| 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 |
Alan
Kay is born May 17, 1940. |
| 1940 | John
Warnock is born October 6, 1940. |
| 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 |
Federico Faggin is born December 1, 1941. |
| 1942 | Steven
Hawking is born January 8, 1942. |
| 1942 | Gary
Kildall is born May 19, 1942. |
| 1943 |
David
S. Morse is born April 15, 1943. |
| 1943 | Vinton
Cerf is born June 23, 1943. |
| 1943 | The
Colossus, the first eclectic programmable computer developed by
Tommy Flowers is first demonstrated in December 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 |
Edward Yourdon is born
April 30, 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 | The first binary, and partially programmable computer, Colossus, was created at Bletchley Park. |
| 1945 | Patent is filed for the Harvard Mark I digital computer on February 8, 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 |
Lee Felsenstein is born
in 1945. |
| 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 | ENIAC computer completed. |
| 1946 |
Robert Metcalfe is born
April 7, 1946. |
| 1946 | The Selectron tube capable of storing 256 bits of information begins development. |
| 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 | Freddie Williams memory system known as the Williams tube is now in working order. |
| 1947 | ISO is founded. |
| 1947 | The
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is established September 18, 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 | 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 | The 604 multiplying punch, based upon the vacuum tube technology, is produced by IBM. |
| 1948 | The television begins to divert radio audiences. |
| 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 | The EDSAC performs its first calculation on May 6, 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 | 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 | 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 | 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 | 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. |
| 1952 | Complaint is filed against IBM for Monopolistic practices on January 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 | 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. |
| 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 |
James Martin is born in 1953. |
| 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 |
Richard Stallman is born March 16, 1953. |
| 1953 | The IBM 701 becomes available to the scientific community. A total of 19 are produced and sold. |
| 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 |
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 | 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 |
Larry Wall is born
September 27, 1954. |
| 1954 | CERN is established on September 29, 1954. |
| 1954 | IBM
introduces its first calculating machine that uses solid-state transistors
instead of vacuum tubes October 7, 1954. |
| 1954 | The
first commercially produced transistor radio, the Regency TR-1 is announced
October 18, 1954. |
| 1955 |
Steve Jobs is born February 24, 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 | Tom Watson, IBM's president is featured on the front of Time Magazine March 28, 1955. |
| 1955 | Albert Einstein dies on April 18, 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 |
Tim Bernes-Lee is born June 8, 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 |
John von Neumann is
presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Dwight
Eisenhower on February 15, 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 | The
first ASR device was used in
1952 to recognize single digits spoken by a
user (it was not computer driven). |
| 1956 | On September 13, 1956 the IBM 305 RAMAC is the first computer to be shipped with a hard disk 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. |
| 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 |
John von Neumann passes
away February 8, 1957 at the age of 53. |
| 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. |
| 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 | 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 | Hitachi is founded. |
| 1959 | The Harvard-MARK I is turned off for the last time. |
| 1959 | Robert Noyce creates an integrated circuit with component connections made of aluminum lines on silicon. |
| 1959 | The Luna 2 becomes the first human made object to land on the moon on September 14, 1959. |
| 1959 | Leonard Kleinrock starts to developing packetization. |
| 1959 | Motorola produces the two-way, fully transistorized mobile radio. |
| 1959 | Panasonic is founded. |
