History of Personal Computers
1937 - The first computer without gears, cams, belts or shafts is built by J.V. Atanasoff . 1941 - Atanasoff and Clifford Berry designed a computer that can solve 29 equations simultaneously able to store information on its main memory. 1943-1944 - Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert built the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC). This is considered as the grandfather of digital computers. 1946 - Mauchly and Presper built the UNIVAC, the first commercial computer for business and government applications. 1953 - The first computer language was developed by Grace Hopper, which eventually becomes known as COBOL. Thomas Johnson Watson, Jr. created the IBM 701 EDPM. 1954 - The FORTRAN programming language is pioneered.
1958 - Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce unveiled the computer chip. 1964 - Douglas Engelbart shows a prototype of the modern computer, with a mouse and a graphical user interface. This computer is more accessible to the general public. 1970: The newly formed Intel unveils the Intel 1103, the first Dynamic Access Memory (DRAM) chip. 1971: Alan Shugart leads a team of IBM engineers who invent the “floppy disk,” allowing data to be shared among computers. 1973: Robert Metcalfe, a member of the research staff for Xerox, develops Ethernet for connecting multiple computers and other hardware. 1974-1977: A number of personal computers hit the market, including Scelbi & Mark-8 Altair, IBM 5100, RadioShack’s TRS-80—affectionately known as the “Trash 80,” and the Commodore PET. 1975: The IBM 5100 becomes the first commercially available portable computer. 1976: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak start Apple Computers on April Fool’s Day and roll out the Apple I, the first computer with a single-circuit board. 1977: Radio Shack's initial production run of the TRS-80 was just 3,000. It sold like crazy. For the first time, non-geeks could write programs and make a computer do what they wished. 1977: Jobs and Wozniak incorporate...
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