Computer History
 | First Mechanical Computer The first mechanical computer created by Charles Babbage in 1822. |
 | First Programmable Computer The Z1 was created by German Konrad Zuse in his parents’ living room between 1936 and 1938. It is considered to be the first electro-mechanical binary programmable computer, and the first really functional modern computer. |
 | First Electric Programmable Computer The Colossus was the first electric programmable computer, developed by Tommy Flowers, and first demonstrated in December1943. The Colossus was created to help the British code breakers read encrypted German messages. |
 | First Digital Computer The ENIAC was invented by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly between 1943 and 1946. It occupied about 1,800 square feet and used about 18,000 vacuum tubes, weighing almost 50 tons. The ENIAC was the first digital computer. |
 | First Stored Program Computer The early British computer known as the EDSAC is considered to be the first stored program electronic computer. The computer performed its first calculation on May 6,1949 and was the computer that ran the first graphical computer game, nicknamed “Baby”. |
 | First Commercial Computer In 1942, Konrad Zuse begin working on the Z4 that later became the first commercial computer. The computer was sold to Eduard Stiefel, a mathematician of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich on July 12, 1950. |
 | IBM’s First Computer On April 7, 1953 IBM publicly introduced the 701. Its first commercial scientific computer. |
 | First Computer with RAM MIT introduces the Whirlwind machine on March 8, 1955, a revolutionary computer that was the first digital computer with magnetic core RAM and real-time graphics. |
 | First Transistor Computer The TX-O (Transistorized Experimental computer) is the first transistorized computer to be demonstrated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1956. |
 | First Mini Computer In 1960, Digital Equipment Corporation released its first of many PDP computers, the PDP-1. |
 | First Mass-market and Desktop Computer In 1968, Hewlett Packard began marketing the first mass-marketed PC and the first desktop computer, the HP 9100A. |
 | First Workstation The first workstation is considered to be the Xerox Alto, introduced in 1974. The computer was revolutionary for its time and included a fully functional computer, display, and mouse. The computer operated like many computers today utilizing windows, menus and icons as an interface to its operating system. Many of the computer’s capabilities were first demonstrated in The Mother of All Demos by Douglas Engelbart on December 9, 1968. |
 | First MicroprocessorIntel introduces the first microprocessor, the Intel 4004 on November 15, 1971. |
 | First Personal Computer In 1975, Ed Roberts coined the term “personal computer” when he introduced the Altair 8800. Although the first personal computer is considered by many to be the KENBAK-1, which was first introduced for $750 in 1971. The computer relied on a series of switches for inputting data and output data by turning on and off a series of lights. |
 | First Laptop or Portable Computer The IBM 5100 is the first portable computer, which was released on September 1975. The computer weighed 55 pounds and had a five inch CRT display, tape drive, 1.9MHz PALM processor, and 64KB of RAM. In the picture is an ad of the IBM 5100 taken from a November 1975 issue of Scientific America. |
 | First Multimedia Computer In 1992, Tandy Radio Shack became one of the first companies to release a computer based on the MPC standard with its introduction of the M2500 XL/2 and M4020 SX computers. |
 | Apple introduced its first computer in 1976 called Apple I (Apple 1). The computer kit was developed by Steve Wozniak and contained a 6502 8-bit processor and 4 kb of memory, which was expandable to 8 or 48 kb using expansion cards. Although the Apple I had a fully assembled circuit board the kit still required a power supply, display, keyboard, and case to be operational. Below is a picture of an Apple I from an advertisement by Apple. |
 | IBM introduced its first personal computer called the IBM PC in 1981. The computer was code named and still sometimes referred to as the Acorn and had an 8088 processor, 16 KB of memory, which was expandable to 256 and utilized MS-DOS. |
 | Compaq introduced its first computer in March 1983. It is considered to be the first PC clone. The Compaq Portable was 100% compatible with IBM computers and was capable of running any software developed for IBM computers. |
 | Commodore introduced its first computer, the “Commodore PET” in 1977. |
 | Dell introduced its first computer, the “Turbo PC.” in 1985. |
 | NEC introduced its first computer, the “NEAC 1101.” in 1958. |
 | Toshiba introduces its first computer, the “TAC” digital computer in 1954. |
