Computer history - 1940 - 1960

Year	Event
1940	The first handheld two-way radio called the "Handy Talkie" is created by Motorola for the U.S. Army Signal Control.
1940	Gottfried Ungerboeck is born March 15, 1940.
1940	Alan Kay is born May 17, 1940.
1940	Clive Sinclair is born July 3, 1940
1940	John Warnock is born October 6, 1940.
1940	Gerald Lawson is born December 1, 1940.
1941	Ray Tomlinson is born in 1941.
1941	David Parnas is born February 10, 1941.
1941	Amir Pnueli is born April 22, 1941.
1941	August-Wilhelm Scheer is born July 27, 1941.
1941	German Konrad Zuse finishes the Z3, a fully program-operational calculating machine. The computer is publically introduced in Berlin May 12, 1941.
1941	Dennis Ritchie is born September 9, 1941.
1941	Henry Edward Roberts is born September 13, 1941.
1941	Chester Carlson gets patent for electric photography more commonly known today as photocopying October 6, 1941.
1941	Alan Kotok is born November 9, 1941.
1941	Federico Faggin is born December 1, 1941.
1942	Brian Kernighan is born in 1942.
1942	Edward Tufte is born in 1942.
1942	Steven Hawking is born January 8, 1942.
1942	Armas Markkula is born February 11, 1942.
1942	David Cutler is born March 13, 1942.
1942	Gary Kildall is born May 19, 1942.
1942	James Foley is born July 20, 1942.
1942	Enrico Fermi designs and creates the world's first Nuclear Reactor December 2, 1942.
1943	John Draper is born in 1943.
1943	James Goodnight is born January 6, 1943.
1943	Nikola Tesla passes away January 7, 1943.
1943	Charles Thacker is born February 26, 1943.
1943	David S. Morse is born April 15, 1943.
1943	Hydro-Aire is founded.
1943	Vint Cerf is born June 23, 1943.
1943	Bill Moggridge is born June 25, 1943.
1943	Jonathan Postel is born October 6, 1943.
1943	The Colossus, the first electric programmable computer developed by Tommy Flowers is first demonstrated in December 1943.
1943	Butler Lampson is born December 23, 1943.
1943	ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), the first general-purpose electronic digital calculator begins to be constructed. This computer by most is considered to be the first electronic computer.
1943	Dan Noble with Motorola designs a "Walkie Talkie" the first portable FM two-way radio that a backpack version that weighed 35 pounds.
1944	Donald Chamberlin is born in 1944.
1944	James Gray is born January 12, 1944.
1944	Hasso Plattner is born January 21, 1944.
1944	Andrew Tanenbaum is born March 16, 1944.
1944	David Clark is born April 7, 1944.
1944	Edward Yourdon is born April 30, 1944.
1944	Bailey Diffie is born June 5, 1944.
1944	The Harvard Mark I computer is officially presented at Harvard University on August 7, 1944. The relay-based Harvard-IBM MARK I a large programmable-controlled calculating machine provides vital calculations for the U.S. Navy. Grace Hopper becomes its programmer.
1944	Larry Ellison is born August 17, 1944.
1944	The first binary, and partially programmable computer, Colossus, was created at Bletchley Park.
1944	Steve Crocker is born October 15, 1944.
1944	Abhay Bhushan is born November 23, 1944.
1945	Lee Felsenstein is born in 1945.
1945	Patent is filed for the Harvard Mark I digital computer on February 8, 1945.
1945	John Ambrose Fleming passes away April 18, 1945.
1945	Adele Goldberg is born July 7, 1945.
1945	Edmund Clarke is born July 27, 1945.
1945	The Von Neumann Architecture and a description of a general purpose electronic digital computer with a stored programs is introduced in John von Neumann's report of the EDVAC.
1945	The term bug as computer bug was termed by Grace Hopper when programming the MARK II.
1945	The first ballpoint pen goes on sale in New York for $12.50 on October 30, 1945.
1945	Herbert Freeman is born December 13, 1945.
1945	Hector de Jesus Ruiz is born December 25, 1945.
1946	James Thomas is born March 26, 1946.
1946	Freddie Williams applies for a patent on his cathode-ray tube (CRT) storing device in December. The device that later became known as the Williams tube is capable of storing between 512 and 1024 bits of data.
1946	Konrad Zuse writes the first algorithmic programming language called 'Plankalkül'.
1946	ENIAC computer completed.
1946	Tektronix is founded.
1946	Brooklyn New York's Flatbush National Bank becomes the first bank to issue a credit card in 1946.
1946	Robert Metcalfe is born April 7, 1946.
1946	Sony is founded May 7, 1946.
1946	The Selectron tube capable of storing 256 bits of information begins development.
1946	Gordon Eubanks is born November 7, 1946.
1946	Andrew Chi-Chih Yao is born December 24, 1946.
1947	1947 Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann. file patent #2,455,992 describing one of the first computer games played on a CRT January 25, 1947.
1947	Robert Cailliau is born January 26, 1947.
1947	P.L. Porter is founded.
1947	Freddie Williams memory system known as the Williams tube is now in working order.
1947	Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting on June 24, 1947.
1947	Ben Shneiderman is born August 21, 1947.
1947	Edward Shortliffe is born August 28, 1947.
1947	Jay Forrester extends the life of a vacuum tube from 500 to 500,000 hours.
1947	ISO is founded.
1947	The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is established September 18, 1947.
1947	John Barlow is born October 3, 1947.
1947	Star Micronics is founded.
1947	David Patterson is born November 16, 1947.
1947	John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley invent the first transistor at the Bell Laboratories on December 23, 1947.
1948	IBM builds the SSEC (Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator). The computer contains 12,000 tubes.
1948	John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley patent the first transistor.
1948	Andrew Donald Booth creates magnetic drum memory, which is two inches long and two inches wide and capable of holding 10 bits per inch.
1948	William Gibson is born March 17, 1948.
1948	Scott Fahlman is born March 21, 1948.
1948	The 604 multiplying punch, based upon the vacuum tube technology, is produced by IBM.
1948	Nakamichi is founded.
1948	Carol Bartz is born August 29, 1948.
1948	Charles Simonyi is born in September 10, 1948
1948	ALPS is established November 1, 1948.
1948	The television begins to divert radio audiences.
1949	David Bradley is born in 1949.
1949	Claude Shannon builds the first machine that plays chess at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
1949	The concept of a computer program capable of reproducing itself was first mentioned by John von Neumann in his 1949 "Theory of self-reproducing automata" essay.
1949	The Harvard-MARK III, the first of the MARK machines to use an internally stored program and indirect addressing, goes into operations again under the direction of Howard Aiken.
1949	The first computer company, Electronic Controls Company is founded by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the same individuals who helped create the ENIAC computer.
1949	John Thomson is born April 24, 1949.
1949	The EDSAC performs its first calculation on May 6, 1949.
1949	Howard Cunningham is born May 26, 1949.
1949	Alain Glavieux is born July 4, 1949.
1949	John Chambers is born August 23, 1949.
1949	Popular Mechanics predicts: "Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
1949	The small-scale electronic machine (SSEM) is fully operational at Manchester University.
1949	The Australian computer CSIRAC is first ran.
1950	Bertrand Meyer is born in 1950.
1950	Dave Boggs is born in 1950.
1950	Douglas Lenat is born in 1950.
1950	The United States Government receives the UNIVAC 1101 or ERA 1101 in 1950. This computer is considered to be the first computer that was capable of storing and running a program from memory.
1950	The first electronic computer is created in Japan by Hideo Yamachito.
1950	Konrad Zuse completes and sells the Z4 on July 12, 1950, becoming the first commercial computer.
1950	Jon Hall is born August 7, 1950.
1950	Steve Wozniak is born August 11, 1950.
1950	Alan Turing publishes his paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence in October. This paper helps create the Turing Test.
1950	The NICAD battery begins its commercial use.
1950	Mitchell Kapor is born November 1, 1950.
1950	Bjarne Stroustrup is born December 30, 1950.
1951	Radia Perlman is born in 1951.
1951	The first business computer, the Lyons Electronic Office (LEO) is completed by T. Raymond Thompson, John Simmons and their team at Lyons Co.
1951	The first commercial computer, the "First Ferranti MARK I" is now functional at Manchester University.
1951	The first ISO is published with the title, "Standard reference temperature for industrial length measurement."
1951	UNIVAC I was introduced.
1951	The EDVAC begins performing basic tasks.
1951	Dean Kamen is born April 5, 1951.
1951	Jay Forrester applies for a patent for magnetic core memory, the first random access memory (RAM) May 11, 1951.
1951	The Nixie tube is first introduced.
1951	Grace Hopper develops A-0, the first Arithmetic language.
1951	Dan Bricklin is born July 16, 1951.
1951	Sanyo is founded in 1951.
1951	Bill Atkinson is born in 1951.
1951	Geophysical Service Incorporated is renamed to Texas Instruments in 1951.
1952	Fred Baker is born in 1952.
1952	Complaint is filed against IBM for Monopolistic practices on January 1952.
1952	Alan Cooper is born June 3, 1952.
1952	Adi Shamir is born July 6, 1952.
1952	Geoffrey Dummer a British radar engineer introduces the concept of the integrated circuit at a tech conference in the United States.
1952	Fairly reliable working magnetic drum memories for use in computers begin to be sold by Andrew Donald Booth and his father.
1952	RIAA is established.
1952	The first ASR device was used to recognize single digits spoken by a user (it was not computer driven).
1952	Alexander Sandy Douglas created the first graphical computer game of Tic-Tac-Toe on an EDSAC known as "OXO."
1952	The National Security Agency (NSA) is formed November 4, 1952.
1952	Craig Newmark is born December 6, 1952
1953	David Deutsch is born in 1953.
1953	James Martin is born in 1953.
1953	IBM introduces the 701 to the public April 7, 1953. The 701 is IBM's first electric computer and first mass produced computer.
1953	The UNIVAC predicts the presidential election during a televised news broadcast.
1953	A magnetic memory smaller and faster than existing vacuum tube memories is built at MIT.
1953	Paul Allen is born January 21, 1953.
1953	Craig Reynolds is born March 15, 1953.
1953	Dr. Sidney Harman and Bernard Kardon create the Harman Kardon company.
1953	Richard Stallman is born March 16, 1953.
1953	Andy Hertzfeld is born April 6, 1953.
1953	TEAC is formed on August 29, 1953.
1953	The IBM 701 becomes available to the scientific community. A total of 19 are produced and sold.
1953	Florian Brody is born October 31, 1953.
1953	The Colgate Comedy Hour on N.B.C. becomes the first TV show to broadcast in color on November 22, 1953.
1954	IBM produces and markets the IBM 650. More than 1,800 of these computers are sold in an eight-year span, with 120 installations in the first year.
1954	Daniel Kottke is born April 4, 1954.
1954	Brother is founded April 21, 1954.
1954	Tim O'Reilly is born June 6, 1954.
1954	Alan Turing passes away June 7, 1954.
1954	The USSR's Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant opens June 27, 1954 and becomes the first Nuclear power plant to generate electricity.
1954	Robert Enderle is born July 27, 1954.
1954	The first version of FORTRAN (formula translator) is published by IBM.
1954	Texas Instruments announces the start of commercial production of silicon transistors.
1954	IBM becomes the first company to translate Russian into English using a computer.
1954	Guy Kawasaki is born August 30, 1954.
1954	Larry Wall is born September 27, 1954.
1954	CERN is established on September 29, 1954.
1954	Guy Steele is born October 2, 1954.
1954	IBM introduces its first calculating machine that uses solid-state transistors instead of vacuum tubes October 7, 1954.
1954	John Ousterhout is born October 15, 1954.
1954	Commodore is founded.
1954	The first commercially produced transistor radio, the Regency TR-1 is announced October 18, 1954.
1954	Ken Williams is born October 30, 1954,
1954	Mitsumi is founded.
1954	Merrimac Industries is founded.
1954	William Joy is born November 8, 1954.
1955	John Gustafson is born January 19, 1955.
1955	Steve Jobs is born February 24, 1955.
1955	Grady Booch is born February 27, 1955.
1955	MIT introduces the Whirlwind machine March 8, 1955, a revolutionary computer that was the first digital computer with magnetic core RAM and real-time graphics.
1955	Thomas Watson, IBM's president is featured on the front of Time Magazine March 28, 1955.
1955	Albert Einstein passes away on April 18, 1955 (Age: 76)
1955	Eric Schmidt is born April 27, 1955.
1955	John McCarthy coins the term Artificial Intelligence (AI) in 1955 at Dartmouth University.
1955	Dartmouth Colleges John McCarthy coins the term "artificial intelligence."
1955	Dave Winer is born May 2, 1955.
1955	James Gosling is born May 19, 1955.
1955	Tim Bernes-Lee is born June 8, 1955.
1955	Tim Bray is born June 21, 1955.
1955	Donna Dubinsky is born July 4, 1955.
1955	Andreas (Andy) von Bechtolsheim is born September 30, 1955.
1955	John Dvorak is born October 28, 1955.
1955	William (Bill) H. Gates is born October 28, 1955.
1955	IBM introduces the first IBM 702.
1955	Bell Labs introduces its first transistor computer. Transistors are faster, smaller and create less heat than traditional vacuum tubs, making these computers more reliable and efficient.
1955	The ENIAC is turned off for the last time. Its estimated to have done more arithmetic than the entire human race had done prior to 1945.
1956	Calcomp is founded.
1956	Guido van Rossum is born January 31, 1956.
1956	Polyflon is founded.
1956	John von Neumann is presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Dwight Eisenhower on February 15, 1956.
1956	Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov is born on March 14, 1956.
1956	Steve Ballmer is born March 24, 1956.
1956	Jim Ellis is born May 6, 1956.
1956	The TX-O (Transistorized Experimental computer) and first transistorized computer is demonstrated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
1956	Tim Paterson is born June 1, 1956.
1956	Thomas Watson passes away June 19, 1956 (Age: 82)
1956	Dr. Robert Adler of Zenith invents the first cordless TV remote control in 1956.
1956	John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley are awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for their work on the transistor.
1956	On September 13, 1956 the IBM 305 RAMAC is the first computer to be shipped with a hard drive that contained 50 24-inch platters and was capable of storing 5 million characters and weighed a ton.
1956	Wen Tsing Chow develops PROM.
1956	The programming language FORTRAN is introduced to the public October 15, 1956.
1956	Leo Laporte is born November 29, 1956.
1957	Carl Sassenrath is born in 1957.
1957	IBM announces it will no longer be using vacuum tubes and releases its first computer that had 2000 transistors.
1957	Fred Cohen is born in 1957.
1957	Barry Leiba is born in 1957.
1957	John von Neumann passes away February 8, 1957 (age of 53)
1957	Mark Dean is born March 2, 1957.
1957	Emil Post passes away on April 21, 1954 (age 57)
1957	Jeff Hawkins is born June 1, 1957.
1957	Bruce Eckel is born July 8, 1957.
1957	Fairchild Semiconductor is founded by Andy Grove, Eugene Kleiner, Gordon Moore, Jerry Sanders, Robert Noyce.
1957	Digital Equipment Corporation is founded by Kenneth Olsen. The company will later become a major network computer manufacturer.
1957	Russia launches the first artificial satellite, named Sputnik on October 4, 1957.
1957	In response to Sputnik the United States creates the new agency ARPA.
1957	Casio is established.
1957	Eric Raymond is born December 4, 1957.
1958	Keltec is founded.
1958	Shafi Goldwasser is born in 1958.
1958	Clair Lake passes away in 1958.
1958	GoldStar is founded. The company later becomes LG Electronics.
1958	The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics is renamed to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
1958	Control Data Corporation introduces Seymour Cray's 1604 for $1.5 Million, half the cost of the IBM computer.
1958	Henry Phillips passes away in 1958.
1958	NEC builds its first computer the NEAC 1101.
1958	William Higinbotham created the first video game called: Tennis for Two.
1958	The programming language FORTRAN II is created. Later FORTRAN III is created but never released to the public.
1958	President Eisenhowers Christmas address is the first voice transmission from a satellite.
1958	Steve Case is born August 21, 1958.
1958	The first integrated circuit is first developed by Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor and Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments. The first IC was demonstrated on September 12, 1958.
1959	Feng-hsiung Hsu is born in 1959.
1959	Harald Alvestrand is born in 1959.
1959	Danese Cooper is born January 19, 1959.
1959	Hitachi is founded.
1959	The Harvard-MARK I is turned off for the last time.
1959	Dudley Buck passes away May 21, 1959 (Age: 32).
1959	Robert Noyce creates an integrated circuit with component connections made of aluminum lines on silicon.
1959	Stephen Wolfram is born August 29, 1959.
1959	The Luna 2 becomes the first human made object to land on the moon on September 14, 1959.
1959	Edith Clarke passes away on October 29, 1959 (age 76)
1959	Leonard Kleinrock starts to developing packetization.
1959	Motorola produces the two-way, fully transistorized mobile radio.
1959	Panasonic is founded.
1959	David Culler is born November 12, 1959.