Timeline - History of the Computer

1822 - Charles Babbage invents the Difference Engine to calculate mathematical tables (http://www.gizmag.com/go/1288/).

1842-1843 - Ada Byron annotated a translation of Charles Babbage's paper and in her notes, theorised the first computer program (http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.html).

1939-1940 - Alan Turing, with the help of teams of mathematicians & cryptographers devised the first working computer, The Bombe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe#History_and_use).

1950 - Alan Turing proposed the Turing Test to judge computer intelligence (http://www.turing.org.uk/publications/testbook.html).

1950's - Computers first commercially produced for government, military & corporate work by IBM (http://nct09-gc.blogspot.com/2009_08_02_archive.html).

1965 - Gordom Moore propounded Moore's Law; the capacity of microchips doubles every 2 years ( http://nct09-gc.blogspot.com/2009_08_02_archive.html).

1972 - Think tanks at Zerox PARC invented concepts such as the mouse, the graphical user interface (GUI) & pull down menus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_PARC).

1975 - World's first personal computer (PC) is released. Its called the Altair (http://www.warbaby.com/FG_test/Timeline.html).

1975 - Bill Gates writes a computer language for the Altair called BASIC & created Microsoft (http://inventors.about.com/od/gstartinventors/a/Bill_Gates.htm).

1976 - Apple 1 released. This computer was developed by Apple founders Steve Wozniak & Steve Jobs (http://www.apple-history.com/).

1978 - Apple 2 is released (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple).

1979 - Apple release their 'killer application' Visicalc', essentially a spreadsheet application. (http://www.bricklin.com/visicalc.htm).

1980 - IBM meets with Bill Gates who agrees to write the operating system for the PC they are about to release (http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa031599.htm).

1981 - IBM release their PC on the market (http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa031599.htm).

1985 - Microsoft released Windows 1.0 (http://www.investingvalue.com/investment-leaders/bill-gates/index.htm).

1991 - Linus Torvalds puts his operating system Linux on the internet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds).