Digital Timeline
A timeline which tries to trace the evolution of digital logic and devices.
9th Century
The
Banū Mūsā brothers
invent a
digital music player
.
1642
Blaise Pascal
invented the digital, mechanical
calculator
.
1703
Gottfried Leibniz
published
Explanation of the Binary Arithmetic
1725
Basile Bouchon
used
punched cards
to store information. In this case, to control a loom.
1792
Claude Chappe
invented the
optical telegraph
.
1804
The
Jacquard machine
expanded on Bouchon's loom.
1820
Charles Xavier Thomas
improved the
calculator
.
1832
Semyon Korsakov
used punch cards to store and search information.
1835
Joseph Henry
invented the
relay
.
1837
Charles Babbage
proposed the
Analytical engine
.
Samuel Morse
developed
Morse code
.
1843
Alexander Bain
invented a
fax machine
.
1854
George Boole
published
The Laws of Thought
introducing
Boolean algebra
.
1869
William Stanley Jevons
invented the
logical machine
. His version was called a
logic piano
.
1883
Allan Marquand
improved the
logical machine
.
1886
Charles Sanders Peirce
described how boolean operations could be solved by electrical switches.
Herman Hollerith
invented the
tabulating machine
.
1895
Otto Schäffler invented the
plugboard
.
1904
John Ambrose Fleming
invented the
diode
(
the Fleming valve
).
1906
Lee de Forest
invented the
triode
.
1909
Percy Ludgate
designed a mechanical analytical engine.
1918
William Eccles
and
FW Jordan
invented the
flip-flop circuit
.
1936
Alan Turing
conceived the
Turing machine
.
1937
Claude Shannon
wrote
A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits
which advocated that Boolean logic should be used to design digital logic circuits.
George Stibitz
built the
Model K adder
.
1938
Konrad Zuse
built a programmable, digital computer-
the Z1
.
1942
John Atanasoff
built a nonprogrammable, digital computer-
the ABC
.
1943
Tommy Flowers
built the
Colossus
- an electronic, digital, programmable computer.
1944
Howard Aiken
designed and
IBM
built the
Harvard Mark I
- a programmable calculator.
1945
Eckert
and
Mauchly
built the
ENIAC
- the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer.
John von Neumann
described the
von Neumann architecture
.
1947
William Shockley
invented the
transistor
.
1948
Claude Shannon
wrote
A Mathematical Theory of Communication
which proved that all information can be encoded digitally and coined the term,
bit
.
1956
Wen Tsing Chow
invented
PROM
s.
1960
Robert Noyce
, one of the
traitorous eight
, invented the
monolithic integrated circuit chip
.
1970
Texas Instruments
developed the
74181 ALU
.
1971
Federico Faggin
designed the
Intel 4004
.
Dov Frohman
invented
EPROM
s.
1975
Ed Roberts
developed the
Altair 8800
.