The Computer Book: From the Abacus to Artificial Intelligence, 250 Milestones in the History of Computer Science

586 Pages·2019·29.63 MB·English

by  Simson L. Garfinkel

THE COMPUTER BOOK
FROM THE ABACUS TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, 250
MILESTONES IN THE HISTORY OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
Simson L. Garfinkel and Rachel H.
Grunspan
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ISBN 978-1-45492622-1
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Photo Credits - see page 528
Contents
Introduction
Acknowledgments
c. 2500 BCE Sumerian Abacus
c. 700 BCE Scytale
c. 150 BCE Antikythera Mechanism
c. 60 Programmable Robot
c. 850 On Deciphering Cryptographic Messages
c. 1470 Cipher Disk
1613 First Recorded Use of the Word Computer
1621 Slide Rule
1703 Binary Arithmetic
1758 Human Computers Predict Halley’s Comet
1770 The “Mechanical Turk”
1792 Optical Telegraph
1801 The Jacquard Loom
1822 The Difference Engine
1836 Electrical Telegraph
1843 Ada Lovelace Writes a Computer Program
1843 Fax Machine Patented
1843 Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Gold-Bug”
1851 Thomas Arithmometer
1854 Boolean Algebra
1864 First Electromagnetic Spam Message
1874 Baudot Code
1874 Semiconductor Diode
1890 Tabulating the US Census
1891 Strowger Step-by-Step Switch
1914 Floating-Point Numbers
1917 Vernam Cipher
1920 Rossum’s Universal Robots
1927 Metropolis
1927 First LED
1928 Electronic Speech Synthesis
1931 Differential Analyzer
1936 Church-Turing Thesis
1941 Z3 Computer
1942 Atanasoff-Berry Computer
1942 Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics
1943 ENIAC
1943 Colossus
1944 Delay Line Memory
1944 Binary-Coded Decimal
1945 “As We May Think”
1945 EDVAC First Draft Report
1946 Trackball
1946 Williams Tube
1947 Actual Bug Found
1947 Silicon Transistor
1948 The Bit
1948 Curta Calculator
1948 Manchester SSEM
1949 Whirlwind
1950 Error-Correcting Codes
1951 The Turing Test
1951 Magnetic Tape Used for Computers
1951 Core Memory
1951 Microprogramming
1952 Computer Speech Recognition
1953 First Transistorized Computer
1955 Artificial Intelligence Coined
1955 Computer Proves Mathematical Theorem
1956 First Disk Storage Unit
1956 The Byte
1956 Robby the Robot
1957 FORTRAN
1957 First Digital Image
1958 The Bell 101 Modem
1958 SAGE Computer Operational
1959 IBM 1401
1959 PDP-1
1959 Quicksort
1959 Airline Reservation System
1960 COBOL Computer Language
1960 Recommended Standard 232
1961 ANITA Electronic Calculator
1961 Unimate: First Mass-Produced Robot
1961 Time-Sharing
1962 Spacewar!
1962 Virtual Memory
1962 Digital Long Distance
1963 Sketchpad
1963 ASCII
1964 RAND Tablet
1964 Teletype Model 33 ASR
1964 IBM System/360
1964 BASIC Computer Language
1965 First Liquid-Crystal Display
1965 Fiber Optics
1965 DENDRAL
1965 ELIZA
1965 Touchscreen
1966 Star Trek Premieres
1966 Dynamic RAM
1967 Object-Oriented Programming
1967 First Cash Machine
1967 Head-Mounted Display
1967 Programming for Children
1967 The Mouse
1968 Carterfone Decision
1968 Software Engineering
1968 HAL 9000 Computer
1968 First Spacecraft Guided by Computer
1968 Cyberspace Coined—and Re-Coined
1968 Mother of All Demos
1968 Dot Matrix Printer
1968 Interface Message Processor (IMP)
1969 ARPANET/Internet
1969 Digital Imaging
1969 Network Working Group Request for Comments: 1
1969 Utility Computing
1969 Perceptrons
1969 UNIX
1970 Fair Credit Reporting Act
1970 Relational Database
1970 Floppy Disk
1971 Laser Printer
1971 NP-Completeness
1971 @Mail
1971 First Microprocessor
1971 First Wireless Network
1972 C Programming Language
1972 Cray Research
1972 Game of Life
1972 HP-35 Calculator
1972 Pong
1973 First Cell Phone Call
1973 Xerox Alto
1974 Data Encryption Standard
1974 First Personal Computer
1975 Adventure
1975 The Shockwave Rider
1975 AI Medical Diagnosis
1975 BYTE Magazine
1975 Homebrew Computer Club
1975 The Mythical Man-Month
1976 Public Key Cryptography
1976 Tandem NonStop
1976 Dr. Dobb’s Journal
1977 RSA Encryption
1977 Apple II
1978 First Internet Spam Message
1978 Minitel
1979 Secret Sharing
1979 VisiCalc
1980 Sinclair ZX80
1980 Flash Memory
1980 RISC
1980 Commercially Available Ethernet
1980 Usenet
1981 IBM PC
1981 Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
1981 Japan’s Fifth Generation Computer Systems
1982 AutoCAD
1982 First Commercial UNIX Workstation
1982 PostScript
1982 Microsoft and the Clones
1982 First CGI Sequence in Feature Film
1982 National Geographic Moves the Pyramids
1982 Secure Multi-Party Computation
1982 TRON
1982 Home Computer Named Machine of the Year
1983 The Qubit
1983 WarGames
1983 3-D Printing
1983 Computerization of the Local Telephone Network
1983 First Laptop
1983 MIDI Computer Music Interface
1983 Microsoft Word
1983 Nintendo Entertainment System
1983 Domain Name System
1983 IPv4 Flag Day
1984 Text-to-Speech
1984 Macintosh
1984 VPL Research, Inc.
1984 Quantum Cryptography
1984 Telebit Modems Break 9600 bps
1984 Verilog
1985 Connection Machine
1985 First Computer-Generated TV Host
1985 Zero-Knowledge Proofs
1985 FCC Approves Unlicensed Spread Spectrum
1985 NSFNET
1985 Desktop Publishing
1985 Field-Programmable Gate Array
1985 GNU Manifesto
1985 AFIS Stops a Serial Killer
1986 Software Bug Fatalities
1986 Pixar
1987 Digital Video Editing
1987 GIF
1988 MPEG
1988 CD-ROM
1988 Morris Worm
1989 World Wide Web
1989 SimCity
1989 ISP Provides Internet Access to the Public
1990 GPS Is Operational
1990 Digital Money
1991 Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
1991 Computers at Risk
1991 Linux Kernel
1992 Boston Dynamics Founded
1992 JPEG
1992 First Mass-Market Web Browser
1992 Unicode
1993 Apple Newton
1994 First Banner Ad
1994 RSA-129 Cracked
1995 DVD
1995 E-Commerce
1995 AltaVista Web Search Engine
1995 Gartner Hype Cycle
1996 Universal Serial Bus (USB)
1997 Computer Is World Chess Champion
1997 PalmPilot
1997 E Ink
1998 Diamond Rio MP3 Player
1998 Google