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 | Jean Ichbiah is born March 25, 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 | Peter Samson is born in 1941. |
| 1941 | Ray Tomlinson is born in 1941. |
| 1941 | Leslie Lamport is born February 7, 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. |
| 1941 | Robert Miner is born December 23, 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 | Louis Gerstner is born March 1, 1942. |
| 1942 | David Cutler is born March 13, 1942. |
| 1942 | John Atanasoff successfully tests the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) which was the first computer to use regenerative capacitor drum memory. |
| 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 | Nolan Bushnell is born February 5, 1943. |
| 1943 | Charles Thacker is born February 26, 1943. |
| 1943 | Jef Raskin is born March 9, 1943. |
| 1943 | Peter Karmanos is born March 11, 1943 |
| 1943 | David S. Morse is born April 15, 1943. |
| 1943 | Fujio Masuoka is born May 8, 1943. |
| 1943 | Hydro-Aire is founded. |
| 1943 | Vint Cerf is born June 23, 1943. |
| 1943 | Bill Moggridge is born June 25, 1943. |
| 1943 | Masatoshi Shima is born August 22, 1943. |
| 1943 | Jonathan Postel is born October 6, 1943. |
| 1943 | Michael Stonebraker is born October 11, 1943. |
| 1943 | Peter Norton is born November 14, 1943. |
| 1943 | The Colossus, the first electric programmable computer developed by Tommy Flowers is first demonstrated in December 1943. |
| 1943 | Nicholas Negroponte is born December 1, 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 | James Clark is born March 23, 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. |
| 1944 | Paul Otlet passes away December 10, 1944 (Age: 76) |
| 1945 | Lee Felsenstein is born in 1945. |
| 1945 | Joseph Canion is born January 19, 1945. |
| 1945 | Patent is filed for the Harvard Mark I digital computer on February 8, 1945. |
| 1945 | Gustav Tauschek passes away February 14, 1945 (Age: 48) |
| 1945 | John Ambrose Fleming passes away April 18, 1945. |
| 1945 | Adele Goldberg is born July 7, 1945. |
| 1945 | Azim Premji is born July 24, 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 | John McAfee is born September 18, 1945. |
| 1945 | Martin Hellman is born October 2, 1945. |
| 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. |
| 1945 | Leonard Adleman is born December 31, 1945. |
| 1946 | James Thomas is born March 26, 1946. |
| 1946 | Freddie Williams applies for a patent on his cathode-ray tube (CRT) storing device on December 11, 1946. The device that later became known as the Williams tube or more appropriately the Williams-Kilburn tube. The tube stored only stored 128 40-bit words. |
| 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 | Robert Stein is born April 20, 1946. |
| 1946 | Sony is founded May 7, 1946. |
| 1946 | Jan Rajchman begins his work on developing the Selectron tube that was capable of storing 256 bits. Because of the popularity of magnetic core memory at the time, the Selectron tube was never put into mass production. |
| 1946 | N. R. Narayana Murthy is born August 20, 1946. |
| 1946 | Gordon Eubanks is born November 7, 1946. |
| 1946 | Andrew Chi-Chih Yao is born December 24, 1946. |
| 1947 | Paul Brainerd is born in 1947. |
| 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 | Michael Hart is born March 8, 1947. |
| 1947 | Walter Mossberg is born March 27, 1947. |
| 1947 | Freddie Williams memory system known as the Williams-Kilburn 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 and other researchers comes up with the idea of using magnetic-core memory in the Whirlwind computer. |
| 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 | Raymond Kurzweil is born February 12, 1948. |
| 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 | Lawrence Rowe is born April 11, 1948. |
| 1948 | Robert Tarjan is born April 30, 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 | Mikhail Donskoy is born September 9, 1948. |
| 1948 | Charles Simonyi is born in September 10, 1948 |
| 1948 | ALPS is established November 1, 1948. |
| 1948 | Leonid Levin is born November 2, 1948. |
| 1948 | The television begins to divert radio audiences. |
| 1949 | David Bradley is born in 1949. |
| 1949 | James Bryce passes away 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 | Robert Frankston is born June 14, 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. 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 | Murali Chemuturi is born June 28, 1950. |
| 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 | Paul Otellini is born October 12, 1950. |
| 1950 | The NICAD battery begins its commercial use. |
| 1950 | Mitchell Kapor is born November 1, 1950. |
| 1950 | Leslie Comrie passes away December 11, 1950 (Age:57) |
| 1950 | Bjarne Stroustrup is born December 30, 1950. |
| 1951 | Radia Perlman is born in 1951. |
| 1951 | William Stevens is born February 5, 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 Ferranti MARK 1 or Manchester Electronic Computer is delivered to the Manchester University in February 1951. |
| 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, an early type of 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 | John Doerr is born June 29, 1951. |
| 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 | John Dvorak is born April 5, 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 | Leonid Khachiyan is born May 3, 1952. |
| 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 | In July 1953 a core memory expansion is added to the ENIAC. |
| 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 | Kevin Warwick is born February 9, 1954. |
| 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 | Karlheinz Brandenburg is born June 20, 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 | Harold Prewitt is born October 1, 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. |
| 1954 | Enrico Fermi passes away November 28, 1954. |
| 1955 | Sandra Lerner is born in 1955. |
| 1955 | Hubert Booth passes away January 14, 1955. |
| 1955 | John Gustafson is born January 19, 1955. |
| 1955 | Steve Jobs is born February 24, 1955. |
| 1955 | Konrad Zuse completes the Z22, the seventh computer model and first computer that used magnetic storage memory. |
| 1955 | Grady Booch is born February 27, 1955. |
| 1955 | MIT introduces the Whirlwind machine on March 8, 1955, a revolutionary computer that was the first digital computer with magnetic core RAM and real-time graphics. |
| 1955 | Steve Gibson is born March 26, 1955. |
| 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 | Dave Winer is born May 2, 1955. |
| 1955 | An Wang is issued U.S. patent #2,708,722 on May 17, 1955 for then invention of the magnetic "Pulse Transfer Controlling Device", which made made magnetic core memory a reality. |
| 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 | William (Bill) H. Gates is born October 28, 1955. |
| 1955 | IBM introduces the first IBM 702. |
| 1955 | Ray Ozzie is born November 20, 1955. |
| 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 | Mark McCahill is born February 7, 1956. |
| 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 | Mark Hurd is born January 1, 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 | Nathaniel Borenstein is born September 23, 1957. |
| 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 | JEDEC 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 | Jeffrey Raikes is born May 29, 1958. |
| 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. |
| 1958 | Ursula Burns is born September 20, 1958. |
| 1958 | Michael Muuss is born October 16, 1958. |
| 1958 | Phil Farrand is born November 5, 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 | Peter Molyneux is born May 5, 1959. |
| 1959 | Dudley Buck passes away May 21, 1959 (Age: 32) |
| 1959 | Louis Ridenour passes away May 21, 1959 (Age:47) |
| 1959 | Robert Noyce creates an integrated circuit with component connections made of aluminum lines on silicon. |
| 1959 | Nathan Myhrvold is born August 3, 1959. |
| 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 | Paul Galvin passes away November 5, 1959 (Age: 64) |
| 1959 | David Culler is born November 12, 1959. |