2300 BCE
The abacus
Sumerian and later Chinese (suanpan) counting boards mechanise arithmetic for trade and administration. Source — Wikipedia:
Chronological Storyline (12 Milestones)
1642 CE
Pascal’s mechanical calculator
Blaise Pascal builds the Pascaline, an early mechanical adding machine. Source — Wikipedia:
1804 CE
Jacquard’s punched-card loom
The Jacquard loom stores patterns on punched cards — a key idea behind programmable machines. Source — Wikipedia:
1837 CE
Babbage & Lovelace analytical engine
Charles Babbage designs a programmable computer; Ada Lovelace writes the first algorithm for it. Source — Wikipedia:
1890 CE
Hollerith’s tabulating machine
Herman Hollerith’s punched-card tabulator processes the US census and seeds IBM. Source — Wikipedia:
1945 CE
ENIAC electronic computer
ENIAC, using thousands of vacuum tubes, becomes a general-purpose electronic computer. Source — Wikipedia:
1947 CE
The transistor
Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley invent the transistor at Bell Labs, replacing fragile vacuum tubes. Source — Wikipedia:
1958 CE
The integrated circuit
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce put many components on one chip, launching microelectronics. Source — Wikipedia:
1969 CE
ARPANET, ancestor of the Internet
Packet-switched ARPANET links distant computers, the foundation of the global Internet. Source — Wikipedia:
1971 CE
Intel 4004 microprocessor
Intel’s 4004 packs a whole CPU onto a single chip, beginning the personal-computing era. Source — Wikipedia:
2012 CE
Deep learning breakthrough (AlexNet)
AlexNet’s decisive ImageNet win shows deep neural networks can outperform prior methods. Source — Wikipedia:
2017 CE
Transformers power modern AI
The transformer architecture enables large language models and today’s generative AI. Source — Wikipedia: )