A Timeline of Computingcompiled by piero scaruffiHistory pages | Editor | Contact Book: A History of Silicon Valley (Copyright © 2012 Piero Scaruffi) |
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(See also the Timeline of Artificial Intelligence
and the Timeline of Cyberculture and Hacker Culture
and, for pictures of the machines, the
Visual History of Computing)
1859: Charles Babbage designs a "Difference Engine" 1885: William Burroughs develops an adding machine 1890: Hermann Hollerith's tabulator is chosen for the national census 1906: Lee DeForest invents the vacuum tube 1911: Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Company is acquired by a new company that will change name to International Business Machines or IBM in 1924 1925: Burroughs introduces a portable adding machine 1925: AT&T and Western Electric form the Bell Labs in New York 1927: Fritz Pfleumer in Germany invents the magnetic tape 1931: Vannevar Bush's Differential Analyzer: an analog computer to solve differential equations for engineering and physics problems (eg power transmission)
   1936: RCA introduces the 6L6, the most successful vacuum tube ever 1937: Claude Shannon's thesis: the application of Boolean algebra to electronic circuits (the switching circuits of telephone exchanges can express Boolean algebra) 1938: John Atanasoff at Iowa State College conceives the electronic digital computer 1939: Fred Terman's students William Hewlett and David Packard start a company to produce their audio-oscillator, the first startup in "Silicon Valley" 1941: Konrad Zuse's Z3 programmable electromechanical computer, the first Turing-complete machine
Article about the "electronic brain":
1950: Turing proposes a test to determine whether a machine is intelligent or not 1950: The Pilot ACE computer
Article in 1946 about Turing's "electronic brain" under development
Zuse 3 (1941): Turing-complete, electromechanical, no stored program, no memory Colossus (1943): electronic, not Turing-complete, no stored program, no memory Harvard Mark 1 and IBM ASCC (1944): not Turing-complete, electromechanical, no stored program, decimal, no memory ENIAC (1946): Turing-complete, electronic, no stored program, decimal (memory: delay lines) Manchester Baby (1948): Turing-complete, electronic, stored-program (memory: Williams tubes) Manchester Mark 1 (1949): Turing-complete, electronic, stored-program (memory: Williams tubes and drum memory) Cambridge EDSAC (1949): ditto (memory: delay lines) Pilot ACE (1950): ditto (memory: delay lines) SEAC (1950): ditto (memory: delay lines) with semiconductor logic SWAC (1950): ditto (memory: Williams tubes) ERA 1101 and Atlas (1950): ditto (memory: drum memory) Whirlwind (1951): ditto (memory: magnetic-core memory) IAS EDVAC (1951): ditto (memory: Williams tubes) Ferranti (1951): first commercial Turing-complete electronic stored-program computer (memory: Williams tubes and drum memory) Univac (1951): ditto (memory: delay lines) 1951: The first compiler (Grace Murray)
Computer programmers of 1951: Patsy Simmers (holding an ENIAC board) Gail Taylor (holding an EDVAC board), Milly Beck (holding an ORDVAC board), Norma Stec (holding a BRLESC-I board)
1960: William Fetter of Boeing coins the expression "computer graphics" 1960: Digital Equipment introduces the first minicomputer, the PDP-1 (Program Data Processor), that comes with a keyboard and a monitor 1960: John McCarthy speculates that "computation may someday be organized as a public utility" 1961: Joe Orlicky of JI Case pioneers Material Requirements Planning or MRP) 1961: Rolf Landauer argues that information is physical 1961: Charles Bachman at General Electric develops the first database management system, IDS 1961: Philco unveils the first head-mounted display 1961: Fernando Corbato at the MIT creates the first working time-sharing system, CTSS or "Compatible Time Sharing System", that allowed to remotely access a computer, an IBM 7090/94 1961: IBM owns more than 81% of the computer market 1961: General Motors installs "Unimate", the first industrial robot, designed by George Devol 1962: Paul Baran proposes a distributed network as the form of communication least vulnerable to a nuclear strike 1962: Steve Russell and others at the MIT implement the computer game "Spacewar" on a PDP-1 1962: The first commercial modem is manufactured by AT&T 1962: General Electric's scientist Nick Holonyak builds the first practical light-emitting diode (LED) 1963: Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute builds the first prototype of the "mouse" 1963: MIT's student Ivan Sutherland demonstrates "Sketchpad", "A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System" 1963: Irving John Good (Isidore Jacob Gudak) speculates about "ultraintelligent machines" (the "singularity") 1963: The "American Standard Code for Information Interchange" or "ASCII" is introduced 1963: Ivan Sutherland of the MIT demonstrates "Sketchpad", a computer graphics program, and the first program ever with a graphical user interface 1964: IBM introduces the first "mainframe" computer, the 360, and the first "operating system", the OS/360 1964: John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz (at Dartmouth College) invent the BASIC programming language 1964: American Airlines' SABRE reservation system, developed by IBM, is the first online transaction processing 1965: RCA and SDS introduce the first computers made with integrated circuits 1965: Gordon Moore ("Cramming more components into integrated circuits") predicts that the processing power of computers will double every 18 months ("Moore's law") 1965: European computer manufacturer Olivetti introduces the first affordable programmable electronic desktop computer, the P101 1965: The Digital Equipment Corporation unveils the first successful mini-computer, the PDP-8 1966: There are 2,623 computers in the USA (1,967 work for the Defense Department) 1966: IBM scientist Bob Dennard invents the Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) 1967: Jack Kilby (at Texas Instruments) develops the first hand-held calculator 1967: Greg Mansfield and David Cahlander write the full-screen text editor O26 for the Control Data 6000 mainframe Jul 1968: Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andy Grove found Intel ("Integrated Electronics") to build memory chips 1968: The hypertext system FRESS created by Andries van Dam at Brown University for the IBM 360 introduces the "undo" feature 1968: Don Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" 1968: Computer Science Corp becomes the first software company to be listed at the New York stock market 1968: Dutch mathematician Edsger Dijkstra writes "GO TO Statement Considered Harmful" 1968: The hypertext system FRESS created by Andries van Dam at Brown University for the IBM 360 introduces the "undo" feature 1968: Barclays Bank installs networked "automated teller machines" or ATMs 1968: Doug Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute demonstrates the NLS ("oN-Line System") in the "mother of all demos" 1969: Gary Starkweather of Xerox invents the laser printer 1969: Mario Cardullo conceives Radio-frequency identification (RFID) 1969: Advanced Micro Devices is founded by Jerry Sanders and other engineers from Fairchild Semiconductor 1969: The Stanford Research Institute (SRI) demonstrates Shakey the Robot 1969: Ted Codd of IBM invents the relational database 1969: In order to preempt an antitrust lawsuit by the government, IBM unbundles software from its computers and opens up its computers to third-party software companies 1969: Bell Labs unveils the Unix operating system developed by Kenneth Thompson and Dennis Ritchie 1969: The computer network Arpanet is inaugurated with four nodes, three of which are in California (UCLA, Stanford Research Institute and UC Santa Barbara 
1969: Shih Ming and Andrew Chiu found Taiwan's first semiconductor company, Unitron 1970: Japan's Sharp and Canon introduce the first pocket calculators 1970: Intel introduces the first commercially successful 1K DRAM chip 1970: Niklaus Wirth develops the programming language Pascal 1970: Lee Boysel at Four Phase Systems designs the AL1, a commercial microprocessors (an 8-bit CPU) 1970: The first practical optical fiber is developed by glass maker Corning Glass Works 1970: Five of the seven largest USA semiconductor manufacturers are located in Santa Clara Valley or "Silicon Valley" 1970: Xerox opens the Palo Alto Research Center or PARC 1971: The government bans AT&T from entering the data-processing business 1971: Arthur Miller's "The Assault on Privacy" 1971: David Noble at IBM invents the floppy disk 1971: Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney create the first arcade video game, "Computer Space" 1971: Ted Hoff and Federico Faggin at Intel build the first universal micro-processor, a programmable set of integrated circuits, i.e. a computer on a chip 1971: Busicom introduces the pocket calculator LE-120A Handy 1972: Narendra Patni founds the software enterprise Data Conversion with offices both in the USA and India 1972: At least 60 semiconductor companies have been founded in Silicon Valley between 1961 and 1972, mostly by former Fairchild engineers and managers 1972: Intel introduces the 8008 microprocessor, whose eight-bit word allowed to represent 256 characters, including all ten digits, both uppercase and lowercase letters and punctuation marks 1972: Magnavox introduces the first videogame console, the "Odyssey" 1972: Allan Alcorn creates the first videogame, "Pong", an evolution of Magnavox's Odyssey, for Nolan Bushnell's Atari 1972: The Global Positioning System (GPS) is invented by the USA military, using a constellation of 24 satellites for navigation and positioning purposes 1972: Ray Tomlinson at Bolt, Beranek and Newman invents email for sending messages between computer users, and invents a system to identify the user name and the computer name separated by a "@" 1972: IBM engineers in Mannheim, Germany, found Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung or SAP 1973: Efrem Lipkin, Mark Szpakowski, and Lee Felsenstein start the "Community Memory", the first public computerized bulletin board system 1973: Automatic Electronic Systems of Canada introduces the "AES-90", a "word processor" that combines a CRT-screen, a floppy-disk and a microprocessor 1973: Vietnamese-born engineer Andre Truong Trong Thi uses the 8008 to build the computer Micral 1973: Japan's Sharp develops the LCD or "Liquid Crystal Display" technology 1973: Martin Cooper at Motorola invents the first portable, wireless or "cellular" telephone 1973: Xerox PARC's Bob Metcalfe coins the term "Ethernet" for a local area network 1973: The Arpanet has 2,000 users 1973: Gary Kildall in Monterey invents the first operating system for a microprocessor, the CP/M 1973: Taiwan establishes the Industrial Technological Research Institute (ITRI) to develop technologies for foreign markets 1973: Ichiro Kato's team at Waseda University in Japan unveils the first full-scale anthropomorphic robot in the world, Wabot-1 1974: Tata obtains a software contract from Burroughs, the first major software project offsources by the USA to India 1974: The first item is sold by a store using a scanner to read a barcode using the Universal Product Code invented by IBM 1974: Japan's Hitachi produces its first IBM-compatible mainframe computer 1974: Donald Chamberlin at IBM's San Jose laboratories invents SQL 1974: Xerox's PARC unveils the "Alto", the first workstation with a "mouse" and a Graphical User Interface 1974: Sam Hurst invents the touch-screen user interface 1974: IBM's San Jose laboratories unveils the relational database system System R 1974: Vint Cerf of Stanford and others publish the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) 1975: Advanced Micro Devices introduces a reverse-engineered clone of the Intel 8080 microprocessor 1975: Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith establish the Computer Graphics Laboratory at the New York Institute of Technology 1975: Ed Roberts in New Mexico introduces the Altair 8800 based on an Intel microprocessor and sold as a mail-order kit 1975: Bill Gates and Paul Allen develop a version of BASIC for the Altair personal computer and found Microsoft 1975: Steve Wozniak and others found the "Homebrew Computer Club" 1976: Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs form Apple Computer and build the first microcomputer in Jobs' garage in Cupertino. 1976: Stanford University researchers (Martin Hellman, Ralph Merkle and Whitfield Diffie) describe the concept of public-key cryptography 1976: Bill Joy writes the "vi" text editor for Unix 1976: Ed Catmull and Fred Parke's computer animation in a scene of the film "Futureworld" is the first to use 3D computer graphics 1976: MOS Technology introduces the 6502 processor 1976: Stan Shih and his wife Carolyn Yeh found the calculator maker Multitech (later Acer) in Taiwan 1977: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak develop the Apple II using the 6502 processor 1977: UC Berkeley develops the "Berkeley Software Distribution" (BSD), better known as "Berkeley Unix", a variant of the Unix operating system Aug 1977: Larry Ellison founds the Software Development Laboratories, later renamed Oracle Corporation 1977: Atari introduces a videogame console, the 2600, based on the 6502 processor 1977: Dave Smith builds the "Prophet 5", the world's first microprocessor-based musical instrument, the first polyphonic and programmable synthesizer 1977: Dennis Hayes of National Data Corporation invents the PC modem, a device that converts between analog and digital signals 1978: Toshihiro Nishikado creates the first blockbuster videogame, "Space Invaders" 1978: Olivetti introduces the world's first electronic typewriter, the ET101 1978: Apple launches a project to design a personal computer with a graphical user interface 1978: Atari announces the Atari 800, designed by Jay Miner 1979: Dan Bricklin develops VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program for personal computers 1979: Larry Michels founds the first Unix consulting company, Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) 1979: Michael Stonebraker at U.C. Berkeley unveils a relational database system, Ingres 1979: Lucasfilm hires Ed Catmull from the New York Institute of Technology to lead the Graphics Group of its Computer Division 1979: Kevin MacKenzie invents symbols such as :-), or "emoticons", to mimic the cues of face-to-face communication 1979: John Shoch of Xerox's PARC coins the term "worm" to describe a program that travels through a network of computers 1980: The Arpanet has 430,000 users, who exchange almost 100 million email messages a year 1980: Seagate Technology introduces the first hard-disk drive for personal computers 1980: Doug and Gary Carlston found the videogame company Broderbund 1980: Integrated circuits incorporate 100,000 discrete components 1980: The Usenet is born, an Arpanet-based discussion system divided in "newsgroups" 1980: Apple goes public for a record $1.3 billion 1980: Sony introduces the double-sided, double-density 3.5" floppy disk that holds 875 kilobyte 1980: Onyx introduces the first microcomputer running the Unix operating system 1980: The largest semiconductor manufacturers in the world are: Texas Instruments, National, Motorola, Philips (Europe), Intel, NEC (Japan), Fairchild, Hitachi (Japan) and Toshiba (Japan). 1980: David Patterson and Carlo Sequin launch a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) project at UC Berkeley 1981: The Xerox 8010 Star Information System is the first commercial computer that uses a mouse 1981: Richard Feynman coins the concept of "quantum computing" 1981: Narayana Murthy founds Infosys in Bangalore, India 1981: Richard Feynman's lecture "Simulating Physics with Computers" about quantum computation 1981: John Hennessy starts a RISC project at Stanford University Aug 1981: The IBM PC is launched, running an operating system developed by Bill Gates' Microsoft Oct 1981: Jim Clark of Stanford University and Abbey Silverstone of Xerox found Silicon Graphics in Sunnyvale to manufacture graphic workstations 1981: Andreas Bechtolsheim at Stanford University builds a workstation running Unix and networking software Dec 1982: John Warnock and Charles Geschke of Xerox PARC develop PostScript and found Adobe to commercialize it 1982: Thomas Zimmerman of IBM Almaden builds the first commercially-available dataglove 1982: Stanford students Andy Bechtolsheim, Vinod Khosla and Scott McNealy (a former Onyx employee) and former Berkeley student Bill Joy found SUN Microsystems, named after the "Stanford University Network", to manufacture workstations 1982: Richard Feynman's lectures launch the field of quantum computing 1982: Apple's employee Trip Hawkins founds Electronic Arts to create home computer games 1982: John Walker founds Autodesk to sell computer-aided design software 1982: Gary Hendrix founds Symantec 1982: Nastec introduces the term "Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE)" for its suite of software development tools 1982: Richard Feynman proposes a universal quantum simulator that can simulate any physical object 1982: Japan's Sony introduces the compact disc Jan 1983: The Lotus Development Corporation, founded by Mitchell Kapor, introduces the spreadsheet program "Lotus 1-2-3" for MS-DOS developed by Jonathan Sachs 1983: Bjarne Stroustru's C with Classe is renamed C++ 1983: Gavilan, founded by Manuel Fernandez, former CEO of Zilog, introduces the first portable computer marketed as a "laptop" 1983: Crash of the videogame console market Mar 1983: Compaq introduces the Portable PC, compatible with the IBM PC 1983: The Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol or "TCP/IP" running on Unix BSD 4.2 debuts on the Arpanet, and the Arpanet is officially renamed Internet 1983: Paul Mockapetris invents the Domain Name System for the Internet to classify Internet addresses through extensions such as .com Jan 1983: Apple introduces the "Lisa", the first personal computer with a graphical user interface 1983: The Musical Instrument Digital Interface is introduced, based on an idea by Dave Smith 1983: William Inmon builds the first data warehousing system 1983: Nintendo releases the Family Computer, renamed Nintendo Entertainment System in the USA) 1984: Cisco is founded by Leonard Bosack and Sandra Lerner 1984: Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard discover quantum cryptography 1984: Michael Dell, a student at University of Texas at Austin, founds PCs Limited, later renamed Dell, to sell custom PC-compatible computers by mail-order only 1984: Psion introduces the first personal digital assistant, the first hand-held computer 1984: Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin develop "Presentation", an application to create slide presentations (later renamed "Powerpoint") 1984: Michael McGreevy creates the first virtual-reality environment at NASA Ames 1984: Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner found the MIT Media Lab 1984: General Motors builds a factory that uses Supply Chain Management software 1984: Wavefront introduces the first commercial 3D-graphics software 1984: Hewlett-Packard introduces the first ink-jet printer Jan 1984: Apple introduces the Macintosh, which revolutionizes desktop publishing 1984: William Gibson's novel "Neuromancer" popularizes the "cyberpunks" 1984: The CDROM is introduced by Sony and Philips 1984: Fujio Masuoka at Toshiba invents flash memory, a cheaper kind of EEPROM 1984: Japanese firms introduce the 256K DRAM chips 1985: Texas Instruments opens a software laboratory in Bangalore, India 1985: David Deutsch's universal quantum computer 1985: British computer manufacturer Acorn debutes a RISC processor, the Acorn Risc Machine or ARM, designed by Sophie Wilson 1985: Stewart Brand creates the "Whole Earth Lectronic Link" (or "WELL"), a virtual community of computer users structured in bulletin boards for online discussions 1985: Digital Research introduces GEM (Graphical Environment Manager), a graphical-user interface for the CP/M operating system designed by former Xerox PARC employee Lee Jay Lorenzen 1985: Microsoft releases Windows 1.0 for MS-DOS 1985: Commodore launches the Amiga 1000, a 16-bit home computer with advanced graphical and audio (multimedia) designed by former Atari employee Jay Miner and running a multitasking operating system and GUI designed by Carl Sassenrath) 1985: Richard Stallman founds the non-profit organization "Free Software Foundation" (FSF) 1985: Hewlett Packard introduces the LaserJet, a printer for the home market 1985: Jobs and Wozniak leave Apple Jul 1985: Aldus introduces PageMaker for the Macintosh, the first system for desktop publishing 1985: A crisis in the semiconductor industry is brought about by the dumping of cheaper Japanese products 1985: Richard Stallman releases a free operating system, "GNU" 1985: Warren Robinett, Scott Fisher and Michael McGreevy of NASA Ames build the "Virtual Environment Workstation" for virtual-reality research, incorporating the first dataglove and the first low-cost head-mounted display 1985: The Arpanet is renamed Internet 1985: Jaron Lanier founds VPL Research, the first company to sell Virtual Reality products 1985: Jim Kimsey's Quantum Computer Services (later renamed America Online or AOL) provides dedicated online services for personal computers 1986: Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs buys Lucasfilms' Pixar, that becomes an independent film studio run by Ed Catmull 1986: A book by Eric Drexler popularizes the term "nanotechnology" 1986: Phil Katz invents the zip compression format for his program Pkzip 1986: A virus spreads among IBM PCs, nicknamed "Brain" 1987: Jerry Kaplan and others found GO Corporation to manufacture portable computers with a pen-based user interface 1987: Microsoft introduces Bookshelf on a CD-ROM 1987: David Duffield and Ken Morris found PeopleSoft to manufacture Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications 1987: The JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) format is introduced 1987: Linus Technologies introduces the first pen-based computer, WriteTop 1987: Bill Atkinson at Apple creates the hypermedia system HyperCard 1987: Uunet becomes the first commercial Internet Service Provider, ISP 1987: ITRI's president Morris Chang founds Taiwan's Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the first independent silicon-chip foundry in the world, to serve the "fabless" companies of the USA 1987: The largest semiconductor manufacturers in the world are Japan's NEC, Japan's Toshiba and Japan's Hitachi 1988: Foxconn opens a pioneering factory in China's experimental city Shenzhen 1988: Mark Weiser proposes the vision of a future in which computers will integrated into everyday objects ("ubiquitous computing") 1988: "Morris", the first digital worm, infects most of the Internet 1988: Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) that provids broadband on a phone line is invented by Bellcore 1989: UC Berkeley introduces the "BSD license", one of the first open-source licences 1989: Guido van Rossum releases Python 1989: Nintendo introduces the power glove 1989: Adobe releases Photoshop 1989: Barry Shein founds the first Internet Service Provider, "The World", in Boston 1990: Dycam introduces the first digital camera, Model 1 1990: Microsoft announced that it will stop working on IBM's OS/2 and introduces the Windows 3.0 operating system 1990: Tim Berners-Lee of CERN invents the HyperText Markup Language "HTML" and demonstrates the World-Wide Web 1990: The first Internet search engine, "Archie", is developed in Montreal 1990: A spin-off of Acorn, Advanced RISC Machines (ARM), introduces the first embeddable RISC chip 1991: Pierre Wellner of Xerox's EuroPARC designes the multi-touch "Digital Desk" with multi-finger and pinching motions 1991: The Indian government sets up the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) to promote software exports and opens the first park in the Electronics City of Bangalore 1991: Finnish student Linus Torvalds introduces the Linux operating system, a variant of Unix 1991: Paul Lindner and Mark McCahill of the University of Minnesota release "Gopher", a software program to access the World-Wide Web 1991: Pei-Yuan Wei introduces a "browser" for the world-wide web, Viola Dec 1991: Apple introduces QuickTime 1992: Intel is the world's largest semiconductor company 1992: The Electronic Visualization Lab at the University of Illinois Chicago creates a "CAVE" ("Cave Automatic Virtual Environment"), a surround-screen and surround-sound virtual-reality environment (graphics projected from behind the walls that surround the user) 1992: SAP launches R/3, moving its ERP system from mainframe to a three-tiered client-server architecture and to a relational database 1992: Jean Armour Polly coins the phrase "Surfing the Internet") 1992: The first text message is sent from a phone 1992: Japan's Fujitsu introduces the world's first mass-produced plasma display 1992: South Korea's Samsung becomes the largest producer of memory chips in the world 1992: Second generation wireless technology marks the transition from analog to digital voice 1993: Apple releases the Newton pen-based tablet computer with software for handwritten recognition running the ARM processor 1993: American outsources the management of its credit-card business to its Indian office, the first major project of business-process outsourcing to India 1993: Stanford University's professor Jim Clark hires Mark Andreessen who develops the first browser for the World Wide Web (Mosaic) 1993: Thomas Siebel founds Siebel for customer relationship management (CRM) applications 1993: Steve Putz at Xerox's PARC creates the web mapping service Map Viewer 1993: Broderbund introduces the videogame "Myst" 1993: Adobe Systems introduces Acrobat and the file format PDF (or Portable Document Format) 1994: Japan's Sony introduces the PlayStation 1994: Japan's Denso invents the QR Code (Quick Response Code), an alternative to the barcode with greater storage capacity 1994: Mark Pesce introduces the "Virtual Reality Modeling Language" or VRML) 1994: The "Band of Angels" is founded by "angels" to fund Silicon Valley startups 1994: University of North Carolina's college radio station WXYC becomes the first radio station in the world to broadcast its signal over the Internet) 1994: The search engine Architext (later Excite) debuts 1994: There are 315 public companies in Silicon Valley Jan 1995: Stanford student Jerry Yang founds Yahoo 1995: Netscape, the company founded by Marc Andreessen, goes public even before earning money and starts the "dot.com" craze and the boom of the Nasdaq 1995: Microsoft bundles a free browser with its operating system, Internet Explorer, and starts the browser wars with Netscape 1995: John Lasseter's "Toy Story" is the first feature-length computer-animated film 1995: The MP3 standard is introduced 1995: The Sony Playstation is introduced 1995: Ward Cunningham creates WikiWikiWeb, the first "wiki", a manual on the internet maintained in a collaborative manner 1995: SUN launches the programming language Java 1995: Craig Newmark starts craigslist.com on the Internet, a regional advertising community 1995: Amazon.com is launched on the web as the "world's largest bookstore", except that it is not a bookstore, it is a website 1995: The At Home Network (@Home) is founded by William Randolph Hearst III 1996: Sabeer Bhatia launches Hotmail, a website to check email from anywhere in the world 1996: ASCI Red, a custom supercomputer built by Intel for the Sandia National Laboratory, is the first computer to perform more than 1 teraFLOPS 1996: Dell begin selling its computers via its website 1996: Nokia introduces the first "smartphone" 1996: Steve Jobs rejoins Apple 1996: Jeff Hawkins invents the Palm Pilot, a personal digital assistant, and Palm releases the WebOS, a mobile phone software platform based on Web technology 1996: Macromedia introduces Flash 1996: Japan's Toshiba introduces the first DVD player 1996: Japan's Sony introduces the chip FeliCa for RFID technology Sep 1996: Sony and Philips introduce a set-top box, developed by Steve Perlman's WebTV 1996: GeoSystems Global launches the web mapping service MapQuest that also provides address matching 1996: The Apache HTTP Server is introduced, an open-source web server 1996: Brent Townshend invents the 56K modem 1996: Ajay Bhatt's team at Intel introduces USB (Universal Serial Bus) to connect computer devices 1997: Andrew Weinreich creates SixDegrees.com, the first social networking website 1997: Netflix is founded 1997: Colin Williams and Scott Clearwater's "Explorations in Quantum Computing" 1997: AOL launches the Instant Messenger service 1997: US West launches the first commercial DSL service in Phoenix 1997: Reed Hastings founds Netflix to rent videos via the Internet 1997: The XML standard for exchanging documents on the World-Wide Web is introduced 1997: Evite is founded by Stanford engineering students Al Lieb and Selina Tobaccowala 1997: The total revenues for ERP software market is $7.2 billion, with SAP, Baan, Oracle, J.D. Edwards, and PeopleSoft accounting for 62% of it) 1997: Psion adopts the ARM processor in its Series 5 in conjunction with a brand new operating system, Symbian, a joint venture with Ericsson, Nokia, Panasonic, and Motorola 1997: Lenovo passes IBM to become China's main vendor of personal computers 1998: Qualcomm licenses the ARM chip for its cell-phone technology 1998: South Korea's SaeHan introduces the world's first MP3 player, the MPMan F10 1998: Sued by the government, Microsoft accepts to unbundle Internet Explorer from the Windows operating system 1998: Wayne Westerman and John Elias found Fingerworks to commercialize a technology to help people with finger injuries use a computer 1998: South Korea's SaeHan Information Systems introduces the first mass-produced mp3 player, the "MPMan" 1998: Stanford's scientist Mendel Rosenblum and others found Vmware, the pioneer of virtualization 1998: NuvoMedia introduces the Rocket eBook, a handheld device to read ebooks 1998: Netscape makes its browser Navigator available for free in january 1998. 1998: Chinese and Indian engineers run about 25% of Silicon Valley's high-tech businesses, accounting for $16.8 billion in sales and 58,000 jobs 1998: SoftBook Press releases the first e-book reader 1998: Netscape launches the open-source project "Mozilla" of Internet applications 1998: America Online acquires Netscape 1998: Pierre Omidyar founds eBay, a website to auction items 1998: Two Stanford students, Larry Page and Russian-born Sergey Brin, launch the search engine Google 1998: Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay and scores of Internet-related startups create overnight millionaires Dec 1998: Peter Thiel and Max Levchin found Confinity 1998: Jim Gray creates the web mapping service TerraServer that also offers satellite images 1998: Bob Somerby starts "The Daily Howler", the first major political blog 1999: Between 1998 to 1999 venture capital investments in Silicon Valley firms increases more than 90% from $3.2 billion to $6.1 billion 1999: A panel on "Big Data" is held at the Visualization Conference in San Francisco 
1998: David Brock and Sanjay Sarma use RFID and the Internet to track products throughout the supply chain 1999: Kevin Ashton coins the term "Internet of Things" for Brock's and Sarma's system 1999: Google has 8 employees Mar 1999: Friendster is launched in Morgan Hill by Jonathan Abrams 1999: Total revenues for supply-chain software are $3.9 billion, with i2 owning 13% of the market 1999: Siebel owns almost 50% of the CRM market 1999: Blogger.com allows people to create their own "blogs", or personal journals 1999: Marc Benioff founds Saleforce.com to move business applications to the Internet, pioneering cloud computing 1999: Philip Rosedale founds Linden Lab to develop virtual-reality hardware 1999: The world prepares for the new millennium amidst fears of computers glitches due to the change of date (Y2K) 1999: The recording industry sues Shawn Fanning's Napster, a website that allows people to exchange music 1999: 100 new Internet companies are listed in the USA stock market 1999: The USA has 250 billionaires, and thousands of new millionaires are created in just one year 1999: Microsoft is worth 450 billion dollars, the most valued company in the world, even if it is many times smaller than General Motors, and Bill Gates is the world's richest man at $85 billion 1999: Singapore's Creative Technology introduces the Nomad line of digital audio players 1999: Japan's NTT DoCoMo ("Do Communications over the Mobile network" introduces the "i-mode" service that allows mobile phones to access a broad range of Internet services 1999: At Home acquires Excite, the largest Internet-related merger yet 1999: The first USB flash drive is introduced by M-Systems 2000: 32% of Silicon Valley's high-skilled workers are foreign-born, mostly from Asia 2000: The NASDAQ stock market crashes, wiping out trillions of dollars of wealth 2000: Software and services account for 50% of IBM's business 2000: There are 417 public companies in Silicon Valley 2000: 10 billion email messages a day are exchanged over the Internet 2000: Confinity and X.com merge to form Paypal, a system to pay online 2000: Dell has the largest share of worldwide personal computer sales) 2000: Japan's Sharp introduces the J-SH04, the first mobile phone with a built-in camera 2000: Japan's Honda introduces the humanoid robot ASIMO 2000: Almost 50% of Japanese who access the Internet do so via a cell phone Jan 2001: Apple launches iTunes, a service to download digital music Nov 2001: Apple launches the iPod Dec 2001: Listen.com launches Rhapsody, a service that provides streaming on-demand access to a library of digital music 2001: ARM dominates the market for embedded RISC chips, particularly for cell-phone applications 2001: Third generation wireless technology enables Internet browsing 2001: Jimmy Wales founds Wikipedia, a multilingual encyclopedia that is collaboratively edited by the Internet community 2001: Hewlett-Packard acquires Compaq 2002: Ebay acquires Paypal 2002: Bram Cohen unveils the peer-to-peer file sharing protocol BitTorrent Oct 2002: Danger, founded by Andy Rubin, releases the mobile phone Hiptop, later renamed T-Mobile Sidekick 2002: South Korea's Samsung is the second semiconductor manufacturer in the world after Intel, and Japan's Toshiba is third, passing Texas Instruments 2003: Asia produces about 40% of the world's IT goods and consumes about 20% of them 2003: Fingerworks introduces the iGesture Pad 2003: Skype is founded in Europe by Niklas Zennstroem and Janus Friis to offer voice over IP, a system invented by Estonian engineers 2003: Matt Mullenweg launches a platform for people to create their own website or blog, Wordpress 2003: Linden Lab launches "Second Life", a virtual world accessible via the Internet How in 1954 they imagined that computers would look like in 2004:
And how they actually looked like in 2004:
Mar 2005: Yahoo acquires Flickr Nov 2005: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim launch YouTube 2005: Adobe acquires Macromedia 2005: Yahoo, Google, America OnLine (AOL) and MSN (Microsoft's Network) are the four big Internet "portals", totaling a combined audience of over one billion people 2005: Oracle acquires Siebel 2005: Google launches the web mapping system Google Earth that also offers three-dimensional images of terrain 2005: More than 50% of all jobs outsourced by Silicon Valley companies go to India 2005: Sales of notebook computers account for 53% of the computer market 2005: Yahoo, Google, America OnLine (AOL) and MSN (Microsoft's Network) are the four big Internet portals with a combined audience of over one billion people worldwide 2005: Silicon Valley accounts for 14% of the world's venture capital 2005: 52.4% of Silicon Valley's high-tech companies launched between 1995 and 2005 have been founded by at least one immigrant 2005: Total revenues of ERP software are $25.5 billion, with SAP making $10.5 billion and Oracle $5.1 billion 2005: Ebay acquires Skype 2005: Apple acquires Fingerworks' multi-touch technology 2005: Taiwan's companies produce 80% of all personal digital assistants, 70% of all notebooks and 60% of all flat-panel monitors 2005: Lenovo acquires IBM's personal computer business 2005: Paul Graham starts Y Combinator, an incubator of startups 2006: Amazon introduces its Simple Storage Service, or S3, that anyone can use for public cloud storage 2006: Nintendo's Wii includes motion-sensing controllers 2006: YouTube only has 60 employees, but they manage 100 million videos 2006: HP surpasses Dell in worldwide personal-computer shipments, the first time a Silicon Valley company rules the personal-computer market 2006: Jack Dorsey creates the social networking service Twitter 2006: The Bay Area is the largest high-tech center in the USA with 386,000 high-tech jobs 2006: YouTube is bought by Google for $1.65 billion 2006: The world-wide web has 100 million websites 2006: Google acquires YouTube 2006: Scott Hassan founds Willow Garage to manufacturer robots for domestic use Jan 2007: 48% of Apple's revenues come from sales of the iPod Jan 2007: Apple unveils the iOS, a Unix-like operating system for iPhones incorporating Fingerworks' technology May 2007: Facebook introduces an open platform for third parties to develop applications for its social network Jun 2007: Apple launches the iPhone Jul 2007: Mark Pincus founds Zynga Aug 2007: Taiwan's Acer acquires its US rival Gateway 2007: Foursquare pioneers location-based services for mobile devices 2007: Forrester Research estimates that online retail sales in the USA reached $175 billion 2007: Google introduces a free Linux-based open-source operating system for mobile phones, Android, a former startup owned by Andy Rubin 2007: Google acquires DoubleClick, the company that dominates "display advertising" 2007: Siri introduces a virtual personal assistant for mobile devices 2007: The world's largest vendors of personal computers are HP, Dell, Taiwan's Acer, China's Lenovo and Japan's Toshiba May 2008: The virtual world YoVille is launched on Facebook 2008: IBM's Roadrunner is the first computer to perform more than 1 petaFLOPS 2008: The "crowd-funding" website Kickstarter is launched Jul 2008: YoVille is acquired by Zynga 2008: Apple introduces the "App Store" where independent software developers can sell their applications for the iPhone 2008: Microsoft Windows owns almost 90% of the operating system market for personal computers September 2008: Google releases its own web browser, Chrome 2008: Google owns almost 70% of the Internet search market Nov 2008: Andrew Mason launches the discount-coupon site Groupon 2008: The Silicon Valley has 2.4 million (less than 1% of the USA's population) generating more than 2% of the USA's GDP, with a GDP per person of $83,000 2008: Microsoft Windows owns almost 90% of the operating system market for personal computers, while Google owns almost 70% of the Internet search market 2008: Hewlett-Packard puchases Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in a shift towards services Jan 2009: Satoshi Nakamoto introduces the digital currency Bitcoin and the blockchain 2009: Facebook introduces the "Like" button Jun 2009: Zynga releases FarmVille Aug 2009: Google's market value is more than $140 billion, and its search engine is the most used in the world Oct 2009: Motorola is the first company to deliver an Android-based smart phone, the Droid Nov 2009: Google releases its own operating system, Chrome OS, a variant of the Linux-based operating system Ubuntu 2009: Microsoft is still the largest software company in the world with revenues of $50 billion, but Google ($22.8 billion) has passed IBM's software revenues ($22 billion), Oracle ($17.5 billion) and SAP ($15.3 billion) 2009: Activision sells 4.7 million copies of "Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2" (developed by Infinity Ward) on its first day 2009: Taiwan's Foxconn becomes the world's largest manufacturer of electronics employing 800,000 people 2009: Oracle buys SUN and therefore Java 2009: BitTorrent accounts for at least 20% of all Internet traffic 2009: Facebook has 150 million users in january and grows by about one million users a day, the fastest product ever to reach that many users in five years 2009: Thomas Siebel founds energy startup C3 LLC 2009: Xerox puchases Affiliated Computer Services in a shift towards services 2009: Microsoft is the largest software company in the world with revenues of $50 billion, followed by IBM with $22 billion, Oracle with $17.5 billion, SAP with $11.6 billion, Nintendo with $7.2 billion, HP with $6.2 billion, Symantec with $5.6 billion, Activision Blizzard with $4.6 billion, Electronic Arts with $4.2 billion, Computer Associates with $3.9 billion, and Adobe with $3.3 billion. 2009: almost 90% of households in the USA own a cell phone 2009: Yahoo owns 17% of the market for display ads, followed by Microsoft at 11% and AOL at 7% Jan 2010: Research In Motion owns 42% of the smartphone market, followed by Apple with 25%, Microsoft with 15% and Android-based devices with 9% Mar 2010: YouTube broadcasts the Indian Premier League of cricket live worldwide Mar 2010: Apple is worth $205 billion, third in the USA after Exxon and Microsoft Mar 2010: Ben Silbermann launches the image bookmarking system Pinterest Apr 2010: Apple introduces the tablet computer iPad, which sells one million units in less than one month Apr 2010: HP purchases Palm, a struggling smartphone maker Apr 2010: Microsoft's IE has 59.9% of the browser market, followed by Firefox with 24.5% and Google Chrome with 6.7% Apr 2010: Apple introduces the tablet computer iPad that sells one million units in less than one month May 2010: SAP buys Sybase May 2010: Apple's market capitalization ($227 billion) surpasses Microsoft's ($226 billion) Jul 2010: Facebook has 500 million users Oct 2010: Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launch Instagram, a mobile photo-sharing service for the iPhone 2010: Angry Birds, developed by Rovio Mobile, becomes the first blockbuster of iPhone-based videogaming Nov 2010: Microsoft introduces Kinect, a motion sensing input device for the Xbox videogame console 2010: Google is worth $180 billion 2010: The smarphone market grows 55% in 2010, with 269 million units sold worldwide 2010: India's Infosys has become one of the largest software companies in the world, with over 100,000 employees 2010: Taiwan's Quanta Computer is the largest manufacturer of notebook computers in the world 2010: Taiwan's HTC introduces the world's first 4G smartphone, the EVO 2010: Activision sells 5.6 million copies of "Call of Duty - Black Ops" on its first day 2010: FarmVille is the most popular Facebook game with more than 50 million users 2010: Facebook introduces Places a location-based service 2010: Microsoft's Internet Explorer owns 59.9% of the browser market, followed by Firefox with 24.5% and Google's Chrome with 6.7% 2010: Apple acquires the voice-activated assistant Siri 2010: Microsoft partnering with Nokia introduces the mobile operating system Windows Phone, derived from Andy Rubin's Danger technology 2010: Face.com offers face recognition technology for smartphones and Facebook 2010: Sales of laptop/notebook computers pass sales of desktop computers 2011: Tencent releases the social networking platform Weixin/WeChat for smartphones Jun 2011: The largest notebook vendors in the world are Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP and Samsung, but Apple is the single largest notebook vendor in the world, with a 20% market share, if one also considers notepads Jul 2011: Apple's AppStore has 425,000 apps, downloaded 15 billion times, on 200 million iOS devices, while Google's Android Market has 250,000 applications, downloaded 6 billion times, on 135 million Android devices Aug 2011: Apple surpasses ExxonMobil to become the most valuable company in the world based on market capitalization Aug 2011: Google acquires Motorola's smartphone business Nov 2011: Sony introduces the head-mounted display HMZ-T1 Dec 2011: Android own 46.3% of the smartphonemarket, Apple iPhones 30%, RIM 15% and Microsoft 4.6% 2011: The world buys almost 60 million tablet computers, of which 66.6% are Apple iPads, 28.8% are Androids and 1.3% are Research in Motion (QNX/BlackBerry) 2011: James Ellenbogen's team at MITRE unveils the world's first nanoelectronic processor Mar 2012: Facebook has 7 billion visits a month, Twitter 182 million, Pinterest 104 million, LinkedIn 86 million, Tagged 72 million and Google+: 61 million, and Facebook users average 405 minutes per month, Pinterest and Tumblr users 89 minutes, Twitter 21 minutes, Google+ 3 minutes 2012: Graydon Hoare at Mozilla releases the programming language Rust Mar 2012: Pinterest becomes the third largest social network in the USA after Facebook and Google+ Apr 2012: Facebook acquires Instagram 2012: Facebook acquires Face.com May 2012: Facebook goes public, the biggest high-tech IPO in history Sep 2012: Android-based smartphones made by Samsung, HTC and others account for 75% of the market, whereas Apple's share is 14.9% Nov 2012: Google has 85% of worldwide search engine use, followed by Yahoo with less than 8%, Bing with less than 5%, Baidu with less than 2% Nov 2012: Microsoft's Internet Explorer is the most used browser with more than 55% of users, followed by Firefox with 20%, Chrome with 17% 2012: South Korea's Samsung sells twice as many smartphones as Apple and five times more than Nokia 2020: Downloads of apps like Zoom and Skype increase dramatically during the Covid-19 epidemic as video conferencing and chats replace face-to-face meetings 2022: OpenAI introduces ChatGPT 2024: A bug in Crowdstrike's antivirus software disrupts flights, railways, hospitals and other businesses worldwide See also the timeline of Silicon Valley See also the timeline of the Asian Miracle See also the timeline of cyberculture Bibliography:
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