COMPUTER TIME LINE - 1950-1980

COMPUTER
TIME LINE


On an 8x8 board, Alan Turing writes the first computer program to simulate chess

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., writes about "EPICAC" in one of the first love stories involving a computer.

The American military begins to use computers to simulate operations in its "war games."

1951
The first nonspecialist computer magazine, Computers and People (originally titled Computers and Automation), comes on the market.

John Pinkerton completes the first business computer, LEO, for Lyons Teashop Company in England. LEO will be used for administrative purposes, not for calculating.

Eckert and Mauchly complete UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer), the first computer specifically designed for commercial operations, and deliver it to the U.S. Census Bureau for tabulating the 1950 census.

While working on UNIVAC I, Grace Hopper meets the need for faster programming by devising a set of  instructions that tells the machine how to convert its language into symbolic code. This is the A-O compiler, the first of its kind.

1952
IBM, the world's largest purveyor of punched card office machines, shifts to the manufacture of electronic computers.

John Diebold's "Automation: The Advent of the Factory" leads off the string of studies that will explore the computer's impact on employment and leisure time.

1954

FORTRAN is born, through a paper titled "Specifications for the IBM Mathematical Formula Translating System, FORTRAN," written by IBM's Programming Research Group.

1955
At RCA Labs in Princeton, N.J., Harry Olson and Herbert Belar complete the RCA Electronic Music Synthesizer, the first of its kind.

M.I. T.'s Whirlwind I introduces the first computer graphics: primitive interactive line drawings on two display consoles.

The first formal computer user group, SHARE, meets in the basement of Rand Corporation headquarters in Santa Monica, Calif. The members, including government, research, aviation and computer organizations, gather to exchange "homegrown" software in the absence of instructions for the IBM 704.

1956

The 45-mile stretch of high-tech creativity known as Silicon Valley etches itself on the landscape of California's Santa Clara Valley.

Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley receive the Nobel Prize for their invention of the transistor. Shockley, who had left Bell Labs in 1955, founds Shockley Transistor Corporation, one of the first of the Silicon Valley firms. Engineers from Shockley Transistor will form their own major electronics firms, such as Fairchild Semiconductor.

1957

At his marriage in Amsterdam, programming expert Edsgar Dijkstra fills in his profession on the license as "programer." Finding this unacceptable on the grounds that no such profession exists, city authorities erase his entry and sub stitute "theoretical physicist."

Lejaren Hiller arranges the first computercomposed music, Illiac Suite for String Quartet.

In Maynard, Mass., Ken Olsen starts Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) as a mail-order parts business.

1958

Computer firms spring up along Route 128, north of Boston.

Texas Instruments' Jack St. Kilby develops the first working model of the integrated circuit.

At Control Data Corporation, Seymour Cray designs the CDC 1604, the first fully transistorized supercomputer.

1959

At Fairchild Semiconductor, Robert Noyce and Jean Hoerni develop the planar process, in which circuit components are interconnected by photoengraving on a flat, polished wafer, usually silicon. With integrated circuits, computers grow smaller and much more powerful.

CODASYL (Committee on Data Systems Languages), representing government, military and industry, meets to decide on a common language for business data processing. COBOL, for Common Business Oriented Language, is published within months, whereupon the Defense Department stipulates that all its suppliers must use the language.

1960
The term "software" becomes widely accepted throughout the computer industry.

1961
The National Institutes of Health Clinic Center in Bethesda, Md., implements the first computerized patientmonitoring system.

1962

Dr. Edward O. Thorp's best-selling Beat the Dealer describes using a computer to work out the odds at blackjack. Thorpe's system is so successful that several casinos bar him from the game.

Disk file storage is initiated with the IBM 1440 series. The 14-inch disks look like phonograph records, are arranged in stacks of six and store three million characters.

With a $30 million investment and an IBM 9090, American Airlines launches SABRE, the first computerized airline reservation system. One of the largest commercial data bases in operation, SABRE allows customers to book reservations and rent cars. By 1968 it will handle over 100,000 calls per day from passengers, travel agents and other airlines.

Ivan Sutherland, a doctoral candidate at M. I. T.'s Lincoln Laboratory, designs Sketchpad, a linedrawing system for draftsmen. Using a cathode ray display tube, the system features an electronic stylus, or light pen, to display calculations at any stage of design. Soon after, another M.I.T. researcher, Timothy Johnson, develops a collateral program to display three-dimen-  sional drawings.

1963

M.I.T.'s Dr. Joseph Weizenbaum develops Eliza, a program that simulates conversation between psychotherapist and patient.

General Motor; Research Labs produces the first computerdesigned auto part: the trunk lid for 1965 Cadillacs. The computer system is DAC-1 (Design Augmented by Computer), whose screen displays an image that can be modified with a light pen.

After more than 73,000 hours of steadfast service, UNIVAC I is retired to the Smithsonian Institution.

1964

Sara Lee, maker of frozen pastries, becomes the first fully automated factory. The Deerfield, Ill., plant uses a Honeywell 610 computer to change equipment speeds and oven temperatures and to determine what products are needed in filling orders.

In Texas v. Hancock a programmer who stole his employer's computer software, worth about $5 million, is convicted and sentenced to five years. This constitutes the first computer crime leading to criminal prosecution.

1965

On May 1, at four A.M. in a room at Dartmouth College, John Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz run their first program in BASIC (Beginners' All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) for non professional computer users.

Harris-Intertype Corporation introduces three models of a computer designed specifically for typesetting. All of them justify automatically, and the top-end version offers near-perfect hyphenation.

Several Wall Street firms turn to computers for securities analysis and accounting.

DEC produces the first "mini" computer, incorporating many features of a large computer but with smaller storage capacity and a slower processing speed.

Schools begin to use computers for science simulation, math quizzes and educational games.

1966

Operation Match, one of the early computer dating services, opens in Cambridge, Mass.

Texas Instruments unveils the first solid-state hand-held calculator. It has no electronic display, but prints out answers on a strip of heat-sensitive paper.

1967

The chess-playing MacHack IV is entered by Richard Greenblatt in the Massachusetts state championship, becoming the first program to compete successfully against human chess players.

Computerworld, one of the most comprehensive weekly newspapers geared to the computer industry, begins publication.

1968

The movie 2001: A Space Odyssey plays across the country, introducing the mutinous computer HAL.

W. Carlos' Switched-On Bach, an album of fugues, preludes and two-part inventions played on a Moog Synthesizer, is a big hit.

Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce leave Fairchild Semiconductor to form Intel (Integrated Electronics) Corporation.

1969

M.E. Hoff, Jr., a young engineer at Intel, takes charge of the Busicom project involving the manufacture of chips for a Japanese calculator firm. His improvements on the design result in a central processing unit of 2,250 microminiaturized transistors on a chip less than 1/6" long and 1/8" wide. The Intel 4004 is the first micro computer.

1970

Ralph Baer, a division manager at Sanders Associates in New Hampshire, originates the home video game when he develops an electronic unit with hand controls that sends broadcast signals to a TV set.

1971

Magnavox buys the patent rights to Baer's TV/hand-control invention, then sells the sublicensing rights to Atari and other manufacturers.

Left with a stock of unsold chips, Intel puts the 4004 microprocessor in its catalog. To everyone's surprise, the chip takes the industry by storm and paves the way for most of the advances of the decade.

1972

IBM announces the System/32, a desk-size unit that contains all the computer hardware.

Intel develops the 8008 microprocessor, originally designed for the Display Terminal Corporation (now Datapoint) CRT. The 8008 ultimately satisfies all customer requirements except in the area of speed.

In a move to reduce clutter and clatter in the newsroom, the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle and Herald install CRTs for use in writing and editing stories.

Atari founder Nolan Bushnell invents and markets Pong, considered by many the first milestone in video game history.

Diablo Systems of Hayward, Calif., develops the first automatic printer for data processing systems. The "daisy wheel" Hytype Printer I features a glass-reinforced nylon disk and can print 30 characters per second; integrated circuits do much of the work.

The Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, are the first games to use computers as "primary" judges of times and finishes. The computer companies involved are Gebr. Junghams GMBH and Compagnie de Montres Longines Francillon S. A.

1973

The National Computer Conference is held at the New York Coliseum June 4-8, replacing the fall and spring joint conferences.

Intel turns out the 8008 microprocessor, which is 20 times faster than the original 4004 chip.

Shugart Associates of Sunnyvale, Calif., ships its first 8" floppy disks. Replacing punched cards as a data entry medium, the reusable plastic/ oxide disks weigh less than two ounces and store programs and files.

Truong Trong Thi, a Frenchman of Vietnamese origin, introduces the first commercially available microcomputer system, based on the Intel 8008, but fails to secure adequate distribution.

1974

The July cover story of Radio-Electronics magazine tells how to "Build the Mark-8, Your Personal Minicomputer" (with an Intel 8008 microprocessor).

Computer magazines now range from Computer Law and Tax Reporter, which documents legal battles in data processing, to Creative Computing, one of the first magazines devoted to recreational use of computers.

In the first experiment with bank computer terminals, two branches of the Lincoln, Neb., Hinky Dinky grocery chain install computer terminals for bank deposits and withdrawals. In six weeks First Federal Savings & Loan takes in 672 new accounts.

Two leading designers at Intel leave to form Zilog, another microprocessing firm. They develop the Z80 chip, which competes directly with Intel's new 8080.

1975
The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics features a cover story on the MITS Altair, the first widely available personal computer.

In a five-week period, Harvard student William Gates and associate Paul Allen adapt BASIC to fit the microcomputer. Having wrested the new computers from the hands of a small group of assembly language programmers, they form Microsoft to market their version of the language.

Objective Design of Tallahassee, Fla., offers Encounter, the first commercial personal computer game, in assembly language on paper tape.

1976

The New York Times starts to convert to electronic editing and typesetting on a Harris 2550 system.

With a surplus of calculator chips, Commodore enters the personal computer market through MOS (metal oxide semiconductor) technology.

The first Adventure game is programmed by Crowther and Wood at Princeton University.

The number of computer magazines grows to include Byte: The Small Systems Journal (aimed at the "personal computer" amateur and professional), the quarterly Computer Graphics and Art, and Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia for the microcomputer hobbyist.

1977

Storage systems become smaller, more powerful and more convenient. Micropolis Corporation of Northridge, Calif., announces the Metafloppy, a family of integrated 51/4' floppy disk systems with the storage capacity of 8" disks.

The newsweekly Computerworld begins a Microcomputing section to handle the flood of information on micros.

Apple markets the Apple II, ultimately to become the personal computer equivalent of the Volkswagen.

Radio Shack unveils its fully assembled microcomputer, the TRS-80 Model 1, with keyboard, CRT and cassette unit.

1978

Fed up with time-consuming projections using a calculator and spreadsheet, first-year Harvard Business School student Daniel Bricklin teams up with Robert Frankston at M.I.T. to create VisiCalc, an electronic spreadsheet that can recalculate all related numbers when one variable changes. They pool their finance. and with $16,000 found Software Arts in Wellesley, Mass.

Seymour Rubenstein, formerly of IMSAI, founds MicroPro International and commissions John Barnaby to write the word processing program that will become WordStar.

Texas Instruments produces its Speak & Spell toy, the first widespread offering of digital speech synthesis.

Epson America in Anaheim, Calif, introduces its 80-column dot-matrix printer, which becomes a runaway best seller.

1979

Personal Software markets VisiCalc, soon called the "smash hit of software." The first version works only on the Apple II and thus boosts that computer's sales. VisiCalc is credited with taking micros out of the home and making them "serious."

Publisher Adam Osborne sells his company to McGraw-Hill and founds Osborne Computer in Hayward, Calif.

Video games appear everywhere: in restaurants, gas stations, bars. With threatening names like Centipede and Space Invaders, the quarter-gobbling dwarfs cause concern among parents.

The Source offers an electronic service enabling home computer owners to read newspapers, get stock info, check airline schedules and browse through restaurant guides. Similar services will include CompuServe and Dow Jones News/Retrieval.