Computer History - 1900 - 1940

Year	Event
1900	Howard H. Aiken is born March 8, 1900.
1900	Nikola Tesla develops frequency hopping, now known as spread spectrum.
1901	The first radio message is sent across the Atlantic Ocean in Morse code.
1901	Arthur Samuel is born in 1901.
1901	Elisha Gray passes away on January 21, 1901 (age 66)
1901	Hubert Cecil Booth receives a patent for the first powered vacuum cleaner August 30, 1901.
1902	Walter Brattain is born February 10, 1902.
1902	3M is founded.
1903	Nikola Tesla patents electrical logic circuits called "gates" or "switches".
1903	Wilbur and Orville Wright both take the first flight December 17, 1903.
1903	John von Neumann is born December 28, 1903.
1903	John Vincent Atanasoff is born October 4, 1903.
1904	George Stibitz is born April 20, 1904.
1904	John Ambrose Fleming experiments with Edison's diode vacuum tubes and creates the first commercial diode vacuum tube.
1904	Lear Romec is founded.
1905	Derrick Lehmer is born February 23, 1905.
1906	The IEC is founded in London England.
1906	Arnold I. Dumey is born in 1906.
1906	Reynold Johnson is born July 16, 1906.
1906	Xerox is founded.
1906	Philo Farnsworth is born August 19, 1906.
1906	Grace Hopper is born December 9, 1906.
1907	Paul Eisler is born in 1907.
1907	Lee De Frost files patent #879,532 on January 29, 1907 for the vacuum tube triode. This is later used as an electronic switch in the first electronic computer.
1907	Gordon Brown is born August 30, 1907.
1907	John Mauchly is born August 30, 1907.
1907	IBM files for its first U.S. patent, #998,631 October 11, 1907.
1908	John Bardeen is born May 23, 1908.
1908	Olivetti is founded on October 29, 1908.
1908	The film "A Visit To The Seaside" becomes the first film commercially produced in natural color in December of 1908.
1909	Edmund Berkeley is born February 22, 1909.
1909	Geoffrey Dummer is born February 25, 1909.
1909	Antoni Kilinski is born October 20, 1909.
1910	William Shockley is born February 13, 1910.
1910	Konrad Zuse is born June 22, 1910.
1910	Hitachi is founded.
1909	The Bryant Chucking Grinder Co. is founded in 1909 by William Leroy Bryant.
1910	Henry Babbage, Charles Babbage's youngest son completes a portion of the Analytical Engine and was able to perform basic calculations.
1911	Alexey Andreevich Lyapunov is born in 1911.
1911	Cuthbert Hurd is born April 5, 1911.
1911	Company now known as IBM on is founded June 16, 1911 in the state of New York as the Computing - Tabulating - Recording Company (C-T-R), a consolidation of the Computing Scale Company, and The International Time Recording Company.
1911	Frederic Williams is born June 26, 1911.
1911	IBM is granted its first patent #998,631 July 25, 1911.
1911	Allen Coombs is born October 23, 1911.
1912	Alan Turing is born June 23, 1912.
1912	Helmut Schreyer is born July 4, 1912.
1912	David Packard is born September 7, 1912.
1912	G. N. Lewis begins work on the lithium battery.
1913	Julian Bigelow is born in 1913.
1913	William Hewlett is born May 20, 1913.
1913	Maurice Wilkes is born June 26, 1913.
1913	Herman Goldstine is born September 13, 1913.
1913	Robert Adler is born December 4, 1913.
1914	I. Bernard Cohen is born March 1, 1914.
1914	Cyril Cleverdon is born September 9, 1914.
1914	George Dantzig is born November 8, 1914.
1915	Joseph Licklider is born March 11, 1915.
1915	The first telephone call is made across the continent.
1915	Borje Langefors is born May 21, 1915.
1915	John Tukey is born June 16, 1915.
1915	Arthur Walter Burks is born October 13, 1915.
1916	Harry Huskey is born January 19, 1916.
1916	Herbert Simon is born June 15, 1916.
1916	Claude Shannon is born April 30, 1916.
1916	The Curtiss Wright company is founded.
1916	Christopher Strachey is born November 16, 1916.
1917	Nikon is founded.
1917	George Grant passes away August 16, 1917 (Age: 68)
1917	Hugh Ross is born August 31, 1917.
1917	On September 9, 1917 one of the earliest records of OMG (Oh! My God!) is used by British Admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher when writing to Winston Churchill in a 1917 correspondence.
1917	Arthur C. Clark is born December 16, 1917.
1918	Alexander L'vovich Brudno is born January 10, 1918.
1918	Andrew Booth is born February 11, 1918.
1918	Panasonic is founded March 18, 1918.
1918	William Eccles and F.W. Jordan build the world's first flip-flop.
1918	Bashir Rameyev is born May 1, 1918.
1918	Jay Forrester is born July 14, 1918.
1918	Herbert Grosch is born September 13, 1918.
1919	Nathan Rochester is born January 14, 1919.
1919	Andrew F. Kay is born March 22, 1919.
1919	John Adam Presper "Pres" Eckert, Jr. is born April 9, 1919.
1919	Harlan Mills is born May 14, 1919.
1919	John Pinkerton is born August 2, 1919.
1919	Olympus is established on October 12, 1919 by Takeshi Yamashita.
1920	Heinz Zemanek is born January 1, 1920.
1920	An Wang is born February 7, 1920.
1920	Bob Bemer is born February 8, 1920.
1920	James Pomerene is born June 22, 1920.
1920	First radio broadcasting begins in United States, Pittsburgh, PA.
1921	Alexander (Sandy) Shafto Douglas is born May 21, 1921.
1921	Forrest Parry is born July 4, 1921.
1921	John Bennet is born July 31, 1921.
1921	Czech playwright Karel Capek coins the term "robot" in the 1921 play RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots).
1921	The first Radio Shack store is open.
1921	Gerald Estrin is born September 9, 1921.
1922	MPAA is established.
1922	Charles Hamblin is born in 1922.
1922	Georgy Adelson-Velsky is born January 8, 1922.
1922	Alan Perlis is born April 1, 1922.
1922	Keith Uncapher is born April 1, 1922.
1922	Alexander Graham Bell passes away August 2, 1922 (age 75)
1922	Gene Amdahl is born November 16, 1922.
1923	Corrado Böhm is born in 1923.
1923	Joseph Weizenbaum is born January 8, 1923.
1923	Herman Lukoff is born May 2, 1923.
1923	Eugene Kleiner is born May 12, 1923.
1923	Edgar Codd is born August 23, 1923.
1923	Jack St. Clair Kilby, Nobel Prize winner and inventor of the Integrated Circuit, handheld calculator, and thermal printer is born November 8, 1923.
1923	Donald Michie is born November 11, 1923.
1924	The Computing - Tabulating - Recording (C-T-R) company is renamed to IBM on February 14, 1924.
1924	David Evans is born February 24, 1924.
1924	Enid Mumford is born March 6, 1924.
1924	George Pake is born April 1, 1924.
1924	Donald Davies is born June 7, 1924.
1924	CATV and cable broadcasting begins being used in some European cities.
1924	Friedrich Bauer is born June 10, 1924.
1924	Gerrot Blaauw is born July 17, 1924.
1924	Georgii Lopato is born August 23, 1924.
1924	Jean Hoerni is born September 26, 1924.
1924	John Backus is born December 3, 1924.
1924	Charles Bachman is born December 11, 1924.
1924	Jean Bartik is born December 27, 1924.
1924	George Fairchild passes away on December 31, 1924 (Age: 71)
1925	John Opel is born January 5, 1925.
1925	Douglas Engelbart is born January 30, 1925.
1925	Heinz Nixdor is born April 9, 1925.
1925	Fredrik Bull passes away June 7, 1925 (Age: 43)
1925	David Huffman is born August 9, 1925.
1925	Seymour Cray is born September 28, 1925.
1926	Ken Olsen is born February 20, 1926.
1926	Packard Bell is originally founded.
1926	John Kemeny is born May 31, 1926.
1926	John Diebold is born June 8, 1926.
1926	Fernando Corbató is born July 1, 1926.
1926	Carl Petri is born July 12, 1926.
1926	The first patent for the semiconductor transistor is created.
1926	Arthur Rock is born August 19, 1926.
1927	David Wheeler is born February 9, 1927.
1927	Gerard Salton is born March 8, 1927.
1927	Allen Newell is born March 19, 1927.
1927	Dudley Buck is born April 25, 1927.
1927	Glen Culler is born July 7, 1927.
1927	Theodore Maiman is born July 11, 1927.
1927	Marvin Minsky is born August 9, 1927.
1927	Bob Evans is born August 19, 1927.
1927	John McCarthy is born September 4, 1927.
1927	Philo Taylor Farnsworth becomes the first person to successfully transmit a TV signal on September 7, 1927.
1927	Robert Noyce is born December 12, 1927.
1928	Jean Sammet is born in 1928.
1928	Thomas Kurtz is born February 22, 1928.
1928	Juris Hartmanis is born July 5, 1928.
1928	The Galvin Manufacturing Corporation begins on September 25, 1928, the company will later be known as Motorola.
1928	Bernard Galler is born October 3, 1928.
1928	Noam Chomsky is born December 7, 1928
1928	Jack Tramiel is born December 13, 1928
1928	Martin Cooper is born December 26, 1928.
1929	Harlan Anderson is born in 1929.
1929	Gordon Moore is born January 3, 1929.
1929	Herman Hollerith passes away November 17, 1929.
1929	Douglas Ross is born December 21, 1929.
1930	Einar Stefferud is born January 11, 1930.
1930	Geophysical Service Incorporated is founded. The company will later become Texas Instruments.
1930	Edsger Dijkstra is born May 11, 1930.
1930	Henry Perot is born June 27, 1930.
1930	Daniel McCracken is born July 23, 1930.
1930	Galvin Manufacturing Corporation Auto radios begin to be sold as an accessory for the automobile. Paul Galvin coins the name Motorola for the company's new products, linking the ideas of motion and radio.
1930	Dorr Felt passes away August 7, 1930.
1930	Alan F. Shugart is born September 27, 1930.
1930	Citizen is founded.
1931	James Russell is born in 1931.
1931	Fletcher Jones is born January 22, 1931.
1931	Eiichi Goto is born January 26, 1931.
1931	Anthony (Tony) Edgar Sale is born January 30, 1931.
1931	Andrei Ershov is born April 19, 1931.
1931	Frederick Brooks is born April 19, 1931.
1931	Thomas Edison passes away October 18, 1931.
1932	Jay Glenn Miner is born May 31, 1932.
1932	Frances Allen is born August 4, 1932.
1932	ROM-Type storage media is introduced.
1932	Robert H. Dennard is born September 5, 1932.
1932	Dana Scott is born October 11, 1932.
1933	Canon is established.
1933	Stephanie Shirley is born September 16, 1933.
1933	Boris Babayan is born December 20, 1933.
1934	Edward Fredkin is born January 1, 1934.
1934	Charles Hoare is born January 11, 1934
1934	Charles Flint passes away February 26, 1934.
1934	Robert Moog is born May 23, 1934.
1934	Leonard Kleinrock is born June 13, 1934.
1934	Gordon Bell is born August 19, 1934.
1934	The FCC is established.
1934	The US Communication Act goes into place.
1934	Carl Sagen is born November 9, 1934.
1935	Barry Boehm is born in 1935.
1935	The Polygraph machine aka lie detector is used for the first time.
1935	Roger Needham is born February 9, 1935.
1935	Charles Molnar is born March 14, 1935.
1935	Fujitsu is established June 20, 1935.
1935	Joshua Lederberg is born May 23, 1935.
1935	TDK is founded on December 7, 1935.
1936	Edward Feigenbaum is born January 20, 1936.
1936	Germanys Konrad Zuse creates the Z1, one of the first binary digital computers and a machine that could be controlled through a punch tape.
1936	While working on a radio, Paul Eisler invents the Printed Circuit Board (PCB).
1936	Abraham Lempel is born February 10, 1936.
1936	Dvorak receives a patent for the Dvorak keyboard May 12, 1936.
1936	Henry F. Phillips receives patent for the Phillips screw and screwdriver July 7, 1936.
1936	Andrew Grove is born September 2, 1936.
1936	Jerry Sanders is born September 12, 1936.
1936	Alan Turing develops the Turing Machine.
1937	Larry Roberts is born in 1937.
1937	Charles Peddle is born in 1937.
1937	Steve Russell is born in 1937.
1937	Igor Aleksander is born in 1937
1937	Harold Lawson is born in 1937.
1937	Iowa State Colleges John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry begin work on creating the binary-based ABC (Atanasoft-Berry Computer). Considered by most to be the first electronic digital computer.
1937	Dabbala Reddy is born June 13, 1937.
1937	Seiko Instruments is founded.
1937	Ted Nelson is born June 17, 1937.
1937	Guglielmo Marconi passes away July 20, 1937 (Age: 63)
1937	Alec Reeves develops PCM.
1937	Marcian Hoff is born October 28, 1937.
1937	Jagadish Bose passes away November 23, 1937 (Age:78)
1938	Charles Moore is born in 1938.
1938	Gary Starkweather is born in 1938.
1938	Molex is founded.
1938	Donald Knuth is born January 10, 1938.
1938	Vivitar is founded.
1938	Lynn Conway is born January 10, 1938.
1938	Samsung is founded.
1938	Ivan Sutherland is born May 16, 1938.
1938	The company now known as Hewlett Packard creates its first product the HP 200A.
1938	Chester Carlson produces first electrophotographic image October 22, 1938, which later becomes the Xerox machine.
1938	Orson Welles and Houseman broadcast H.G. Welles War of the Worlds on the airways October 30th as a Halloween spoof.
1938	BBC creates the first science fiction television program.
1938	Bob Kahn is born December 23, 1938.
1939	Adam Osborne is born March 6, 1939.
1939	John Scully is born April 6, 1939.
1939	George Stibitz completes the Complex Number Calculator capable of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing complex numbers. This device provides a foundation for digital computers.
1939	The first Radio Shack catalog is published.
1939	Craig Barrett is born August 29, 1939
1939	Charles Geschke is born September 11, 1939.
1939	John Hopcroft is born October 7, 1939
1939	Iowa State Colleges John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry create a protoType of the binary-based ABC (Atanasoft-Berry Computer).
1939	The companies Tanaka Seisakusho and Hakunetsusha merge to become the new company we now know as Toshiba.
1939	Hewlett Packard is found by William Hewlett and David Packard. The name is decided on the flip of a coin toss.
1939	Barbara Liskov is born November 7, 1939.