Heron of Alexandria made numerous inventions, including "Sequence Control" in which the operator of a machine set a machine running, which then follows a series of instructions in a deterministic fashion. This was, essentially, the first program. He also made numerous innovations in the field of automata, which are important steps in the development of robotics.
The mechanism is the oldest known complex scientific calculator. It contains many gears, and is sometimes called the first known analog computer, although its flawless manufacturing suggests that it may have had a number of undiscovered predecessors during the Hellenistic Period. It appears to be constructed upon theories of astronomy and mathematics developed by Greek astronomers and it is estimated that it was made around 100 BC.
Al-Jazari constructed an elaborate clock and described it in his Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices in 1206. It was about 3.3 metres high (11 feet), and had multiple functions alongside timekeeping.
The German blacksmith, goldsmith, printer and publisher Johannes Gutenberg is born. His invention of mechanical movable type printing started the printing revolution.
Printer Johannes Gutenberg dies of natural causes in Mainz, Germany.
Leonardo da Vinci produced drawings of a device consisting of interlocking cog wheels which can be interpreted as a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction
Birth of the German professor of Hebrew and Astronomy who went on to invent the Calculating Clock
Wilhelm Schickard draws his design for the Calculating Clock in a letter to Johannes Kepler. The machine could add and subtract 6-digit numbers.
The French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and philosopher Blaise Pascal is born. He invented the Pascaline mechanical calculator.
Wilhelm Schickard, inventor of the Calculating Clock dies from Bubonic Plague in Tubingen.
After three years of effort and 50 prototypes Blaise Pascal invents the Pascaline - an early mechanical calculator.
German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz is born. He became one of the most prolific inventors of mechanical calculators.
French mathematician and inventor of the Pascaline, Blaise Pascal, dies aged only 39 in Paris
Gottfried Leibniz completes the Stepped Reckoner - a digital mechanical calculator. It was the first mechanical calculator that could perform all four arithmetic operations.
German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz dies, aged 70, in Hanover, Germany.
French inventor Claude Chappe is born. He went on to invent a practical semaphore system that eventually spanned the whole of France.
French inventor and entrepreneur Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar is born. He is best known for designing, patenting and manufacturing the Arithmometre.
American inventor and painter Samuel Morse is born. he becomes best known for his development of the Morse Code and his contribution to the development of the single-wire telegraph.
The English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer Charles Babbage is born. He is considered to be the "Father of the Computer".
In 1792, Claude Chappe, a French engineer, built the first fixed visual telegraphy system (or semaphore line) between Lille and Paris
In France Thomas de Colmar patents the Arithmometre which becomes the first commercially successful mechanical calculator.
Charles Babbage proposes the use of a Difference Engine in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society on 14 June entitled "Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables".
The modern zoetrope was invented in 1833[4] by British mathematician William George Horner.
The businessman Samuel F.B. Morse and the physicist Joseph Henry of the United States developed their own, simpler version of the electrical telegraph, independently. Morse successfully demonstrated this system on September 2, 1837
The first commercial electrical telegraph was constructed by Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Fothergill Cooke, and its use began on April 9, 1839.
Scottish scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator Alexander Graham Bell is born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He becomes best known for the invention of the telephone.
American inventor and industrialist Dorr E. Felt is born. He goes on to invent the comptometer and comptograph.
The first permanent transatlantic telegraph cable was successfully completed on 27 July 1866, allowing transatlantic electrical communication for the first time
Creator of the Arithmometre, Thomas de Colmar, dies in Paris
Charles Babbage dies, aged 79, in Marylebone, London
Creator of the Morse Code, Samuel Morse, dies in New York.
The conventional telephone now in use worldwide was first patented by Alexander Graham Bell in March 1876.[13] That first patent by Bell was the master patent of the telephone, from which all other patents for electric telephone devices and features flowed. Credit for the invention of the electric telephone has been frequently disputed, and new controversies over the issue have arisen from time-to-time.
The praxinoscope was an animation device, the successor to the zoetrope. It was invented in France in 1877 by Charles-Émile Reynaud. Like the zoetrope, it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder.
The zoopraxiscope is an early device for displaying motion pictures. Created by photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge in 1879, it may be considered the first movie projector. The zoopraxiscope projected images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion. The stop-motion images were initially painted onto the glass, as silhouettes
The comptometer was the first commercially successful key-driven mechanical calculator, patented in the USA by Dorr E. Felt in 1887.
First described in conceptual terms by U.S. inventor Thomas Edison in 1888, the Kinetoscope was largely developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892
The first commercial exhibition of motion pictures in history was given in New York City, using ten Kinetoscopes.
The Antikythera Wreck is a shipwreck dating from the 1st or 2nd Century BC. It was discovered in 1900 containing many statues as well as the Antikythera Mechanism, the world's oldest known analog computer.
American physicist and inventor John Vincent Atanasoff is born in Hamilton, New York.
Inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, dies in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Inventor of the Comptometer and Comptograph, Dorr E Felt dies in Chicago aged 68
American engineer and entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell is born in Clearfield, Utah. He later founds Atari Inc.
he Nimrod was a special purpose computer that played the game of Nim, designed and built by Ferranti and displayed at the Exhibition of Science during the 1951 Festival of Britain.
Clive Sinclair founded Sinclair Radionics to develop and sell electronic devices such as calculators.
Spacewar! is one of the earliest known digital computer games. It is a two-player game, with each player taking control of a spaceship and attempting to destroy the other. A star in the centre of the screen pulls on both ships and requires maneuvering to avoid falling into it. In an emergency, a player can enter hyperspace to return at a random location on the screen, but only at the risk of exploding if it is used too often.
The tennis themed game Pong is released by Atari Inc. Developed by Nolan Bushnell
The Intel 8008 was an early byte-oriented microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel and introduced in April 1972. It was an 8-bit CPU with an external 14-bit address bus that could address 16KB of memory.
The Magnavox Odyssey is the world's first video game console and was invented by Ralph Baer
The American video game and home computer company is founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney
Atari releases Gran Trak 10, the first racing game, to video arcades.
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