Census.ġ896: Hollerith establishes the Tabulating Machine Company, which later become International Business Machines (IBM).ġ904: John Fleming invents the diode vacuum tube, which can convert alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC).ġ910-1915: The physicist Manson Benedicks realizes that a germanium crystal can convert AC to DC, which later becomes a basic building block for microchips.ġ919: The flip_flop switch is invented by W.H.
Hollerith machines are used for the 1890 U.S. Burroughs patents a mechanical adding machine.ġ890: Herman Hollerith patents a mechanically programmable enumeration machine (talley or sort) using key_punched cards (actually 3 different machines) called a Tabulating Machine. He fails to secure enough funding to build the machine and dies before completing the machineġ842: Ada Lovelace becomes the first "programmer"’ by describing Babbage’s Analytic Engine.ġ847-1854: George Boole creates boolean algebra and publishes An Investigation of the Laws of Thought.ġ868: The QWERTY keyboard is invented by Christopher Sholes, specifically designed to slow down typists so that the mechanical keys will not hit each other.ġ888: William S. 200 – Reference to both sand and token types of abacus in Greece.Ģ00 BC: Chinese invent paper and the mambo stick abacus.ġ00 BC: Romans using the wax abacus, abacus with rods.ġ500-1540: Printing reinvented in Europe by Johannes Gensfleisch (known as Gutenberg).ġ600-1614: Scotsman John Napier invents a way to calculate logarithms using “Napier’s Bones” – ivory rods that work as a calculator when appropriately arranged.ġ622: First slide rule invented by William Oughtred.ġ637: René Descartes invents Analytical Geometry.ġ642: Pascal designed a mechanical calculator (addition only) called the Pascaline.ġ680s: Leibniz and Newton independently invent calculus.ġ694: Leibniz creates the “Leibniz’s wheel," which is a four_function device (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division), saving much time for creating log tables.ġ700s: The rise of increasingly accurate analog mechanical devices.ġ800-1801: Joseph Jacquard creates memory and programmability by using a punched card on a loom.ġ811: Luddites, fearing loss of livelihood, try to destroy many Jacquard looms.ġ820: The Arithmometer, the first mass_produced calculator, introduced.ġ823: Charles Babbage creates his Difference Engine, which can add, subtract, multiply, and divide to six significant figures, but he never attempts twenty significant figures needed for real usefulness.ġ830s: Babbage designs his Analytic Engine, which functions similar to a modern digital computer with a processor, storage for data, and cards for input and output.
300 – first known use of zero used by Babylonian scholars. 35,000 BC (also known as BCE _ Before Current Era): Notched bones used for counting.Ģ0,000 BC: Pictures on rocks appeared in Europe.ġ0,000 BC: Clay objects for counting used in the Fertile Crescent.Ħ000 BC: First seals that make impressions on clays.Ĥ000 BC: People of Sumer invent a base 60 numbering system (the base of the time) used by Greeks, Babylonians, Arabs.ģ000 BC: Egyptian number system and hieroglyphics appear,Ģ700 BC: An abacus invented in Sumer and Babylonia.Ģ000 BC: Minion civilization uses tablets of clay for accounting calculationsġ500BC: The first alphabetic language appears with the Semites in what today is Syriaġ000 BC: Many numeric systems appear.