 1800s
  • Timeline the 1900s
  • Timeline the 2000s


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    Timeline Miscellany
    2,400,000 BC: Hominids in Africa manufacture stone tools.
    25,000 BC: The first boomerang is used by people in what is now Poland, 13,000 years before the Australians.
    2,500 BC: Soldering, to join sheets of gold, is invented in Mesopotamia.
    2,200 BC: The mechanism now known as the Antikythera Calculator, was created during the early years of the Hellenistic Period.
    260 BC: Archimedes works out the principle of the lever.
    15 BC: The Chinese invent the belt drive.
    60 AD: Hero, an Alexandrian Greek, builds a toy powered by steam.


     
    Timeline the 1500s
    1500: Italy       Leonard da Vinci sketches details of a rudimentary mechanical calculator.
    1588:  The Spanish Armada decides to visit England (they were soon to regret it!).


     
    Timeline the 1600s
    1600: Scotland John Napier invents a simple multiplication table called Napier’s Bones.
    1614: Scotland John Napier invents logarithms.
    1621: England William Oughtred invents the slide rule (based on John Napier’s Logarithms).
    1623: Germany Wilhelm Schickard invents the first mechanical calculator that he called his Calculating Clock.
    1642: France Blaise Pascal invents a mechanical calculator called the Arithmetic Machine.
    1671: Germany Baron Gottfried von Leibniz invents a mechanical calculator called the Step Reckoner.


     
    Timeline the 1700s
    1746: Holland  The Leyden Jar (also known as the Leiden Jar) is invented at the University of Leiden.
    1752: America  Benjamin Franklin performs his notorious kite experiment.
    1770:  The eraser is invented.
    1775: Italy  Court Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta invents a static electricity generator called the Electrophorus.
    1777: England  Charles Stanhope invents a mechanical calculating machine.
    17??: England  Charles Stanhope invents a logic machine called the Stanhope Demonstrator.


     
    Timeline the 1800s
    1800: Italy Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta invents the first battery.
    1801: France Joseph-Marie Jacquard invents a loom controlled by punch cards.
    1820: France Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar invents a mechanical calculator called the Arithmometer (also known as a Thomas Machine).
    1820: France Andre Ampere investigates the force of an electric current in a magnetic field.
    1821: England Michael Faraday invents the first electric motor.
    1821: England Michael Faraday plots the magnetic field around a conductor.
    1821: England Sir Charles Wheatstone reproduces sound.
    1822: England Charles Babbage starts to build a mechanical calculating machine called the Difference Engine.
    1822: France Andre Ampere discovers that two wires carrying electric currents attract each other.
    1823: England Michael Faraday liquefies chlorine.
    1827: England Sir Charles Wheatstone constructs a microphone.
    1827: Germany Georg Ohm investigates electrical resistance and defines Ohm’s Law.
    1829: England Sir Charles Wheatstone invents the concertina.
    1831: England Michael Faraday creates the first electric dynamo.
    1831: England Michael Faraday creates the first electrical transformer.
    1831: England Michael Faraday discovers magnetic lines of force.
    1831: England Michael Faraday discovers that a moving magnet induces an electric current.
    1831: England Michael Faraday discovers the principal of electro-magnetic induction.
    1832: England Charles Babbage conceives the first mechanical computer called the Analytical Engine.
    1832: England Joseph Henry discovers self-induction or inductance.
    1833: England Michael Faraday defines the laws of electrolysis.
    1837: America Samuel Finley Breese Morse exhibits an electric telegraph.
    1837: England Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Fothergill Cooke patent the five-needle electric telegraph.
    1842: England Joseph Henry discovers that an electrical spark between two conductors is able to induce magnetism in needles – this effect is detected at a distance of 30 meters.
    1842: ScotlandAlexander Bail demonstrates first electromechanical means to capture, transmit, and reproduce an image.
    1843: England Augusta Ada Lovelace publishes her notes explaining the concept of a computer.
    1843: England Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Fothergill Cooke patent the 2-needle electrical telegraph.
    1844: America Morse Telegraph connects Washington and Baltimore. On 24 May 1844, Morse transmits the message, "What hath God wrought," from Washington to Baltimore.
    1845: England Michael Faraday discovers the rotation of polarized light by magnetism.
    1845: England First use of the electronic telegraph to help apprehend a criminal.
    1845:  First telegraph cable is laid across the English Channel between England and France
    1846: Germany Gustav Kirchhoff defines Kirchoff’s laws of electrical networks.
    1847: England George Boole publishes his first ideas on symbolic logic.
    1850: England Francis Galton invents the Teletype printer.
    1850:  The paper bag is invented.
    1852: France Jean Foucault invents the first gyroscope.
    1853:  Sir Charles Tilston Bright lays the first deepwater cable between Scotland and Ireland.
    1854: Crimea Telegraph used in the Crimea War.
    1855: England James Clerk Maxwell explains Faraday’s lines of force using mathematics.
    1855: Germany Heinrich Geissler invents a powerful vacuum pump.
    1858: America Cunard agents in New York send first commercial telegraph message to report a collision between two steam ships.
    1858: Atlantic First transatlantic telegraph cable is laid (and later failed).
    1858:  Queen Victoria exchanges transatlantic telegraph messages with President Buchanan in America.
    1859: Germany Hittorf and Pucker invent the cathode ray tube (CRT).
    1865: England James Clerk Maxwell predicts the existence of electromagnetic waves that travel in the same way as light.
    1865:  Atlantic cable links Valencia (Ireland) and Trinity Bay (Newfoundland).
    1866:  First permanent transatlantic telegraph cable is laid between Ireland and the USA.
    1869: Britain William Stanley Jevons invents the Logic Piano.
    1872:  First simultaneous transmission from both ends of a telegraph wire.
    1873: England James Clerk Maxwell describes the electromagnetic nature of light and publishes his theory of radio waves.
    1874: America Alexander Graham Bell conceives the idea of the telephone.
    1875: America Frank Stephen Baldwin invents a new form of mechanical calculator founded on a “pin wheel” or “variable cog” mechanism.
    1875: America Edison invents the Mimeograph.
    1875: England James Clerk Maxwell states that atoms must have a structure.
    1876: America Intelligible human speech heard over Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone for the first time on 10 March of this year.
    1876: America Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone.
    1877: America First commercial telephone service goes into operation.
    1877: America Thomas Watson devises a “thumper” to alert users of incoming telephone calls.
    1878: Sweden Willgodt Theophil Odhner creates his version of a pin-wheel mechanical calculator.
    1878: America First public long-distance telephone lines between Boston and Providence become operational.
    1878: England Sir Joseph Wilson Swan demonstrates a true incandescent light bulb.
    1878: England William Crookes invents his version of a cathode ray tube called the Crookes’ Tube.
    1878: Ireland Denis Redmond demonstrates capturing an image using selenium photocells.
    1879: America Thomas Alva Edison invents an incandescent light bulb (a year after Sir Joseph Wilson Swan in England).
    1879: England William Crookes postulates that cathode rays may be negative charged particles.
    1880: America Alexander Graham Bell patents an optical telephone system called the Photophone.
    1880: France Edouard Eugene Desire Branly invents the Branly Coherer.
    1880: France Pierre and Jacques Currie discover piezoelectricity.
    1881: America Alan Marquand invents a graphical technique of representing logic problems.
    1883: America William Hammer and Thomas Alva Edison discover the “Edison Effect”.
    1884: Germany Paul Gottleib Nipkow uses spinning disks to scan, transmit, and reproduce images.
    1885: America Dorr Eugene Felt invents the first mechanical calculator called the Comptometer in which numbers are keyed-in (rather than being “dialed-in”).
    1886: England Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carrol) publishes a diagrammatic technique for logic representation in The Game of Logic.
    1887: England J.J.Thomson discovers the electron.
    1887: England William Crookes demonstrates that cathode rays travel in a straight line.
    1887: Germany Heinrich Hertz demonstrates the transmission, reception, and reflection of radio waves.
    1888: America First coin-operated public telephone invented.
    1889: France Louis Troncet invents a mechanical calculator called the Arithmographe involving metal strips being moved with a stylus.
    1889: America Almon Brown Strowger invents the first automatic telephone exchange.
    1890: America Census is performed using Herman Hollerith’s punched cards and automatic tabulating machines.
    189?: England John Venn proposes logic representation using circles and eclipses.
    1892: America First automatic telephone switchboard comes into service.
    1894: England Oliver Joseph Lodge repeats the experiments of Heinrich Hertz with a modified Branley Coherer.
    1894: Germany Heinrich Hertz discovers that radio waves travel at the speed of light and can be refracted and polarized.
    1894: Italy Guglielmo Marconi invents wireless telegraphy.
    1895: America Dial telephones go into Milwaukee’s city hall.
    1895: Germany Wilhelm Kohnrad Roentgen discovers X-rays.
    1895: Russia Alexander Popov (also spelled Popoff) constructs a receiver for natural electricity waves and tries to detect thunderstorms.
    1897: England Italian-born Marconi transmits a Morse code message ”let it be so” across the Bristol Channel.
    1897: England Italian-born Marconi establishes the first Marconi-station at the Needles (Isle of Wight, England), sending a signal over 22 km to the English coast.


     
    Timeline the 1900s
    1901: England Hubert Cecil Booth invents the first vacuum cleaner.
    1901: England Italian-born Marconi sends a radio signal across the Atlantic.
    1902: Austria Czechoslovakian Alexander Rechnitzer invents the first electromechanical (motor-driven) calculator.
    1902: America Millar Hutchinson invents the first electrical hearing aid.
    1902:  Transpacific cable links Canada and Australia.
    1902: America US Navy installs radiotelephones aboard ships.
    1904: England John Ambrose Fleming invents the vacuum tube diode rectifier.
    1904:  First practical photoelectric cell is developed.
    1904:  First ultraviolet lamps are introduced.
    1904:  Telephone answering machine is invented.
    1906: America First radio program of voice and music is broadcast.
    1906:  Dunwoody and Pickard build a crystal-and-cat-whisker-radio.
    1906:  First tungsten-filament lamps are introduced.
    1907: America Lee de Forest creates a three-element vacuum tube amplifier (the triode).
    1907: America Lee de Forest begins regular radio music broadcasts.
    1908: England Charles Fredrick Cross invents cellophane.
    1909: America General Electric introduces the world’s first electrical toaster.
    1909: America Belgian-born chemist-entrepreneur Leo Baekeland patterns an artificial plastic that he calls Bakelite (or Bakeliet in some countries).
    1909: England Italian-born Marconi shares Noble prize in physics for his contribution to telegraphy.
    1909:  Radio distress signals save 1900 lives after two ships collide.
    1910: America First installation of teleprinters on postal lines between New York City and Boston.
    1910:  First electric washing machines are introduced.
    1910: France George Claude introduces neon lamps.
    1911: America Swiss-born David Sundstrand creates a mechanical calculator with a 10-button keypad arranged in three rows plus a zero key – a formation that is used to this day.
    1911: Netherlands Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovers superconductivity.
    1912: America Dr Sidney Russell invents the electric blanket.
    1912:  Feedback and heterodyne systems usher in modern radio reception.
    1912:  The Titanic sends out radio distress signals when it collides with an iceberg and sinks on its maiden voyage.
    1913: America William D.Coolidge invents the hot-tungsten filament X-ray tube.This Coolidge Tube becomes the standard generator for medical X-rays.
    1914: America Traffic lights are used for the first time (in Cleveland, Ohio)
    1914:  Better triode improves radio reception.
    1914:  First trans-continental telephone call.
    1914:  Radio message is sent from the ground to an airplane.
    1915:  First transatlantic radio telephone conversation
    1917: America Clarence Birdseye preserves food by means of freezing.
    1917:  Condenser microphone aids broadcast recording.
    1917: America Frank Conrad builds a radio station that eventually becomes KDKA (this call sign is still used to this day).
    1918:  First radio link between UK and Australia.
    1919:  People can dial their own telephone numbers.
    1919:  Short-wave radio is invented.
    1919:  The concept of flip-flop (memory) circuits is invented.
    1919: America Walter Schottky invents the Tetrode (the first multiple-grid vacuum tube).
    1920: Germany Addiator Gesellschaft creates a very popular version of a Troncet-type calculator called the Addiator.
    1921: America Albert Hull invents the Magnetron (a microwave generator).
    1921:  Canadian-American John Augustus Larson invents the polygraph (lie detector).
    1921:  Czech author Karal Capek coins the term robot in his play R.U.R.
    1921:  First use of quartz crystals to keep radios from wandering off station.
    1922:  First commercial broadcast ($100 for a 10-minute advert).
    1922:  Lewis Alan Hazeltine invents the Neutrodyne, which eliminates the squeaks and howls associated with earlier radio receivers
    1923:  First neon advertising signs are introduced.
    1923:  First photoelectric cell is introduced.
    1923:  First ship-to-ship communications (people on one ship can talk to people on another).
    1925: America Scientist, engineer, and politician Vannevar Bush designs an analogue computer called the Product Intergraph.
    1925: America First commercial picture/facsimile radio service across the USA.
    1926: America Austro-Hungarian Dr Julius Edgar Lilienfield from New York files a patent for what we would now recognize as an npn junction transistor being used in the role of an amplifier
    1926: America First pop-up bread toaster is introduced.
    1926:  First commercial picture/facsimile radio service across the Atlantic.
    1926: Scotland John Logie Baird demonstrates an electromechanical TV system.
    1927:  First five-electrode vacuum tube (the Pentrode) is introduced.
    1927:  First public demonstration of long-distance television transmission (basically a Nipkow disk).
    1927: America Harold Stephen Black conceives the idea of negative feedback, which, amongst other things makes Hi-Fi amplifiers possible.
    1927: America Philo Farnsworth assembles a complete electronic TV system.
    1928: America First quartz crystal clock is introduced.
    1928: America First scheduled television broadcast in Schenectady, New York.
    1928: Scotland John Logie Baird demonstrates color TV on an electromechanical television system.
    1928: Scotland John Logie Baird invents a videodisc to record television programs.
    1929:  Joseph Schick invents the electric razor.
    1929: Britain British mechanical TVs roll off the production line.
    1929:  Experiments begin on electronic color television.
    1929:  First ship-to shore communications (passenger can call relatives at home … at a price).
    1929: Germany Magnetic sound recording on plastic tape.
    1929:  The first car radio is installed.
    1930: America Sliced bread is introduced.
    1930: America Vannevar Bush designs an analogue computer called a Differential Analyzer.
    1933: America Edwin Howard Armstrong conceives a new system for radio communication: wideband frequency’s modulation (FM).
    1934: America Half of the homes in the USA have radios.
    1935:  All-electronic VHF television comes out of the lab.
    1935:  Audio tape recordings go on sale.
    1935: England First demonstration of Radar at Daventry.
    1936: America Efficiency expert August Dvorak invents a new typewriter layout called the Dvorak Keyboard.
    1936: America Psychologist Benjamin Burack constructs the first electrical logic machine (but he doesn’t publish anything about it until 1949).
    1936:  First electronic speech synthesis (Vodar).
    1936:  Fluorescent lighting is introduced.
    1936: Germany The Berlin Olympics are televised
    1937: Austria Curt Herzstark creates a working prototype of his handheld Curta mechanical calculator.
    1937: America George Robert Stibitz, a scientist at Bell Labs, builds a simple digital calculator machine based on relays called the Model K.
    1937: England Graduate student Alan Turing invents a theoretical (thought experiment) computer called the Turing Machine.
    1937: England Graduate student Alan Turing writes his groundbreaking paper ”On Computable Numbers with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem.”
    1937:  Pulse-code modulation points the way towards digital radio transmission.
    1938: America Claude E.Shannon publishes an article (based on his master’s thesis at MIT) showing how Boolean Algebra can be used to design digital circuits.
    1938: Argentina Hungarian-born Lazro Biro invents and patterns the first ballpoint pen.
    1938: Germany Konrad Zuse finishes the construction of the first working mechanical digital computer (the ZI)
    1938: Scotland John Logie Baird demonstrates live TV in color.
    1938: America Radio drama War of the Worlds causes wide spread panic.
    1938:  Television broadcasts can be taped and edited.
    1938: America Walter Schottky discovers the existence of holes in the band structure of semiconductors and explains metal/semiconductor interface rectification.
    1939: America George Robert Stibitz builds a digital calculator called the Complex Number Calculator.
    1939: America John Vincent Atanasoff (and Clifford Berry) may or may not have constructed the first truly electronic special-purpose digital computer called the ABC (but it didn’t work till 1942).
    1939: America Bell Labs begin testing high-frequency radar.
    1939:  Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are patented by Messrs Bay and Szigeti.
    1939: England Regular TV broadcasts begin.
    1940: America George Robert Stibitz performs first example of remote computing between New York and New Hampshire.
    1940: America Bell Labs conceives the idea of cell phones (but the technology won’t exist to bring them to market for another 30 years).
    1941:  First microwave transmissions.
    1941:  First touch-tone phone system (too expensive for general use).
    1941: Germany Konrad Zuse completes the first true relay-based general-purpose digital computer (the Z3).
    1942: Germany Between 1942 and 1945/6, Konrad Zuse develops the idea for a high-level computer programming language called Plankakul.
    1943: England Alan Turning, Tommy Flowers, and their colleagues build a special-purpose electronic (vacuum tube) computer called Colossus.
    1943: England Austrian-born engineer Paul Eisler patents the printed circuit board.
    1943: Germany Konrad Zuse starts work on his general-purpose relay-based computer called the Z4
    1944: America Howard Aiken and team finish building an electromechanical .computer called the Harvard Mark I (also known as the IBM ASCC).
    1945: America Hungarian/American mathematician Johann (John) Von Neumann publishes a paper entitled “First draft on a report on the EDVAC.”
    1945: America Percy L Spencer invents the Microwave Oven (the first units go on sale in 1947).
    1945: England Science Fiction author Arthur C.Clark envisions geo-synchronous communications satellites.
    1946: America John William Mauchly, J.Presper Eckert and team finish building a general-purpose electronic computer called ENIAC.
    1946:  Automobile radiotelephones connect to the telephone network.
    1947: America Physicists William Shockley, Walter Brattain, and John Bardeen create the first point-contact germanium transistor on the 23rd December.
    1948: America Airplane re-broadcasts TV signals to nine States.
    1948: America Work starts on what is supposed to be the first commercial computer, UNIVAC 1.
    1948:  First atomic clock is constructed.
    1949: America MIT’s first real-time computer called Whirlwind is launched.
    1949: America Start of network TV.
    1949: England EDSAC computer uses first assembly language called Initial Orders.
    1949: England Cambridge University.Small experimental computer called EDSAC performs its first calculation.
    1950: America Jay Forrester at MIT invents magnetic core store.
    1950: America Physicist William Shockley invents the first bipolar junction transistor.
    1950:  Maurice Karnaugh invents Karnaugh Maps (circa 1950), which quickly become one of the mainstays of the logic designer’s tool-chest.
    1950:  Vidicon camera tubes improve TV pictures.
    1950: SwitzerlandGerman-born Konrad Zuse’s Z4 is sold to a bank in Zurich, Switzerland, thereby making the Z4 the world’s first commercially available computer.
    1951: America The first UNIVAC 1 is delivered.
    1952: America John William Mauchly, J, Persper Eckert and team finish building a general-purpose (stored program) electronic computer called EDVAC.
    1952: England First public discussion of the concept of integrated circuits is credited to a British radar expert, G.W.A.Dummer.
    1952: Japan Sony demonstrates the first miniature transistor radio, which is produced commercially in 1954.
    1953: America First TV dinner is marketed by the Swanson Company.
    1954: America Launch of giant balloon called Echo 1 – used to bounce telephone calls coast-to-coast in the USA.
    1954: World The number of radio sets in the world out-numbers newspapers sold everyday.
    1954:  First silicon transistor manufactured.
    1955:  Velcro is patented.
    1956: America John Backus and team at IBM introduced the first widely used high-level computer language, FORTRAN.
    1956: America John McCarthy develops a computer language called LISP for artificial intelligence applications.
    1956: America MANIAC 1 is the first computer program to beat a human in a game (a simplified version of chess).
    1956:  First transatlantic telephone cable goes into operation.
    1957: Japan Casio introduced the first (and possibly the only) electromechanical calculator based on relays called the Model 14-A.
    1957: America Gordon Gould conceives the idea of the Laser.
    1957: America IBM 610 Auto-Point computer is introduced.
    1957: Russia The USSR launches the Sputnik 1 satellite.
    1958: America Computer data is transmitted over regular telephone circuits.
    1958: America Jack Kilby, working for Texas Instruments, succeeds in fabricating multiple components on a single piece of semiconductor (the first integrated circuit).
    1959: America COBOL computer language is introduced for business applications.
    1959: America Robert Noyce invents techniques for creating microscopic aluminum wires on silicon, which leads to the development of modern integrated circuits.
    1959: America Swiss-born physicist Jean Hoerni invents the planar process, in which optical lithographic techniques are used to create transistors.
    1960: America Theodore Maimen creates the first Laser.
    1960: America The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) begins work on what will become the Internet.
    1960: America NASA and Bell Labs launch the first commercial communications satellite.
    1961: England The first electronic calculator based on vacuum tube technology – the ANITA – is presented to the market.
    1961:  Time-sharing computing is developed.
    1962: America Steve Hofstein and Fredric Heiman at RCA Research Lab invent field effect transistors (FETS).
    1962: America Unimation introduces the first industrial robot.
    1962:  First commercial communications satellite (Telstar) launched and operational.
    1962:  First commercial touch-tone phone system.
    1963: America The LINC computer is designed at MIT.
    1963:  PDP-8 becomes the first popular microcomputer.
    1963:  Netherlands-based Philips company introduces first audio cassette.
    1964: America One of the first commercial all-transistor desktop calculators is introduced to the market: the Friden EC-130.
    1964: Italy One of the first commercial all-transistor desktop calculators is introduced to the market: the IME 84.
    1964: Japan One of the first commercial all-transistor desktop calculators is introduced to the market: the Sharp Compet CS10A.
    1965: America Hungarian-born John Kemeny and American-born Thomas Kurtz develop the BASIC computer language.
    1967: America Fairchild introduced an integrated circuit called the Micromosaic (the forerunner of the modern ASIC).
    1967:  Dolby eliminates audio hiss.
    1967: America First handheld electronic calculator invented by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments.
    1964: Japan One of the first commercial integrated circuit-based desktop calculators is introduced to the market: the Sharp Compet 22.
    1969: Moon First radio signal transmitted by “man on the moon.”
    1970: Japan Sharp introduced the first handheld electronic calculator: the Sharp QT8-B.
    1970: America Texas Instruments and Cannon introduced the first handheld printing electronic calculator called the Pocketronic.
    1970: Japan Busicom introduced the first truly pocket-sized electronic calculator called the Busicom LE-120A "handy".
    1970: America Ethernet developed at Palo Alto Research center by Bob Metcalf and David Boggs.
    1970: America Fairchild introduced the first 256-bit static RAM called the 4100.
    1970: America Intel announced the first 1024-bit dynamic RAM called the 1103.
    1970:  First floppy disk (8.5 inch) is used for storing computer data.
    1970:  Researches at Corning Glass develop first commercial/feasible optical fiber.
    1971: America The Datapoint 2200 computer is introduced by CTC.
    1971: America Ted Hoff designs (and Intel releases) the first computer-on-a-chip, the 4004 microprocessor.
    1971:  CTC’s Kenbak-1 computer is introduced.
    1971:  First direct telephone dialing between the USA and Europe.
    1971:  Swiss-born Niklaus Wirth develops the PASCAL computer language (named after Blaise Pascal).
    1972: America Intel introduced the 8008 microprocessor.
    1973: America Scelbi Computer Consulting Company introduces the Scelbi-8H microcomputer-based do-it-yourself computer kit.
    1973: America Xerox Alto computer is introduced.
    1973: France 8008-based Micral microcomputer is introduced in May of this year.
    1973:  The term microcomputer first appears in print in reference to the 8008-based Micral microcomputer in June of this year.
    1974: America Intel introduces the 8080 microprocessor, the first true general-purpose device.
    1974: America Motorola introduces the 6800 microcomputer.
    1974: America Radio Electronic Magazine publishes an article by Jonathon (Jon) Titus on building an 8008-based microcomputer called the Mark-8.
    1975: America Microcomputer in kit form reaches U.S.home market.
    1975: America MOS Technology introduces the 6502-based KIM-1 microcomputer.
    1975: America Sphere Corporation introduces the 6800-based Sphere 1 microcomputer.
    1975: America Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Microsoft.
    1975: England First liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are used for pocket calculators and digital clocks.
    1975: America Ed Roberts and his MIT’s company introduced the 8800-based Altair 8800 microcomputer.
    1975: America MOS Technology introduces the 6502 microprocessor.
    1975: America Microsoft releases BASIC 2.0 for the Altair 8800 microcomputer.
    1976: America Zilog introduces the Z80 microprocessor.
    1976: America Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs introduced the 6502-based Apple 1 microcomputer.
    1976: America Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs form the Apple Computer Company (on April 1st of this year).
    1977: America Apple introduces the Apple II microcomputer.
    1977: America Commodore Business Machines present their 6502-based Commodore PET microcomputer.
    1977: America Tandy/Radio Shack announced their Z80-based TRS-80 microcomputer.
    1977:  First implementation of optical light-waves in operating telephone company.
    1978: America Apple introduces the first hard disk drive for use with personal computers.
    1979:  ADA programming language is named after Augusta Ada Lovelace (now credited as being the first computer programmer).
    1979: America The first true commercial microcomputer program, the VisiCale spreadsheet, is made available for the Apple II.
    1980:  Cordless and cell phones are developed.
    1980:  Development of the World Wide Web begins.
    1980:  Faxes can be sent over regular phone lines.
    1981: America First IBM PC is launched.
    1981: America First mouse pointing device is created.
    1981:  First laptop computer is introduced.
    1983: America Apple’s Lisa is the first personal computer to use a mouse and pull-down menus.
    1983: America Time magazine names the computer as Man of the year.
    1984:  1 megabyte memory chips introduced
    1985:  CD-ROM’s are used to store computer data for the first time.
    1989:  Pacific fiber-optic link/cable opens (supports 40,000 simultaneous conversation).
    1990: Switzerland British physicist Tim Berners-Lee sets up the world’s first World Wide Web (WWW) server.
    1993:  The MOSAIC web browser becomes available.
    1999: America First 1 GHz microprocessor created by Intel.


     
    Timeline the 2000s
    2005: America      English-born Clive “Max” Maxfield and Alvin Brown write the incredibly clever book How Computers Do Math, thereby making the world a much happier place.
    2006: America      After 145 years, Western Union stopped sending telegrams. It sent its last telegram on 26 January, 2006.

    Note: The material presented here was abstracted and condensed from The History of Calculators, Computers, and Other Stuff document provided on the CD-ROM accompanying our book How Computers Do Math (ISBN: 0471732788).