Timeline

This is timeline of some milestones in the development of digital technology.
(The links lead to a variety of online resources).

Phase I

1649 Blaise Pascal patents his mechanical calculator “Pascaline”
1823 Charles Babbage builds the difference engine
1835 Charles Babbage proposes the analytical engine
1872 William Thomson builds an analog computer for tide prediction
1927 H.L. Hazen and Vannevar Bush build differential analyzer at MIT
1936 Alan Turing proposes an “universal computing machine”
1939 John Atanasoff builds the first electrical digital computer (Atanasoff-Berry Computer)
1942 George Stibitz suggests the use of the word “digital” in a memorandum for the Office of Scientific Research and Development
1944 “Colossus” used by Bletchley Park cryptoanalysts
1945 John von Neumann circulates “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC” (von Neumann architechture)
1945 WWII ends (with the help of science and information technology)

Phase II

1947 Invention of bipolar junction transistor
1948 Claude Shannon publishes “A Mathematical Theory of Information”
1948 First program runs on the “Manchester Baby”
1950 Alan Turing proposes the Turing Test
1952 Geoffrey Drummer presents his idea of an integrated circuit (microchip)
1963 Douglas Engelbart and Bill English build first mouse prototype
1965 First comercial stored-program desktop computer Olivetti Programma 101
1971 First microprocessor  Intel 4004
1971 IBM introduces 8-inch floppy disk
1971 First e-mail sent
1972 First video game console Magnavox Odyssey released
1977 First generation personal computers Apple II, TRS-80, Commodore PET

Phase III

1982 First compact disc released
1982 William Gibson uses the term “cyberspace” in his novel Burning Chrome
1983 First mobile phone Motorola DynaTac
1983 GUI implemented for the first time on the Apple Lisa
1988 First direct IP connection between Europe and North America
1988 First commerical digital camera
1989 Tim Berners-Lee proposes an “information managment system”
1989 Tim Berners-Lee implements the Hypertext Transfer Protocol
1989 15% of all US households own a personal computer
1991 World Wide Web becomes publically accessible
1993 The first DEF CON conference is held in Las Vegas (with roughly 100 atendees; there were 25000 at DEF CON 25 in 2017)
1996 DVD released
1997 Deep Blue beats Garri Kasparow

Phase IV

1998 Google search engine launced by Larry Page and Sergey Brin
2003 Mark Zuckerberg launches facemash.com
2005 Youtube is launched
2006 Youporn is launched
2007 iphone released
2010 4 billion cell phone subscribers (68% of world pop)
2010 The stuxnet worm is discoverd
2013 Edward Snowden reveals massive survailance by the NSA and GCHQ
2015 Apple watch released
2016 AphaGo beats Lee Sedol
2017 Half of the worlds population is connected to the internet
2018 IBM presents “Project Debater”