John Hawk;xNLx;Tyler Olson;xNLx;Brandon Doran
Douglas Englebart of the Stanford Research Institute developed the first pointing prototype called a mouse due to the cord attached to the rear that resembled a common mouse.
IBM introduced the first word processor that combined the IBM Selectric with a magnetic tape drive which was the first reusable storage medium for typed information. For the first time typed material could be edited without having to be retyped.
Published in the 35th anniversary edition of Electronics Magazine, Moore’s Law suggested that processor complexity would increase doubly every two years. (photo credit Intel Free Press)
The use of a transistor and capacitor to form a DRAM memory cell greatly reduced the cost and increased the functionality of Random Access Memory, it continues to be a predominant form of RAM used in computers today because of its low cost.
Invented by Seymour Crey, the CDC 7600 was the first computer to utilize the instruction pipeline concept to increase the processing speed over previous computers. This idea allowed the computer to work on several instructions at once, while allowing new instructions to be input before completing the previous items functional trip.
Xerox product development engineer Gary Starkweather developed the idea of using a laser beam to draw images directly on the printing drum of a copier or printer. The first commercial available laser printers came to market in 1976, and enabled high volume printing at significantly increased rates and resolution
Developed by IBM and David Noble, the first disk type read only memory came available commercially. Originally an 8 inch disk the storage medium allowed for reliable and inexpensive storage of microcode for mainframe computers, and eventually PCs.
The Intel 4004 was the second fully integrated CPU on one small chip and the first to be commercially available. This was made possible due to advances in silicon gate technology which allowed twice the number of random logic transistors and a 5x speed increase over previous attempts.
Gateway routing computers initially called Interface message processors facilitated information navigation between various national computer networks. These revolutionary router computers were invented by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn and allowed dissimilar types of networks to communicate with each other and left the role of information assurance to the host computer.
Apple Computers, later to become Apple Inc., established to facilitate the sales of the Apple I computer. The Apple I was designed and hand built by Steve Wozniak, each with a price tag of $666.66. Unlike other computers the Apple 1 was sold as an assembled products rather than a kit, but still required several components to be added to enable functioning as a normal computer. The unique computer terminal circuitry allowed the user to utilize a keyboard and a television to use the device.
Considered by some to be the first “appliance computer” the relative simplicity of the Apple II’s design distinguished it from other personal computers of the time. It was also the first mass produced computer by Apple. Finally, the Apple II was also the first computer to incorporate color graphics.
The first PC sold by IBM with 16K of memory initially priced at $1,565. The innovation for IBM laid in the components, which were readily available off the shelf parts. This idea of open architecture allowed IBM to lower the cost of the machines in competition with Apple.
Introduced by Apple the Macintosh was the first personal computer featuring an integral graphic user interface and mouse. The computer was initially very expensive and largely found initial success in education and desktop publishing.
Toshiba released the first mass marketed laptop computer in 1987 with the T1000. While the laptop had much of the functionality of a PC, the most glaring drawback was the computer’s lack of a hard drive. The machine operated purely on floppy disks.
Time Burners Lee, while working at CERN, wrote a proposal for the invention of the internet. This would be the birth of the internet as it is today. Lee would then go on in 1990 to write the first web client and server in 1990.
The Pentium CPUs were the first superscalar CPUs, and integrated 3.1 million transistors that increased the graphic and multimedia capabilities of PCs significantly. They also improved the data transfer rates and the size of the data bus increased to 64-bits.
Google starts out as a research project being worked on by Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Stanford University. Google would shortly thereafter move to Menlo Park and purchase their own domain, separate from Stanford. Sergey and Larry started Google in response to other search engines that they thought were inferior. Previously search engines used a rudimentary algorithm, that counted the number of words in a website and compared it to the search term. This led to bad search results. Sergey and Larry wrote a new algorithm that used a bounce back ideology that worked much better than earlier algorithms. This led to much better search results, and allowed for people to use the internet more easily. As a result of this, the internet has grown to where it is today. Google is now a hundred billion dollar corporation and has branched out from being a search engine to working on software, hardware, and producing physical goods.
The USB, or Universal Serial Bus, was designed. The project was started in 1994 by seven companies, Compaq, DEC, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, and Nortel, to design and implement a universal cable connection to connect peripheral devices. Since its inception USB has replaced many other connection types, and has become a standard in the computing world.
Intel introduces the Pentium II prrocessor. This built on the already released Pentium I, adding a faster CPU clock between 233 MHz and 450 MHz. Intel also improved 16 bit instruction sets for this CPU, and packed 5.5 million transistors into the CPU. As manufacturing methods continued to improve, transistors would continue to become smaller and more could be put into CPU's
The second revision of the Pentium III processor, code named coppermine, reached a clock speed of 1 gigahertz. This was achieved through better instruction sets used for the CPU, newer manufacturing processes that allowed for the die to be cast in a 180nm configuration, and more efficient power routing and consumption.
The first consumer 64 bit processor is released by AMD in the form of the Athlon 64. While the Athlon was a 64 bit processor it was also backwards compatible with 32 bit instruction sets. The Athlon was important because it ushered in a new era of consumer computing. With the 64 bit architecture, data paths were now twice as wide, and data addresses could now hold 64 bits instead of 32. This allowed memory capacities to grow as well as the speed at which data was transferred.
PCI Express buss is invented. It was designed to replace older bus standard systems. PCIe was a marked improvement as it allowed for faster speeds than previous bus standards. It also allowed for differing bus sizes, and a per lane transfer rate of 2.5 GBits/s
The Pentium D, the first consumer grade dual core chip is released to market by Intel. AMD's Athlon 64 x2 is released just 5 days later and was also dual core. After various testing, it was discovered that while Intels chip was dual core, it was simply two CPU's in the same package. AMD's offering was a true Dual core CPU and used proper multi-core logic and pipe-lining.
The first commercially viable SSD is released by Sandisk in 2007. The drive was a 32 gigabyte drive. While the drive used technologies that were developed before its introduction by others, this was the first time that a drive like this had been available to consumers for a reasonable price. These drives differed from regular hard drives because they allowed for much faster file transfer speeds. The drives also contained no moving parts, and had a relatively low failure rate when compared to magnetic drives.
The first iPhone is introduced. This moved computing to an even smaller scale. Previously phones had not had to deal with tasks normally mandated to a computer. With the introduction of the iPhone new technologies had to be developed and researched to fit the processing power of a computer into the frame of a phone. Smartphones have exploded in popularity since, and the smartphones of today rival computers of ten years ago.
The credit card sized Raspberry Pi computer system is released. The machines were meant to encourage development in computing, and give tinkerers a way to inexpensively practice with computer components. Runs versions of Linux OS
After 50 years, Moore's Law still holds true. Transistors have doubled every two years while cost per chip remained the same.
We'd love to hear from you. Please send questions or feedback to the below email addresses.
Before contacting us, you may wish to visit our FAQs page which has lots of useful info on Tiki-Toki.
We can be contacted by email at: hello@tiki-toki.com.
You can also follow us on twitter at twitter.com/tiki_toki.
If you are having any problems with Tiki-Toki, please contact us as at: help@tiki-toki.com
Close