A group of American women using mechanical calculators to figure ballistics tables for new weapons are the inspiration for the computer. The army puts $10,000 into the scheme of physicist John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert to create a device that will speed up their task.
---------------
1945 ENIAC
The ENIAC or Electric Numerical Integrator and Computer solves its first problem, in only two months. Without the ENIAC the problem would have taken 20 years by people power. United States Soldiers stand by the 30 ton machine replacing the vacuum tubes which blow out frequently.
---------------
1950 ATLAS
ATLAS is delivered to the Naval Security Group. It has a 16 kb capacity, and is the first parallel electronic computer with a drum memory.
In 1952, the Army Security Agency will take delivery on ABNER, reportedly the most advanced computer of its day.
---------------
1950 SEAC Gets the SCOOP
Impatient for the completion of the UNIVAC, a project to which the US Air Force has lent its support, USAF officials contact the National Bureau of Standards to build a computer. The result is SEAC (Eastern Automatic Computer). It is built for use in Project SCOOP, to help in planning and deployment of defense systems.
Magnetic wire replaces punched tape in SEAC, accelerating reading speed from 30 to 10,000 words per minute. The SEAC programmers also attach an amplifier to the machine, so as to monitor the sounds for irregularities in operation. As a result, some SEAC programs are whimsically tagged with routines that play songs such as "Camptown Races" and "Dixie."
---------------
1953 Surface-to-Air Missile
Nike-Ajax is the first operational surface-to-air missile (SAM). The computer-guided SAM can follow and destroy hostile aircraft as its movements and those of its target are tracked on a radar screen.
---------------
1954 Computerized MOR
Military Operations Research (MOR) leaps forward as a classic war game played with toy tanks on a hexagonal board evolves into the first computerized analytical war game, called Maximum Complexity Computer Battle. It is developed at Johns Hopkins University, the home of the Eniac computer by Dr. George Gamow.
---------------
1955 Computer Air Defense
The US Government implements a computer system for air defense. The new system SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment), monitors and processes radar information and can guide weapons to intercept hostile aircraft if necessary.
---------------
1955 Fiber Optics
Dr. Narinder Kapary of the University of London invents optical fibers. Single strands of optical glass are stretched until they are as thin as human hair. A light shining at one end can travel the length of the fiber through any number of curves and loops without escaping through the sides. The light emerges intact at the other end.
The new science of fiber optics is first employed by the medical profession for looking deep into the body, and is later applied by the communications industry to transmit telephone, television and computer signals.
---------------
1962 Computer Steel Mill
The Richard Thomas and Baldwin Co. is the first wide hot strip steel mill to install an integrated computer system. It controls processing and orders production planning.
---------------
1964 Computer Satellite Film
The IBM 7090 digital computer predicts the movements of a hypothetical satellite. This data is recorded magnetically and converted into line drawings which can be photographed and viewed as an animated film.
---------------
1966 Revolution Against Systems Analysis
Admiral Hyman Rickover, known for his outspoken opinions, publicly critiques US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's reliance on the use of systems analysis. "On a cost effectiveness basis," he testifies before Congress, "the colonists would not have revolted against King George III... (and) computer logic would have advised the British to make terms with Hitler in 1940."
---------------
1966 DEFSMAC
A center for the computer processing of signals intelligence, serving the same purpose as does the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) for reconnaissance photos, is established on the grounds of the NSA at Fort Meade. It is called the Defense Special Missile and Astronautics Center (DEFSMAC). DEFSMAC functions as an early warning trigger for the White House Situation Room, and war rooms at the Pentagon and NORAD.
---------------
1966 Progress in Fiber Optics
New progress is made in the field of fiber optics, hastening the day when the copper wires in telephone cable will be replaced by glass fiber capable of carrying thousands of phone calls, TV signals or computer data on a single fiber.
---------------
1966 Fuel Injection System
The electronic fuel injection system is tested by the Rover auto company of Britain. A small computer evaluates engine operating conditions and feeds an appropriate amount of fuel to the individual cylinders. This improves mileage, reduces exhaust emissions and could make the carburetor obsolete.
---------------
1970 Telemart
Telemart, the first attempt at telemarketing for consumer grocery items, is tested in San Diego.
Shoppers are expected to dial in by touch tone phone, and key in their orders. The orders will be automatically delivered.
The store must close because the demand for transaction processing excedes the capacity of the computer.
---------------
1972 8008
Intel introduces the 8008, an 8 bit microprocessor. An ad, prepared by Regis McKenna, proclaims, "A New Era in Integrated Electronics: A Microprogrammable Computer on a Chip." Adam Osborne writes the manual for the product.
---------------
1972 Catastrophe Theory
Mathematician Rene Thom publishes a general mathematical theory which sets the scientific world on its ear. He suggests that processes, both manmade and natural may be subject to a model of mathematical analysis which treats them as catastrophes. Thom uses topologies generated with computer graphics to display his complex mathematics. In such a display, a catastrophe looks like the rising action of an ocean wave, which at its crest, reveals the catastrophic collapse of the wave.
---------------
1973 Federal Express
Two years after convincing a group of investors to put up $80 million (the largest venture capital package ever) to finance his overnight delivery service, Frederick W. Smith, launches his Federal Express Service. Using time and motion studies and taking into account weather patterns, not to mention tracking packages by computer, their simple precept that proven reliability will earn them their clientele is proven correct. After a first year loss of $27 million, sales rise to $6 billion within sixteen years.
---------------
1975 Hypercube
Bruce Van Natta imagines the Hypercube, which would link microprocessors in order to achieve the effect of a mainframe computer.
This is a Local Area Network - LAN - with parallel processing.
---------------
1976 Apple Computer
Steve Jobs sells his VW Microbus, and Steve Wozniak his two HP programmable calculators to pay for the creation of a printed circuit board for the Apple I. The machine debuts at a meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club. Together they sell 200 of the machines for $666.
Nolan Bushnell introduces Jobs to Don Valentine, a San Francisco venture capitalist, who in turn, introduces Jobs to Mike Markkula.
Markkula, independently wealthy from stock options exploited as a marketing manager at Intel, cannot resist. He invests $91,000, takes one-third interest, and aims Apple Computer Corporation at becoming the first company to make the Fortune 500 in less than five years.
In 1977, Apple introduces the Apple II Personal Computer, promoted by advertising in, among other places, Playboy Magazine.
---------------
1977 The Commodore PET
Commodore introduces the PET computer, designed by Chuck Peddle and employing the same 6502 microprocessor used in the KIM1 and the Apple II. Priced under $1000 and requiring no assembly, the PET boasts an integrated keyboard and television monitor, and has the effect of establishing a whole new product concept -- the personal computer.
---------------
1978 Videotex
The Canadian Government introduces its own system for videotex. It is called Telidon, and boasts graphics as well as text. It produces superior graphics through an alphageometric based technology.
Videotex is similar to teletext in that it is an electronic system for the display of information on the television screen of a set equipped with a decoding device. Unlike teletext, the system provides service from a central computer; information is relayed to the home user through cable or telephone lines. Moreover, it offers the opportunity of user interaction.
The American videotex system is known as ANTIOPE. Compatible worldwide, it provides both broadcast and videotex technology, as well as hard copy printouts.
---------------
1980 Trailer for TRON
The impact of mass media is felt at the SIGGRAPH trade show, the traditional showcase for computer graphics technology. Robert Abel debuts a 60 second trailer - an advertising film for a motion picture - which employs advanced computer graphics modeling techniques.
The trailer is for TRON, a movie which employs sophisticated computer graphics and is produced by Walt Disney Studios. The audience of programmers and hardcore techies whoops and hollers its approval.
---------------
1981 IBM Makes PC
International Business Machine Co. produces a personal computer after the success of Apple.
---------------
1983 Computer Runs the Railroad
British Rail employs computers to set routes and signals automatically in a new system developed by General Electric and Westinghouse.
---------------
1985 Computer Hunts Subs
The British company Gresham - CAP provides the Royal Navy with a computer system for detecting submarines. It is called SEPADS or Sonar Environmental Prediction and Display System.
---------------
1985 The Amiga
Commodore introduces the Amiga. Based on an original design by Jay Miner and a group of engineers at the Amiga company, which Commodore has purchased. The design incorporates advanced chip based digital signal processing (DSP) chips for the management of video and audio. It is a multimedia computer, some years in advance of the general use of the term.
---------------
1986 Sanctions Against South Africa
As American disgust for racist policies of "apartheid" in South Africa grows, both US government and popular boycott movements serve to limit sales of computer equipment and nuclear technology to South Africa, while restricting the traffic in gold coins. Many American companies withdraw from South Africa, sparking a debate on whether the loss of black African jobs outweighs the pressure imposed upon the South African government.
---------------
1988 Transatlantic Fiber Optic Cable
AT&T and its European partners complete construction of the first transatlantic fiber optic cable. Called the TAT-8, this 4,186-mile cable provides high-performance digital transmission for voice communication, video, fax and computer data between Europe and America. A similar cable is planned to span the Pacific.
---------------
1988 Computer Virus Scare
A computer virus - coded instructions that reproduce inside a computer system, frequently destroying or altering information - invades two unclassified networks of the US Department of Defense. In a matter of hours it has infected as many as 6,000 computers across the country. The infected computers are part of military, university and corporate networks.
This virus is the work of Robert Tappan Morris, Jr., a graduate student at Cornell University. Morris is the son of one of the US Government's computer security experts. Although Morris' virus does no lasting damage, it dramatizes the vulnerability of computer networks to electronic sabotage.
Viruses have appeared in computer systems all over the world, and even in legally obtained shrinkwrapped software.
---------------
1989 "The Cuckoo's Egg"
In a book that catches the world military security community by surprise, Clifford Stoll, a doctoral student in Astronomy at the University of California at Berkeley, reveals that he has discovered a sophisticated West German computer espionage ring trying to break into secure military data bases. He discovers the plot by obsessively tracking down a 75 cent billing discrepancy in his department's computer system.
---------------
1990 Computer Terrorists Hit Revlon
Logisticon Inc, a Santa Clara, California software company, uses a phone link and computer access codes to shut down two of four national distribution centers of Revlon Inc., the nations' largest mass-market cosmetics company. The dispute is over inventory control software Logisticon was hired to develop for Revlon. Revlon's suit, filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court, alleges that when the makeup giant informed the software producers that they were suspending payment on their $1.2 million contract until the software worked, Logisticon crippled Revlon's distribution centers for three days in a midnight "guerilla" phone attack which disabled the software in question.
---------------
1990 French Spy on US Computer Companies
A Federal Bureau of Investigation senior official confirms a story first reported in the French magazine L'Expresss, that the French espionage service, la Direction General de la Securite Exteriure, tried to recruit employees of IBM, Texas Instruments, and other American multi-national electronics companies, in an effort to give secrets to Compagnie des Machines Bull, a struggling computer company owned in part by the French government. The spy operation is uncovered by the CIA and FBI and prompts the State Department to file a formal protest with the French government.
---------------
1991 CDTV
Commodore introduces a new consumer electronics device, designed to look like an audio compact disk player, but built with the innards of an Amiga computer. Priced initially at $999.00, demand is strong from mass merchandisers, and investment banking firms begin to recommend Commodore's stock.
---------------
1991 Copernicus Architecture
The US Navy plans to end its high expenditure on computer systems by resorting to the use of "off the shelf" computers in its planned telecommunications system. Called Copernicus, the plan may reduce the cost of developing new systems by a factor of 100 to 1.
---------------
1991 Attacking the Soft Empire
The National Security Agency (NSA) joins with other US intelligence agencies to plant a computer virus in Iraq's air defense system. The agency of infection is reportedly a microchip within a printer illegally shipped from a French company to Iraq through Jordan. The virus causes displays of information on computer screens to disappear.
---------------
1991 Taligent and Kaleida
IBM and Apple announce a joint venture in which they will create a personal computer operating system linking Macintoshes and IBM-style PCs. The jointly owned company started for this purpose is to be called Taligent. Another company, Kaleida, is started by the two computer giants, to create advanced operating system software and products for the consumer marketplace. John Sculley, CEO of Apple calls these new devices Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), and predicts their arrival in the marketplace in 1993. The ventures are seen as a challenge to Microsoft and Intel, as well as to the Japanese.
---------------
1991 Killer Software Bug
Computer software for the Patriot air defense missile system suffers from a "bug" that causes it to develop a 360 millisecond tracking error over a period of four days. The bug is the cause of a failed attempt to down an Iraqi SCUD missile, which hits a US Army barracks in Dharan causing the most severe US casualties of the war -- 28 killed, 98 injured. The bug has been discovered and corrected previously, but the data cassette with the revised software is still en route, and does not arrive until the day after the tragedy.
---------------
1991 Aegis Warship
The Aegis, the world's most technologically sophisticated computer warship, is the ultimate weapon on the waves. The ship's first mission is to patrol the waters of the Persian Gulf and to enforce the oil embargo against Iraq.
---------------
1992 Smart TV
The Japanese control two-thirds of the world's home electronics market. But according to Andrew Lippman of MIT's Media Lab, the next consumer electronics boom will be in interactive television, a market which could be cornered by American manufacturers. These new "smart" televisions will be the perfect marriage of the computer and the television. Fiber optics will play an important role in the new products, but the most significant break with the past will come in the change from analog to digital technology.
---------------
1992 Computer Worker Law
A 1990 ordinance passed in San Francisco requiring employers to provide video display terminal workers with low-glare screens, adjustable furniture and wrist pads is challenged by two small companies in a court case in January. The suit claims that the city has no authority to regulate the safety of work place conditions. Although the companies are small, their legal costs are paid by IBM.
---------------
1992 Sega Leads CD Pack
Sega Enterprises, Ltd., the Japanese manufacturer of computer games, debuts a $300 CD accessory to its $99 Genesis game system. Sega sells 100,000 units of the CD accessory in its first month on the market, more than the total sales to date of all consumer CD-ROM players.
Other computer game manufacturers are quick to take note. Nintendo will release a similar device next year, Sony will be entering the games market, and a new company, 3DO, will release a CD game machine for adults.
---------------
1992 Video Compression
Video images can be stored on the hard disk of a personal computer, but take up so much space that no more than a few seconds worth can be stored at any one time. Hardware and software manufacturers compete to produce effective video compression and decompression systems. Such systems reduce the amount of necessary storage space and allow computer users to manipulate video images with relative ease. At present, the top contenders are MPEG (Motion Pictures Experts Group), DVI (Digital Video Interactive) QuickTime from Apple and AVI from Microsoft.
---------------
1992 Apple QuickTime
Apple Computer introduces the first software-based video capture system for personal computers. With the addition of a video capture board and QuickTime software, a Mac user can store and manipulate video images on hard disk. Unlike previous systems, QuickTime does not require the user to buy expensive video compression hardware. Microsoft will introduce a competitive system for the Windows environment before the year is out.
---------------
1992 Virtual Reality
Progress continues toward computer-based, 3-D simulations of experience. "Virtual Reality" systems, which cost $200,000 as little as five years ago, now sell from $20,000. A basic set includes a mask or helmet through which one views three-dimensional video simulations, a joystick for controlling one's simulated movement through cyberspace, and a "power glove" for manipulating "virtual" objects. Some users complain of nausea and dizziness after using the system, but others see it as a triumph of the imagination.
---------------
1992 Big Blue in the Red
IBM posts its first losses ever. The computer giant has finished 1991 $2.8 billion in the red.
---------------
1992 In Your Ear
The FBI asks Congress to compel phone companies to provide means for the Bureau to silently tap into all transmissions. Many forms of electronic communications such as fax, cellular phones and computer on-line services cannot be easily tapped at present. Phone companies will have to devise special software to separate individual calls from the digital flow.
Some entrepreneurs plan to market devices which will digitally encode telephone conversations, to make eavesdropping virtually impossible. The National Security Agency (NSA) is reportedly concerned that such technology will compromise national security.
---------------
1992 Computer Price Fixing
Domestic air travel in the United States is a $40 billion business. The US Department of Justice believes a number of carriers are using a computer system to fix prices, and files an antitrust suit against eight major airlines.
---------------
1992 3D Video Games?
The consumer electronics industry is eagerly awaiting the debut of a new CD-based video computer game system. The start-up 3DO company has raised $30 million from investors including Time-Warner and Matsushita. The game machine is meant to make a breakthrough into the adult market with 3-D video graphics beyond anything yet seen in home computer games. Paramount Technology, LucasArts Games and Sierra On-Line are already planning to write software for the 3DO.
---------------
1992 Computer Prices Drop
Compaq kicks off another wave of price-cutting in the personal computer market, as the majors compete for customers in a sluggish economy. IBM, Apple, Dell and Gateway all cut prices, introduce new product lines and add new features to existing products. At the beginning of the year, a popular entry-level system like the 486SX cost at least $3000; the same system can now be had for a third the price.
