Timeline – ICT (The Beginnings)
Actually it was already 1100 B.C. when wooden slide rules and aids such as the abacus were invented in various cultures and improved over the centuries.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz invents a functioning calculating machine for all four basic arithmetic operations.
The architect Johann Helfrich von Müller invented the Müller machine in 1784, which anticipated the principles of later calculators.
Charles Babbage begins work on the “Analytical Engine”. Unfortunately I couldn’t find out the exact start date.
The Hollerith machine is used for the US census and becomes the first major success in IT history. Nintendo was founded a year earlier.
German engineer Konrad Zuse completes the “Z3”. The mainframe is considered to be the first functional computer.
In Great Britain “Colossus” cracked German radio messages, in the USA the mainframe computers Mark I (1944) and ENIAC (1946) were built.
The transistor was invented in Bell Labs, but later developments such as the field effect transistor are at least as important for the technical breakthrough.
The UNIVAC 1 is the first commercial computer. It is available for a price of one million US dollars. By the end of the year, there will be 31 computers worldwide.
The first modern mainframe computers are completed: Siemens 2002 (1957), NEAC 1101 (1958) and IBM 7000 (1959) are based on better transistors.
