Computer History 1960 - 1980

YearEvent
1960IBMs 1400 series machines, aimed at the business market begin to be distributed.
1960The Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL) programming language is invented.
1960Psychologist Frank Rosenblatt creates the Mark I Perception, which has an "eye" that can learn to identify its ABCs.
1960 NASA launches TIROS, the first weather satellite into space.
1960 AT&T introduces the dataphone and the first known MODEM.
1960RS-232 is introduced by EIA.
1960IFIP is founded.
1960Digital introduces the PDP-1 the first minicomputer.
1961Hewlett-Packard stock is accepted by the New York Stock Exchange for national and international trading.
1961Leonard Kleinrock publishes his first paper entitled "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets" is published May 31, 1961.
1961General Motors puts the first industrial robot the 4,000 pound Unimate to work in a New Jersey factory.
1961Accredited Standards Committee is founded, this committee later becomes the INCITS.
1961P.Z. Ingerman develops a thunk.
1961ECMA is established.
1961The programming language FORTRAN IV is created.
1962Steve Russell creates "SpaceWar!" and releases it in February 1962. This game is considered the first game intended for computers.
1962Leonard Kleinrock releases his paper talking about packetization.
1962Paul Baran suggests transmission of data using fixed size message blocks.
1962J.C.R. Licklider becomes the first Director of IPTO and gives his vision of a galactic network.
1962 Philips invents the compact audio cassette tape.
1962The NASA rocket, the Mariner II, is equipped with a Motorola transmitter on it's trip to Venus.
1962Sharp is founded.
1963IEEE is founded.
1963The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is developed to standardize data exchange among computers.
1964Dartmouth Universitys John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz develop Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Language (BASIC) and run it for the first time May 1, 1964.
1964Baran publishes reports "On Distributed Communications."
1964 AT&T starts the practice of monitoring telephone calls in the hopes of identifying phreakers.
1964The TRANSIT system becomes operational on U.S. Polaris submarines. This system later becomes known as GPS.
1964On April 7, 1964 IBM introduces its System/360, the first of its computers to use interchangeable software and peripheral equipment.
1964Leonard Kleinrock publishes his first book on packet nets entitled Communication Nets: Stochastic Message Flow and Design.
1964The first computerized encyclopedia is invented at the Systems Development Corporation.
1965Ted Nelson coins the term "hypertext," which refers to text that is not necessarily linear.
1965Hypermedia is coined by Ted Nelson.
1965Donald Davies coins the word "Packet."
1965Engineers at TRW Corporation develop a Generalized Information Retrieval Language and System which later develops to the Pick Database Management System used today on Unix and Windows systems.
1965 Millions watch for the first time a space probe crashing into the moon on March 24, 1965.
1965Texas Instruments develops the transistor-transistor logic (TTL).
1965Lawrence G. Roberts with MIT performs the first long distant dial-up connection between a TX-2 computer n Massachusetts and a Q-32 in California.
1965Gordon Moore makes an observation that later becomes widely known as Moore's Law.
1966MITs Joseph Weizenbaum writes a program called Eliza, that makes the computer act as a psychotherapist.
1966Lawrence G. Roberts and Tom Marill publish a paper about their earlier success at connecting over dial-up.
1966Stephen Gray establishes the first personal computer club, the Amateur Computer Society.
1966Robert Taylor joins ARPA and brings Larry Roberts there to develop ARPANET.
1966The programming language BCPL is created.
1967IBM creates the first floppy disk.
1967Donald Davies creates 1-node NPL packet net.
1967Wes Clark suggests use of a minicomputer for network packet switch.
1967The LOGO programming language is developed and is later known as "turtle graphics," a simplified interface useful for teaching children computers.
1967Donald Davies creates 1-node NPL packet net.
1967Ralph Baer creates "Chase", the first video game that was capable of being played on a television.
1967HES is developed at the Brown University.
1967Nokia is formed.
1967GPS becomes available for commercial use.
1967ISACA is established.
1968Intel Corporation is founded by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore.
1968The first Network Working Group (NWG) meeting is held.
1968 Bob Propst invents the office cubicle.
1968Larry Roberts publishes ARPANET program plan on June 3, 1968.
1968 On June 4, 1968 Dr. Robert Dennard at the IBM T.J. Watson Research center is granted U.S. patent 3,387,286 describing a one-transistor DRAM cell.
1968First RFP for a network goes out.
1968UCLA is selected to be the first node on the Internet as we know it today and serve as the Network Msmnt Center.
1968The movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" is released.
1968SHRDLU is created.
1968Seiko markets a miniature printer for use with calculators.
1968Sony invents Trinitron.
1968Doug Englebart publicly demonstrates Hypertext on the NLS on December 9, 1968.
1969Control Data Corporation led by Seymour Cray, release the CDC 7600, considered by most to be the first supercomputer.
1969AT&T Bell Laboratories develop Unix.
1969Steve Crocker releases RFC #1 on April 7, 1979 introducing the Host-to-Host and talking about the IMP software.
1969Linus Torvalds is born.
1969Gary Starkweather, while working with Xerox invents the laser printer.
1969UCLA puts out a press release introducing the public to the Internet on July 3, 1969.
1969 Ralph Baer files for a US Patent on August 21, 1969 that describes playing games on a television and would later be a part of the Magnavox Odyssey.
1969On August 29, 1969 the first network switch and the first piece of network equipment (called "IMP", which is short for Interface Message Processor) is sent to UCLA.
1969On September 2, 1969 the first data moves from UCLA host to the IMP switch.
1969CompuServe, the first commercial online service, is established.
1969AMD is founded on May 1, 1969.
1970Western Digital is founded.
1970Steve Crocker and UCLA team releases NCP.
1970Intel announces the 1103, a new DRAM memory chip containing more than 1,000 bits of information. This chip is classified as random-access memory (RAM).
1970The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) is established to perform basic computing and electronic research.
1970The forth programming language is created by Charles H. Moore.
1970The first ATM is demonstrated and used in Georgia.
1970U.S. Department of Defense develops ada a computer programming language capable of designing missile guidance systems.
1970Intel introduces the first microprocessor, the Intel 4004 on November 15, 1971.
1970The Sealed Lead Acid battery begins being used for commercial use.
1970Jack Kilby is awarded the National Medal of Science.
1970Centronics introduces the first dot matrix printer.
1970Douglas Englebart gets a patent for the first computer mouse on November 17, 1970.
1970IBM introduces the System/370, which included the use of Virtual Memory and utilized memory chips instead of magnetic core technology.
1971The first 8" floppy diskette drive was introduced
1971Ray Tomlinson sends the first e-mail, the first messaging system to send messages across a network to other users.
1971The first laser printer is developed at Xerox PARC.
1971FTP is first purposed.
1971IBM introduces its first speech recognition program capable of recognizing about 5,000 words.
1971Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney create the first arcade game called "Computer Space."
1971SMC is founded.
1971 Steve Wozniak and Bill Fernandez develop a computer called the Cream Soda Computer.
1971Schadt and Helfrich develop twisted nematic.
1971Niklaus Wirth invents the Pascal programming language.
1971Intel develops the the first processor, the 4004
1971First edition of Unix released November 03, 1971. The first edition of the "Unix PROGRAMMER'S MANUAL [by] K. Thompson [and] D. M. Ritchie." It includes over 60 commands like: b (compile B program); boot (reboot system); cat (concatenate files); chdir (change working directory); chmod (change access mode); chown (change owner); cp (copy file); ls (list directory contents); mv (move or rename file); roff (run off text); wc (get word count); who (who is one the system). The main thing missing was pipes.
1972The first video game console called the Odyssey is released by Magnavox selling for $100.00 USD.
1972ARPA is renamed to DARPA.
1972The programming language FORTRAN 66 is created.
1972Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs invents the C programming language.
1972Edsger Dijkstra is awarded the ACM Turning Award.
1972The compact disc is invented in the United States.
1972Cray Research Inc. is founded.
1972Atari releases Pong, the first commercial video game on November 29, 1972.
1972First public demo of ARPANET.
1972Whetstone is first released in November 1972.
1972Norm Abramson' Alohanet connected to ARPANET: packet radio nets.
1973Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn design TCP during 1973 and later publish it with the help of Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine in December of 1974 in RFC 675.
1973ARPA deploys SATNET the first international connection.
1973Robert Metcalfe creates the Ethernet at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) on May 22, 1973.
1973The first VoIP call is made.
1973IBM introduces its 3660 Supermarket System, which uses a laser to read grocery prices.
1973Interactive laser discs make their debut.
1973The ICCP is founded.
1973Judge awards John Vincent Atanasoff as the inventor of the first electronic digital computer on October 19, 1973.
1973Dr. Martin Cooper makes the first cell phone call at Motorola.
1974Intel's improved microprocessor chip, the 8080 becomes a standard in the computer industry.
1974 John Draper aka Captain Crunch discovers a breakfast cereal children's whistle creates a 2600 hertz tone. Using this whistle and a blue box he's able to successfully get into AT&T's phone network and make free calls anywhere in the world.
1974The first Toshiba floppy disk drive is introduced.
1974The IBM MVS operating system is introduced.
1974 A commercial version of ARPANET known as Telenet is introduced and considered by many to be the first Internet Service Provider (ISP).
1974IBM develops SEQUEL, which today is known as SQL today.
1974IBM introduces SNA.
1974Charles Simonyi coins the term WYSIWYG.
1975Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Monte Davidoff announce Altair BASIC.
1975MITS ships one of the first PCs, the Altair 8800 with one kilobyte (KB) of memory. The computer is ordered as a mail-order kit for $397.00.
1975A flight simulator demo is first shown.
1975Paul Allen and Bill Gates write the first computer language program for personal computers, which is a form of BASIC designed for the Altair. Gates later drops out of Harvard and founds Microsoft with Allen.
1975Xerox exits the computer market on July 21, 1975.
1975The Byte Shop, one of the first computer stores, open in California.
1975EPSON enters the US market.
1975 IMS Associates begin shipping its IMSAI 8080 computer kits on December 16, 1975.
1976 On February 3, 1976 David Bunnell publishes an article by Bill Gates complaining about software piracy in his Computer Notes Altair newsletter.
1976Steve Wozniak designs the first Apple, the Apple I computer in 1976, later Wozniak and Steve Jobs co-found Apple Computers on April Fools day.
1976The first 5.25-inch floppy disk is invented.
1976Microsoft introduces an improved version of BASIC.
1976 The First Annual World Altair Computer convention and first convention of computer hobbyists is held in New Mexico on March 26, 1976.
1976The term meme is first defined in the book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.
1976The first Public Key Cryptography known as the Deffie-Hellman is developed by Whitfield Deffie and Martin Hellman.
1976The Intel 8086 is introduced.
1976The original Apple computer company logo of Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree is replaced by the well known rainbow colored apple with a bite out of it.
1976Matrox is founded.
1976DES is approved as a federal standard in November 1976.
1976Microsoft name is trademarked in November 1976.
1976 In December of 1976 Bill Gates drops out of Harvard to devote all his time to Microsoft.
1977Ward Christansen develops a popular modem transfer modem called Xmodem.
1977Apple Computer becomes Incorporated January 4, 1977
1977Apple Computer Inc., Radio Shack, and Commodore all introduce mass-market computers.
1977 The First West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco's Brooks Civic Auditorium is held on April 15, 1977.
1977Apple Computers Apple II, the first personal computer with color graphics is demonstrated.
1977ARCNET the first commercially network is developed
1977Zoom Telephonics is founded.
1977Commodore announces that the PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) will be a self-contained unit, with a CPU, RAM, ROM, keyboard, monitor and tape recorder all for $495.00
1977Microsoft sells the license for BASIC to Radio Shack and Apple and introduces the program in Japan.
1977BSD is introduced.
1978Dan Bricklin creates VisiCalc.
1978 The first BBS is put online February 16, 1978.
1978TCP splits into TCP/IP driven by Danny Cohen, David Reed, and John Shoch to support real-time traffic. This allows the creation of UDP.
1978Epson introduces the TX-80, which becomes the first successful dot matrix printer for personal computers.
1978OSI is developed by ISO.
1978Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle create the first MUD.
1978The first spam e-mail was sent by Gary Thuerk in 1978 an employee at Digital who was advertising the new DECSYSTEM-2020, 2020T, 2060, AND 2060T on ARPAnet.
1978Microsoft introduces a new version of COBOL.
1978The 5.25-inch floppy disk becomes an industry standard.
1978In June of 1978 Apple introduces Apple DOS 3.1, the first operating system for the Apple computers.
1978Ward Christensen and Randy Seuss have the first major microcomputer bulletin board up and running in Chicago.
1978ETA is founded.
1978John Shoch and Jon Hupp at Xerox PARC develop the first worm.
1979Robert Williams of Michigan became the first human to be killed by a robot at the Ford Motors company on January 25, 1979. Resulting in a $10 million dollar lawsuit.
1979Software Arts Incorporated VisiCalc becomes the first electronic spreadsheet and business program for PCs.
1979Epson releases the MX-80 which soon becomes an industry standard for dot matrix printers.
1979SCO is founded.
1979Sierra is founded.
1979The Intel 8088 is released on July 1, 1979.
1979Bit 3 is founded.
1979Texas Instruments enters the computer market with the TI 99/4 personal computer that sells for $1,500.
1979Hayes markets its first modem which becomes the industry standard for modems.
1979Atari introduces a coin-operated version of Asteroids.
1979More than half a million computers are in use in the United States.
19793COM is founded by Robert Metcalfe.
1979Oracle introduces the first commercial version of SQL.
1979The programming language DoD-1 is officially changed to Ada.
1979The Motorola 68000 is released and is later chosen as the processor for the Apple Macintosh.
1979Phoenix is founded.
1979VMS is introduced.
1979Usenet is first started
1979Bit 3 is established.
1979Seagate is founded.
1979Saitek is founded
1979Oracle is founded.
1979Novell Data System is established as an operating system developer. Later in 1983 the company becomes the Novell company.

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