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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