Introduction Evolution of Computers

• In 1937 John V. Atanasoff created the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC). This is considered as the first electronic computer.
• In 1945 John von Neuman specified the architecture of the EDVAC, which introduced the stored-program computer concept.
• In 1946 John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert introduced the ENIAC, an electronic computing machine.
• In 1947 William Shockley, Walter Brattain and John Bardeen was successful in testing the point-contact transistor. This made the semiconductor revolution which helped to reduce the size of computers.
• In 1949 Maurice Wilkes at Cambridge University released the EDSAC, the first real stored-program computer.
• In 1952 UNIVAC I was developed and this is the first commercial computer which got a large amount of public attention.
• In 1953 IBM releases the IBM 701. This is IBMs first electronic computer.
• In 1955 Bell laboratories introduced the TRADIC, the first fully transistorized computer.
• In 1958 Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments created the first integrated circuit (IC).
• In 1969 the ARPAnet was developed. (This became the base for Internet later.)
• In 1971 IBM invented the 8” floppy disk.
• In 1972 Intel introduced the Intel 8008 microprocessor.
• In 1973 Robert Metcalfe introduced the Ethernet method for network connections.
• In 1974 Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre designed the first workstation with mouse input available.
• In 1977 Apple Computers introduced Apple II.
• In 1979 Motorola introduced the 68000 microprocessor.
• In 1980 Segate Technology created the first hard disk drive for microcomputers.
• In 1981 Xerox introduced the Star, the first personal computer with a graphical user interface (GUI).
• In 1981 Sony introduced the 3 1/2” floppy drives.
• In 1982 Sony introduced the first CD player.
• In 1984 Apple Computer introduced the Macintosh, the first successful mouse driven, GUI based computer.
• In 1984 IBM released the personal computer PC-AT. This introduced the 16-bit ISA bus and is the computer which all modern personal computers are based.
• In 1985 Philips introduced the first CD-ROM drive.
• In 1987 IBM introduced its PS/2 machines. This machine made the 3 1/2” floppy disk drives and VGA video standards for personal computers.
• In 1988 EISA architecture was developed.
• In 1990 theWorldWideWeb (WWW) was introduced. Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) also was introduced.
• In 1995 Microsoft introduced the Windows 95 operating system. This is the first main 32-bit operating system.
• In 1997 Intel released the Pentium II microprocessor
• In 1997 AMD released the K6 microprocessor.
• In 1998 Microsoft released Windows 98.
• In 1999 Intel released the Pentium III, with SSE (Streaming SIMD Extensions) added.
• In 1999 AMD released Athlon.
• In 2000 Microsoft released Windows Me and Windows 2000.
• In 2000 both Intel and AMD released processor at 1 GHz.
• In 2000 Intel released Pentium 4. It belongs to Intel Architecture 32-bit (IA-32) family.
• In 2001 Intel released the Itanium processor. This is Intel’s 64-bit processor for personal computers.
• In 2001 Microsoft released Windows XP.
• In 2002 Intel released the Pentium 4 with 3GHz speed. This processor also included the Hyper-Threading (HT) technology.
• In 2003 Intel released the Pentium M, a processor designed for mobile computer systems.
• In 2005 Intel released the dual core processor named Core Duo.