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4000
BC:
Cuneiform is Ancient PDA
Languages that are only spoken can die out
when the last person who speaks the language
dies. Written languages, on the other hand,
can last forever as long as people can figure
out what the symbols or alphabet mean.
In early history, a people called the Sumerians
created cuneiform writing to keep track
of business. If a farmer sold 50 oxen, he
or his scribe made note of that fact on
a clay tablet using pictograms, or small
drawings of ox that represented the animals
themselves. After thousands of years, the
pictograms grew easier to draw and became
abstract symbols.
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3000
BC: First
Calculator Invented
The ancient Babylonians invented the abacus
in order to add and subtract numbers quickly.
Merchants needed to be able to add prices
and quantities together. Unfortunately,
the abacus wasn't very good at figuring
out how much change to give back to customers.
Over thousands of years, the abacus became
smaller and easier to use. In 1300, the
Chinese created an abacus with wires and
beads. According to historical records,
some people were clever enough to add, subtract,
multiple and divide on an abacus. Luckily,
most of us can now use an electronic calculator
(or maybe our fingers) for this purpose.
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1436:
Printing
Press Invented
Before Johannes Gutenberg created the printing
press, few people could read. That wasn't
a problem because there weren't many books
available. Churchmen took years to copy
books by hand, and only very rich people
could afford to own them.
After Gutenberg invented movable type, hundreds
of books could be created in the time it
took to hand-copy just one book. Books became
cheaper, and poorer people learned to read.
People didn't have to be rich to be educated,
and the average person could learn about
new ideas by reading about them in books
and newspapers.
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1829:
Typewriter
for Everyone
Ever since Guttenberg created the movable-type
printing press (see year 1463), people had
been trying to invent a printing press that
average people could own. With this individual
press, called the typewriter, anyone with
one of these machines could create a book
or a newspaper. In addition, any business
could buy a typewriter and type up information
and records for the company in a format that
anyone could read. No more need to worry about
employees with bad handwriting!
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1842:
First Computer Programmer
Englishwoman Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace
(daughter of the poet Lord Byron ) was the
first person to write language to run a computer.
She wrote it for her friend, Sir Charles Babbage,
who built one of the first mechanical computers.
Babbage often referred to Ada as the "Enchantress
of Numbers." The U.S. Department of Defense
named one of its computer languages Ada in
honor of her magical contributions to field
of computer science.
Learn
about Byron in “Work It, Girl” »
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1876:
Answer
the Phone
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the
telephone which allowed people to talk to
one another across long distances. At first,
all the telephone lines in an apartment building
would be attached to just one telephone line.
An operator, usually a woman, would connect
people to the number they wished to call.
However, everyone else on the line including
the operator could listen in on the conversation.
For obvious reasons, this telephone set-up
was called a "party line."
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1896:
First
"Wireless" Technology
An Italian, Guglielmo Marconi, transmitted
radio waves through the air to a radio receiver.
Because this technology didn't need wires
for transmission, the first radio was called
a "wireless." At first, Marconi
sent telegraph messages through the radio
lines, but he soon improved his transmitter
so that actual sound signals could be sent
through the air.
This technology caught on quickly, and by
the 1930's, average people in countries all
across the world could hear hourly news broadcasts
as well as musical performances and radio
plays. The radio was the first "broadcast'
media because so many people could pick up
the signal which could be "broadly cast"
by a single strong radio transmitter.
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1924:
Think
about IBM
In New York, a 15-year-old company that specialized
in adding and recording data was renamed International
Business Machines. We know them as IBM. True
to their famous 1924 slogan “Think,”
IBM received over 22,357 patents for their
inventions (more than any other company) over
the next 80 years.
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1938:
Hewlett
meets Packard
We should all have friends like Bill and Dave.
That’s Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard,
who were classmates and best friends when
they started their little business in a California
garage. With only $538 and a used drill, they
created a sound testing machine that was immediately
purchased by The Walt Disney Company.
By 2003, Hewlett Packard (HP) had 142,000
employees worldwide and generated over $73
billion a year. HP was the first big technology
company to hire a woman, Carly Fiorina, as
their Chief Executive Officer (CEO). She took
that position in July 1999.
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1945:
The First
Computer Bug
Did you know the first computer “bug”
had wings? A woman at Harvard University named
Grace Murray Hopper was trying to figure out
why her computer didn’t work. In 1945,
computers were huge, so finding the problem
took a long time. This computer was 51 feet
long, 8 feet high, 8 feet wide and encased
in glass! Finally she found a moth that had
gotten stuck under a relay switch. She removed
the little critter and taped it to a log book
for her fellow computer programmers to see.
Forever afterward, computer programmers call
any problem with a computer a "bug."
Programmers also "debug" software
regularly to get rid of problems.
More
about “Amazing Grace” »
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1957:
The First
Satellite Launches
Russia launched the first satellite, called
“Sputnik,” in 1957. In those days,
scientists from the U.S. and Russia were in
a race to see who could create the best space
technology. But pretty soon, the people making
televisions and telephones figured out how
they could use satellites to improve communications
here on planet earth. In 1965, the first commercial
communication satellite, called the “Early
Bird,” was launched into orbit 22,300
miles above the earth.
Many of your favorite I.T. toys like television,
the Internet, cell phones and global positioning
systems use satellites to transmit signals.
Without satellites like the “Early Bird,”
communication tools you use every day wouldn't
work.
How
Do Satellites Work? »
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1962:
The First
Video Game
Enough with all this serious technology; let’s
have some fun! That’s what MIT student
Steve Russell was thinking when he created
“Spacewar,” the very first video
game. It featured two dueling spaceships controlled
by toggle switches and was played on a huge
computer the size of a car. It was a quiet
game, however, because there was no way to
record, play or hear sound effects.
See
How Video Games Cure Phobias »
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1969:
The Internet
is Born
Who says that individuals can't change the
world? Four computers at four different universities
were the first computers networked together.
This network later became the Internet. In
fact, the Internet is really just a network
of networks. The first ones to use this network
were scientists, engineers and librarians.
In 1971, someone figured out how to send e-mail
to others on the network. Within a few months,
e-mail was the most popular feature on the
Internet.
Unfortunately, computers were still too expensive
for home use. But, when personal computers
became cheap in the 1980's, the Internet took
off. First, college professors started using
the Internet and then the general public got
into the act in the 1990's.
Suddenly, people all across the country (and
the world) could communicate cheaply and efficiently,
24 hours a day and seven days a week. The
only problem was filtering out the resulting
noise of all those people typing away on all
those keyboards.
See
the Internet of the Future »
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1970:
What's
a "Floppy" Disk?
In 1970, an amazing thing happened. Data that
had been stored on huge reels of tape could
now be stored on a thin wiggly piece of plastic
that was exactly five and a quarter inches
square. The "floppy" disk was so
thin (maybe a sixth of an inch) that people
could flip it back and forth--hence its jiggly
nickname. However, when newer disks came out
some years later, they were still called "floppy"
disks even though they were three and a half
inches square and not a bit jiggly.
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1971:
Small
is Good
Electronic computers that were built in the
1940s were so big they could fill the entire
floor of a building. By the 1960s, they were
the size of an automobile. Finally, three
guys at the Intel Corporation were able to
make a computer the size of a large beetle.
They called it a “microprocessor.”
This tiny, but powerful chip made “desktop”
or “personal” computers possible.
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1977:
Apple
vs. Microsoft
These two companies prove that there’s
nothing like a little competition to spark
creativity. Both Apple and Microsoft were
founded in 1977 by young, ambitious, and very
smart men. While Apple was led by Steve Jobs
and Steve Wozniak in California, Microsoft
was started by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in
New Mexico. Twenty-five years later, Steve
Jobs and Bill Gates were still fighting for
the hearts and pocketbooks of PC users around
the world.
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1978:
Where
Was I?
While early humans had to use the stars to
figure out which direction was north, people
today can use a small hand-held receiver to
figure out where they are anywhere in the
world thanks to GPS. GPS (the Global Positioning
System) is a network of 24 satellites that
orbit the earth twice each day. The first
GPS satellite was launched in 1978.
Developed by the U.S. military, a GPS receiver
finds four or more satellites, figures out
how far the receiver is from each one and
uses a mathematical calculation to come up
with a location. Newer GPS devices can also
display maps of travelers' current locations.
How
Does GPS Help People With Alzheimer's Disease?
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1980:
Not So
Portable Computer
The Osborne 1 was the first portable computer.
It had a 5-inch black-and-white screen and
could run on a battery or be plugged into
an electrical outlet. While the Osborne was
small enough to be carried onto an airplane,
its weight of 24 pounds would slow down the
average businessman or woman.
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1983:
Cell Phones
Ring Out
The idea of cellular phones goes all the way
back to 1947, but they weren't ready for prototype
testing until 1973. Why? Because a cell phone
is basically an advanced kind of two-way radio,
and the technology needed to shrink it to
a portable size was still new. Motorola was
the first to build a working portable cell
phone in 1973, and AT&T's Bell Labs and
Motorola spent years perfecting cellular technology.
It took another decade before the government
licensed these new gadgets, and people started
using cell phones in 1983.
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1987:
The Blind
Helping the Blind
At 27, Ted Henter was an engineer who lost
his sight in an auto accident. He realized
that his engineering career was over, but
he didn't plan to spend the rest of his life
feeling sorry for himself. Instead, he learned
to be a computer programmer and started his
own company, Henter-Joyce, now Freedom Scientific.
In 1987, his company invented JAWS (Job Access
With Speech), the first-ever computer program
that translated words on a computer screen
into speech or Braille. Using JAWS, visually-impaired
or blind people could use computers for the
first time and browse the Internet. Today,
JAWS® for Windows is the world's best-selling
screen reading software with 78,000 users
worldwide.
How
does I.T. help the disabled?»
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1991:
Creating
the Web
The World Wide Web (WWW) was created when
Tim Berners-Lee developed a computer language
called HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). Until
this time, the Internet was mostly used to
send e-mail or ferry documents back and forth
between research teams. HTML allowed computer
programmers to build graphics into their Internet
sites. Soon, everyone on the Internet surfed
to the new Web pages that were being built
all across the network. Today, even grade-school
students can build their own Web pages.
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1992:
You’ve
Got Mail
In 1992, America Online (AOL) had 200,000
subscribers to its Internet dial-up service.
The idea of Internet access for ordinary people
was the brain child of Bill Von Meister. Before
this, Internet users were predominantly university
professors and scientists who had Internet
access at work. When average people began
to be able to use the Internet and the World
Wide Web, Internet service providers like
AOL became popular businesses. Today, AOL
has over 33 million members worldwide.
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1993:
The First
PDA
The very first Personal Digital Assistant
(PDA) was developed by Apple Computers in
1993. The Newton Message Pad introduced the
world to the stylus pen as a means of communicating
with the electronic device. People used the
stylus to write words on the screen of the
PDA. Unfortunately, the Newton's handwriting
recognition program didn't work very well,
so people often had to re-enter information.
For this reason, the Newton wasn't very popular.
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1994:
Do you
Yahoo!?
Who says two enterprising Ph.D. students
can't be successful? In 1994, David Filo and
Jerry Yang started Yahoo! in their campus trailer as a way to organize
sites on the Internet. Since then, it has
grown to become one of the most visited Internet
destinations on the web.
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1997:
Electronic
Ink and Paper
Trash and recycling could be a thing of the
past according to the folks at E-Ink. The
company has developed a way to print “electronic
ink” on almost any surface. An electronic
signal from a computer or PDA can cause the
ink to re-arrange and display whatever text
or photos are sent to it. Imagine an interactive
newspaper that changes every day, a 300-page
book that contains whatever story you want
to read or even a programmable poster for
your bedroom!
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1997:
Wearable
Motherboard
Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology
created the first computerized T-shirt using
threads that allow electric currents to carry
information to and from the body. Designed
to monitor people who need 24-hour medical
attention, this lightweight shirt can be worn
by anyone from infants to soldiers to senior
citizens.
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1998:
The First
Cyborg
A “cybernetic organism,” or “cyborg,”
is a creature that is part human and part
machine. Professor Kevin Warwick became the
first cyborg when he implanted a computer
chip in his arm. For nine days his chip communicated
with various computers in the lab, opening
doors, turning on the lights and tracking
his every move.
In 2002, a disabled 14-year-old boy from Florida
got an information chip implanted into his
arm. His family hopes that the medical history
contained in the chip will help doctors save
their son’s life in an emergency.
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2002:
Nanotechnology
Gets Real
Scientists have been dreaming about nanotechnology
for decades. While our current computers use
a chip that will fit on a fingertip, a nanochip
will measure only 100 nanometers wide and
can only be seen with a microscope. It’s
hard to believe, but these tiny chips will
be 10 million times faster than your home
computer!
In 2002, dreams came closer to reality when
IBM created a transistor out of carbon nanotubes.
Still, it could be another 20 years before
any products using nanotechnology get into
your hands, clothes, home, air, or skin.
How
will we use nanotechnology? »
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