Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage (1791-1871), computer pioneer, designed the first automatic computing engines. He invented computers but failed to build them. The first complete Babbage Engine was completed in London in 2002, 153 years after it was designed. Difference Engine No. 2, built faithfully to the original drawings, consists of 8,000 parts, weighs five tons, and measures 11 feet long.
1889 Herman Hollerith Census Machine by TMC which became IBM
The Computer History Museum
The American Government requirement of conducting a Census every ten years leads to the development of Hollerith Census Machine by Tabulating Machine Company (TMC) which later change its name to International Business Machine - IBM.
Atanasoff Berry Computer
A judge ruled the Atanasoff Berry Computer (ABC) was the first digital computer designed at Iowa State University nullifying the first computer patent.
Konrad Zuse's computing machine Z3
1946 ENIAC
The Computer History Museum
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computing with 18,000 tubes!!!.
ENIAC/UNIVAC
Produced in 1960, the film outlines the earlier history of computing leading to the development and application of the UNIVAC computer. J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the major figures in the creation of the ENIAC computer, left the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Engineering at the end of WWII to found their own firm. They had hoped to be the first to exploit the new concept of the electronic stored program computer, but were hampered by a lack of funds and, to some extent, by the bureaucracy surrounding their only major customer, the Census Bureau. They sought other investors but never had enough to properly complete their projects.
1951 - MIT Whirlwind
The Computer History Museum
MIT Whirlwind I, the First to Display Real Time Video.
In Your Defense- The Sage System
The SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) System, was designed and built in the 1950s to defend against the threat of Soviet bombers attacking the continental United States. The system was much influenced by the design of MIT's Whirlwind II computer system (which was never completed). IBM designed and built the AN/FSQ-7 computer, the heart of the SAGE program, with companies such as Western Electric (who produced In Your Defense), The Mitre Corporation and System Development Corporation were also major contractors on the project.
1956 - IBM’s Sage
Historical film from 1956 explaining IBM's SAGE computer system. Encoded by Wayne Carlson.
1958 - Sage
The Computer History Museum
Amazing early Air defense control computer from the Cold War - SAGE SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) air defense system, became operational in 1958
1967 - Man and Computer
The Computer History Museum
The film Man & Computer, made in 1967 by IBM's UK branch, provides a basic understanding of computer operations. A large portion of the film shows the ways in which a computer can be simulated by five people using the standard office equipment of the day. The film employs a number of different techniques, including animations, and features a few brief scenes of an IBM System/360 in use—just months after the first machines were delivered. Starting in the 1940s, IBM became a major producer of films used for sales, training, documenting business processes, entertaining at company functions, and educating the public. Several IBM films were made by respected filmmakers and sometimes featured well-known actors.
Xerox Alto
The Computer History Museum
The first workstation with Windows User Interface, mouse & network. Apple and Microsoft copying of Xerox User Interface.
First Computer Ever Made
Scientists have finally demystified the incredible workings of a 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator built by ancient Greeks. A new analysis of the Antikythera Mechanism, a clock-like machine consisting of more than 30 precise, hand-cut bronze gears, show it to be more advanced than previously thought - so much so that nothing comparable was built for another thousand years. "This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind," said study leader Mike Edmunds of Cardiff University in the UK. "The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right ... In terms of historical and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa." If the sharp-sightedness of the Greeks had kept pace with their intelligence, then maybe even the Industrial Revolution had begun one thousand years before Columbus.