Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
1953 IBM ships its first electronic computer, the 701.
1954 A silicon-based junction transistor, perfected by Gordon Teal of Texas Instruments, Inc., brings
a tremendous reduction in costs.
1954 The IBM 650 magnetic drum calculator establishes itself as the first mass-produced computer,
with the company selling 450 in one year.
1955 Bell Laboratories announces the first fully transistorized computer, TRADIC.
1956 MIT researchers build the TX-0, the first general-purpose, programmable computer built with
transistors.
1956 The era of magnetic disk storage dawns with IBM's shipment of a 305 RAMAC to Zellerbach
Paper in San Francisco.
1958 Jack Kilby creates the first integrated circuit at Texas Instruments to prove that resistors and
capacitors can exist on the same piece of semiconductor material.
1959 IBM's 7000 series mainframes are the company's first transistorized computers.
1959 Robert Noyce's practical integrated circuit, invented at Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corp.,
allows printing of conducting channels directly on the silicon surface.
1960 Bell Labs designs its Dataphone, the first commercial modem, specifically for converting
digital computer data to analog signals for transmission across its long-distance network.
1961 According to Datamation magazine, IBM has an 81.2% share of the computer market in 1961,
the year in which it introduces the 1400 series.
1964 IBM announces System/360, a family of six mutually compatible computers and 40 peripherals
that can work together.
1964 Online transaction processing makes its debut in IBM's SABRE reservation system, set up for
American Airlines.
1965 Digital Equipment Corp. introduces the PDP-8, the first commercially successful minicomputer.
1969 The root of what is to become the Internet begins when the Department of Defense establishes
four nodes on the ARPAnet: two at University of California campuses (one at Santa Barbara and
one at Los Angeles) and one each at Stanford Research Institute and the University of Utah.
1971 A team at IBM's San Jose Laboratories invents the 8-inch floppy disk drive.
1971 The first advertisement for a microprocessor, the Intel 4004, appears in Electronic News .
1971 The Kenbak-1, one of the first personal computers, is advertised for $750 in Scientific
American .
1972 Intel's 8008 microprocessor makes its debut.
1973 Robert Metcalfe devises the Ethernet method of network connection at the Xerox Palo Alto
Research Center.
1973 The Micral is the earliest commercial, nonkit personal computer based on a microprocessor,
the Intel 8008.
1973 The TV Typewriter, designed by Don Lancaster, provides the first display of alphanumeric
information on an ordinary television set.
1974 Researchers at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center design the Alto, the first workstation with
a built-in mouse for input.
 
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