1745 Capacitor Leyden
1780 Galvanic action Galvani
1800 Dry cell Volta
1808 Atomic theory Dalton
1812 Cable insulation
Sommering and Schilling
1820 Electromagnetism Oersted
1821 Thermoelectricity Seebeck
1826 Ohm’s law Ohm
1831 Electromagnetic induction Faraday
1831 Transformer Faraday
1832 Self-induction Henry
1834 Electrolysis Faraday
1837 Relays
Cooke,Wheatstone, and
Davy
1839 Photovoltaic effect Becquerel
1843 Wheatstone bridge Wheatstone
1845 Kirchhoff ’s laws Kirchhoff
1850 Thermistor Faraday
1860 Microphone diaphragm Reis
1865 Radiowave propagation Maxwell
1866 Transatlantic telegraph cable
T.C. & M. Co.
1874 Capacitors, mica Bauer
1876 Rolled-paper capacitor Fitzgerald
1876 Telephone Bell
1877 Phonograph Edison
1877 Microphone, carbon Edison
1877 Loudspeaker moving coil Siemens
1878 Cathode rays Crookes
1878 Carbon-filament incandescent lamp
Swan, Stearn,Topham, and Cross
1879 Hall effect Hall
1880 Piezoelectricity Curie
1887 Gramophone Berliner
1887 Aerials, radiowave Hertz
1888 Induction motor Tesla
1893 Waveguides Thomson
1895 X-rays Roentgen
1896 Wireless telegraphy Marconi
1900 Quantum theory Planck
1901 Fluorescent lamp
Cooper and Hewitt
1904 Two-electrode tube Fleming
1905 Theory of relativity Einstein
1906 Radio broadcasting Fessenden
1908 Television
Campell, Swinton
1911 Superconductivity Onnes
1915 Sonar Langevin
1918 Multivibrator circuit
Abraham & Bloch
1918 Atomic transmutation Rutherford
1919 Flip-flop circuits
Eccles and Jordan
1921 Crystal control of frequency Cady
1924 Radar
Appleton, Briet,Watson,
and Watt
1927 Negative-feedback amplifier Black
1932 Neutron Chadwick
1932 Particle accelerator
Crockcroft and Walton
1934 Liquid crystals Dreyer
1935 Transistor field effect Hieil
1935 Scanning electron microscope Knoll
1937 Xerography Carlson
1937 Oscillograph
Van Ardenne, Dowling, and
Bullen
1938 Nuclear fission
Fristsch and Meitner
1939 Early digital computer Aitken and IBM
1943 First general-purpose computer (ENIAC: Mauchly and Eckert
10 ft tall, 11,000 sq ft, 30 tons, 70,000 resistors,
10,000 capacitors, 6000 switches, 18,000 vacuum tubes,
150 kW power, programmed with knobs and switches)
1943 Printed wiring Eisler
1945 First commercial computer (UNIVAC I) —
1948 Transistor (bipolar)
Bardeen, Bratlain, and
Shockley
1948 Holography
Gabor and Shockley
1950 Modem
MIT & Bell Labs
1950 Karnaugh mapping technique (digital logic) Karnaugh
1952 Digital voltmeter Kay
1953 Unijunction transistor GEC
1954 Transistor radioset Regency
1954 Solar battery
Chapin, Fuller, and
Pearson
1956 Transatlantic telephone cable U.K. & U.S.A.
1957 Sputnik I satellite U.S.S.R.
1957 FORTRAN programming language Watson Scientific
1958 Video tape recorder U.S.A.
1958 Laser
Schalow and Townes
1959 Planar manufacturing process for transistors Fairchild Semicondutor
1959 First integrated circuits
Fairchild Semiconductor and
Texas
Instruments
1960 Light-emitting diodes
Allen and Gibbons
1961 Electronic clock
Vogel and Cie
1962 MOSFET transistors
Hofstein, Heiman, and RCA
1963 Electronic calculator
Bell Punch Co.
1964 BASIC programming language Kemeny and Kurtz
1966 Optical fiber communications Kao and Hockham
1969 UNIX operating system
AT&T’s Bell Labs
1970 Floppy disk recorder IBM
1970 First microprocessor (4004, 60,000 oper/s) Intel
1971 EPROM —
1971 PASCAL programming language Wirth
1971 First microcomputer-on-a-chip Texas Instruments
1972 8008 processor (200 kHz, 16 kB) Intel
1972 Ping Pong (early video game) Atari
1972 First programmable word
processor Automatic Electronic Systems
1972 5.25-in diskette —
1973 Josephson junction IBM
1973 Tunable continuous-wave laser Bell Labs
1973 Ethernet
Metcalfe
1974 C programming language
Kernighan, Ritchie
1974 Programmable pocket calculator Hewlett Packard
1975 BASIC for personal computers Allen
1975 Liquid-crystal display
United Kingdom
1975 First personal computer (Altair 8800) Roberts
1975 Integrated optical circuits
Reinhart and Logan
1975 Microsoft founded
Gates and Allen
1976 Apple I computer
Wozniak, Jobs
1977 Commodore PET (14 K ROM, 4 K
RAM) Commodore Business Machines
1978 Space Invaders video game Taito
1978 WordPerfect 1.0
Satellite Software
1980 3.5-in floppy (2-sided, 875
kB) Sony Electronics
1980 Commodore 64
Commodore Business Machines
1980 Macintosh computer
Apple Computer
1981 IBM PC (8088 processor) IBM
1981 MS-DOS 1.0
Microsoft
1982 Laser printer IBM
1983 Satellite television
U.S. Satellite
Communications, Inc.
1983 “Wet” solar cell
Germany/U.S.A.
1983 First built-in hard drive (IBM PC-XT) IBM
1983 Microsoft Word
Microsoft
1983 C++ programming language Stroostrup
1984 CD-ROM player for personal computers Philips
1985 300,000 simultaneous telephone
conversations AT&T, Bell Laboratory over single
optical fiber
1987 Warm superconductivity Karl Alex Mueller
1987 80386 microprocessor (25 MHz) Intel
1990 486 microprocessor (33 MHz) Intel
1994 Pentium processor (60/90 MHz 166.2 mips) Intel
1996 Alpha 21164 processor (550 MHz) Digital Equipment
1996 P2SC processor (15 million transistors) IBM
1997 Deep Blue (IBM RS/6000SP supercomputer) IBM
defeats world chess champ Garry Kasparov
2004 Facebook
2006 Android
2008 Tabs Samsung
2009 Window 7
2012 Window 8 |
