How this timeline is put together

Clay tablet engraved with with cuneiform	300.000BC - 1619AD The era starts at what we call the Pre Historic Era of computing. In this chapter you will read what inventions people needed to make in order to be able to count and record their findings. Also important thinkers and mathematicians are mentioned here as we thought them important for the trail of thought on how to come to a device that counts and calculates. Why is this period called prehistoric? Because it is before we had mechanized means to calculate. Analogue to the written history of mankind, pre history ends when there are written records of our history.
soroban / abacus Schickard calculator	1620 - 1885 The Antiquity period shows us what devices were made by our fore fathers to help them with calculations and counting, but still the devices do not look like a computer Why is this period called Antiquity? Because what we see here are remnants of attempts to design calculating aids. The means to count are not quite the calculators as we would see them, nor can they record or print anything.
Difference engine Babbage pascaline	1886 - 1946 Then we arrive at the pre industrial era where we see the birth of computers, at least a fair idea of it. Babbage is one of the most famous names here. In this period Lady Lovelace invented the method to program a "computer". In other words the programming language was born. A computer language is named after her : "ADA". Why is this period called Pre Industrial? In fact we decided to name this period pre industrial because no machines were made on industrial scale or leave alone in mass production. We will see some devices made by Pascal, Zuse and others. They tried to sell their devices to make some money but most did not sell more than 50 or some. Though some machines are replicated in series they are however not made on a industrial scale or in mass production. (re: Zuse Z1, Millionaire) and took a long time to complete.
IBM 360 system commordore 64	1947 - 20.. The industrial era brought us many examples of the ingenuity of our race. Also minituralisation took unequaled forms and culminated into the invention of the chip. The computer industry started by churning out computers by the hundreds to produce over 4 million computers per year around 2000 Prices went down drastically because of mass production and private persons soon had their own computer: the personal computer. Computers start to replace humans in a rapid pace doing the heavy and dirty work. Why is this period called Industrial? Almost all machines that come to the market are made in mass, large series that run into the millions. However there remain of course super and other specialty computers that will never be made in large series.
?	The Post industrial era lifts a tip of the veil to us. New technologies are on the verge to break through. Like amorphous memory in organic material, computers that work with light in stead of electronic pulses, computers that do calculations by means of recombining DNA or RNA. Computers that can be painted on the wall making use of the budding nano technology etc. etc. Which of all these inventions will be remembered after 100 years? Because they made it to the consumer or influenced the development of other machines greatly.

Notes

Juergen Schmidhuber wrote us:

also I'd like to add that your notions of preindustrial era etc. are very nonstandard and confusing - the term "industrial era" usually refers to the time after 1760 when Watt built a steam engine in the UK; antiquity usually refers to around 500 b.c. when the Greeks invented the first algorithms. Maybe you want to replace your entry "Industrial Era 1947-..." by "Modern Computer History," but it starts in 1941 with Zuse's Z1, not in 1947....

Our comment:

When you look at the events that took place in the context of ordinary history you are strictly speaking right. But if you take the developments of computing in account the boundaries are different. That is why we wrote "Why ..." at each period of the timeline on the "About the timeline" page.

In this light the Z1 is strictly spoken not an industrial made machine, is one of a kind and never sold to anyone. Industrial made means to us: made in series in an industrial process, and sold to end users.
Industrial process is where you have a defined workflow of handling and manufacturing and not made to order by one single person.

Since it is not our intention to create an encyclopedia of computer history and related sciences we have taken the liberty to mention only the most important developments in the History of Computers.

But as time goes by we will be putting in more and more detailed information and even more story lines onto this site.

We are thinking of embedding audio and video fragments into the various pages, but since that will take a lot of space (we only have 600 Mb to our disposal) and traffic (75Gb max) This will have to wait until space and traffic becomes cheaper and we find more sponsors to pay the bills.

So in the next 100 years ;=) it might even grow out into an encyclopedic form but it is not our prime objective.

Some sections are in the process of updating or redesign so they look ugly. Or the material you are looking for might not be there. In that case please inform us and send e-mail with you suggestions

About the time line

Introduction

300.000BC - 1619AD

1620 - 1885

1886 - 1946

1947 - 20..

Story lines

Links

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