The Abacus

The abacus, perhaps the earliest form of computer, is reported to have been invented by the Babylonians sometime between 1,000 BC and 500 BC. The Abacus is an ingenious counting device based on the relative positions of two sets of beads moving on parallel strings. The abacus is still in use in some countries today.
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PowerPoint

Bob Gaskins conceives his easy-to-use presentation program named Presenter in 1984. He later changes the name to PowerPoint for trademark reasons. PowerPoint 1.0 is released in 1987. Later that year, the PowerPoint program are purchased by Microsoft for $14 million. Today, according to Microsoft, more than 30 million presentations are made around the world with PowerPoint every day.
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Whirlwind computer

The Whirlwind computer is developed for the U.S. Navy's Office of Research and Inventions during the early 1950s. The Whirlwind uses magnetic core memory storage, which replaces the unreliable and short-lived electrostatic tubes used previously. The Whirlwind is the first computer designed for real-time work and can do 500,000 additions or 50,000 multiplications per second.
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COM

Anthony Williams drafts two papers in the late 1980s that provide the foundation of many of the ideas behind Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) technology. COM is released in 1993. It is used to enable cross-software communication and dynamic object creation in many of Microsoft's platforms and products. COM is used widely until the introduction of the .NET platform in 2000.
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LEO

British company J. Lyons and Co. builds and operates the world's first business computer, the Lyons Electronic Office (LEO), in the early 1950s. Lyons works with a team of engineers at Cambridge University to develop and deploy LEO. In 1953, LEO begins processing payroll for J. Lyons. The company will eventually produce the LEO II and LEO III and sell the computers commercially through the 1960s.
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Domain Name System

The Domain Name System (DNS) is deployed in 1985. The demand for a more simple and easy-to-remember naming system for Internet addresses is answered by researchers and technicians at the University of Wisconsin, who develop the first Name Server in 1984. A year later, the Domain Name System is implemented and the initial top-level domain names, .com, .net, and .org are introduced.
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America Online

Steve Case starts America Online (AOL) on May 24, 1985. AOL begins as Quantum Computer Services, offering an online connection from Commodore 64 computers to the Internet under the service name Q-Link. AOL goes public in March 1992 and later merges with Time Warner in 2000 to create the world's largest media company. By 2002, AOL-Time Warner's online customer base surpasses 34 million members.
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Pen-based computers

In the early 1990s, pen-based computers are predicted to challenge conventional keyboard-based computers. Several companies, including IBM and Microsoft, develop hardware and software products in anticipation of the pen computer market. Go Corporation releases the first pen operating system. In the end, a mass market never materializes due to inadequate hardware and unrealistic expectations.
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The infamous ILLIAC IV

Conceived in 1964, the ILLIAC IV is one of the most infamous of all computers. As a safeguard during Vietnam War era protests, the computer is transferred during its development in 1970 from Illinois to California. The computer is ready for operation in 1976 after a decade of development. The dubious machine is readily outperformed by existing commercial machines and is decommissioned in 1982.
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Repetitive Stress Injury

The first case of Repetitive Stress Injury is filed in court in January 1995. A former Minnesota high school administrative assistant files a lawsuit against IBM for more than $50,000, claiming she developed Repetitive Stress Injury from using an IBM keyboard. A Minnesota jury rules that IBM is not responsible for the injuries suffered in the case.
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Toy Story

The first fully computer-generated feature film, "Toy Story," is a smashing commercial success in 1995. The film is the product of Pixar, which begins in 1984 when animation engineer John Lasseter joins George Lucas' special effects computer group. The short movie "The Adventures of Andre and Wally B." is Pixar's first 3-D project.
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Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs forms the American Arithmometer Company in January 1886 in St. Louis. The company is renamed the Burroughs Adding Machine Company in 1905. Over the next several decades, Burroughs becomes a global business producing office machines and highly acclaimed mainframe computers and peripherals. In September 1986, Burroughs merges with Sperry Rand to form the Unisys Corporation.
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Hello World

The "Hello World" program found in many computer programming tutorials is a one line program that is typically the first one writes when learning a new programming language. The origin of "Hello world" dates back to an example program developed in the classic book "The C Programming Language," by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, published in 1978.
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Amazon.com

Typing up a business plan while trekking out to Seattle, Jeff Bezos starts up Amazon.com in 1994, and launches the book selling website in July 1995. Bezos and his team keep working with the site. They pioneer features that now seem mundane, such as one-click shopping, customer reviews, and e-mail order verification. The company eventually goes public in 1997, expanding well beyond books.
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Netscape

Netscape goes public in August 1995. The company has all the elements of Silicon Valley's Internet era: young technologists, explosive growth, and a product to change the world. Founded by Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen, the company's Navigator browser holds over 80 percent of the market in mid-1995. America Online eventually acquires Netscape in March 1999.
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Emoticons

The use of emoticons is invented in 1982. Emoticons are the symbols from the characters on a computer keyboard used to convey emotion or tone in an electronic message, such as the sideways smiley face. :-). Emoticons are first used on the CMU's bulletin board system. They are suggested by CMU's owner in response to users' inability to distinguish jokes from serious text content on the system.
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U.S. vs. IBM

In January 1969, the U.S. government begins an antitrust investigation into IBM's dominance and attempts to break up the company. At the time, IBM holds a 65% share of the computer market. As the 13 year investigation continues, the computer market sees a dramatic shift from mainframes to PCs, and with it IBM's market share. The case is dropped in 1982 as PC clones erode Big Blue's dominance.
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Dell

University of Texas student Michael Dell begins selling PCs in 1984. Operating under the name "PC's Limited," the company builds computers from stock components and earns $6 million in its first year. The company takes off with its successful direct-to-consumer sales model and is renamed Dell Computer Corporation in 1988. By 1999, Dell becomes the largest seller of PCs in the United States.
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Relational databases

IBM scientist Edgar F. Codd publishes the paper "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks" in spring of 1970. The paper introduces relational database concepts and describes what constitutes a relational database system. The first commercial relational database management systems appear in 1979, offered by Oracle, Sybase, and Ingres.
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Hypertext

The first hypertext-based system is developed in 1967 by a team of researchers led by Dr. Andries van Dam at Brown University. IBM funds the research. The first hypertext implementation, Hypertext Editing System, runs on an IBM/360 mainframe. IBM eventually sells the system to the Houston Manned Spacecraft Center, which reportedly uses it for the Apollo Space Program documentation.
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Computer Usage Corporation

Elmer Kubie and John W. Sheldon, two former IBM employees, found the Computer Usage Corporation (CUC) in 1955. Responding to the rapid increase in demand for computer software, CUC is the first company formed specifically to provide software development services to customers. Its first project is a program for the California Research Corporation to simulate the flow of oil.
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Robert Metcalf

"Almost all of the many predictions now being made hinge on the Internet's continuing exponential growth. But, I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." - Robert Metcalf, founder of 3Com Corporation.
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QWERTY

The QWERTY keyboard is invented in the late 1870s. The name comes from the six alpha keys in the top-left part of the keyboard. The keyboard layout is designed to slow down typing, thus preventing the keys from jamming, which is a common problem during this period. In light of all the technical developments through the years, the QWERTY keyboard remains the standard configuration in use today.
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Apple stores

Apple Computer opens its first retail computer store in a shopping mall in McLean, Virginia in May 2001. Within five years, Apple opens more than 150 stores in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and Canada. The unique design of the stores coupled with Apple's highly acclaimed products gives Apple an unlikely retail success story.
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Compute

The origin of the word "compute" dates back to the French language of the early 1600s. The French derived the word from the Latin phrase "computare," meaning to count or sum up. The term "computer" came into use in the English language in 1646 as a word for a "person who computes."
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Java

The Stealth Project gets underway in January 1991 at Sun Microsystems with the goal of developing "smart" consumer electronic devices. After a couple of years of moderate success, the project's programming language is renamed Java and its focus is redirected toward the emerging World Wide Web. Commercial introduction of Java in 1995 marks a new era in the history of the web.
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Cookies

A "cookie" is a packet of data that travels between a web browser and a web server. The data is used to customize a user's website experience. The term comes from Lou Montulli, a programmer who is well known for his work in producing web browsers. Lou adapted the phrase from "magic cookie," which in the UNIX world is a token or short packet of data passed between communicating programs.
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Amazon.com

Amazon.com records its first profitable quarter in January 2002. Beginning with online book sales in 1996 and expanding into general merchandise a few years later, the company reports a net income of $5 million on sales of $1.2 billion. The profit announcement is well ahead of Wall Street analysts' expectations and is attributable to growth in international sales and company cost cutting.
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Netscape

Hoping to reverse a market slide, Netscape announces in January 1998 that its web browser will thereafter be free. They also announce that the development of the browser will move to an open-source process. Later in 1998, AOL purchases Netscape with a $4.5 billion stock transaction. The longer than expected merger process slows down new browser releases and Netscape never recaptures its momentum.
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Y2K

Paul Gillin makes the first printed reference to the Y2K problem in Computerworld magazine in February 1984. The belief is that the use of the last two digits of a year value by old computer programs will lead to worldwide disruptions on January 1, 2000. From 1993 to 1999, governments and businesses worldwide spend somewhere between $300 billion and $900 billion fixing Y2K bugs.
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