1945 J. PresperEckert and John Mauc

1945 J. Presper

Eckert and John Mauchly sign a contract to build the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer).


1945 By spring of the year, ENIAC is up and running.

1945 John von Neumann introduces the concept of a stored program in a June 30 draft report on the EDVAC design.

1945 Zuse’s Z4 survives World War II and helps launch postwar devel-opment of scientific computers in Germany.






1945 Working on a prototype of the Mark II, in the summer Grace Murray Hopper finds the first computer “bug,” a moth that had caused a relay failure.

1945 In July, Vannevar Bush’s As We May Think is published in the Atlantic Monthly.


1945








US Army Photo

1946 ENIAC, designed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, is unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania on February 14.



1946 Arthur Burks, Herman Goldstine, and John von Neumann write “Preliminary Discussion of the Logical Design of an Electronic Computing Instrument.”






Center for the History of Electrical Engineering

1946 The American Institute of Electrical Engineers establishes a Subcommittee on Large-Scale Calculating Devices—the origin of today’s IEEE Computer Society.




1946 Alan Turing publishes a
report on his design for ACE (Auto-matic Computing Engine), featuring random extraction of information.








The Computer Museum


1946

1947 In July, Howard Aiken and his team complete the Harvard Mark II.





IEEE Annals of History of Computing



1947-48 The magnetic Laboratories

drum memory is Bell
introduced as a data

storage device for
computers.


1947 On December 23, Bell Labs management is

informed by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain that along with William Shockley they have developed the first transistor.



The Computer Museum


1947 — 1948








Bell Laboratories


1948 Claude Shannon publishes “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” formulating the modern understanding of the communication process.

1948 Richard Hamming devises a way to find and correct errors in blocks of data. The Hamming code is subsequently used in computer and telephone switching systems.


The Computer Museum

1948 On June 21, the Manchester Mark I, or “baby” machine, becomes the first operational stored-program digital computer. It used vacuum tube, or valve, circuits.











Bell Laboratories


1948

1948 The SSEC (Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator), using both electronics and relays, is dedicated on January 24.

IBM Archives The Computer Museum




1949 The

Whirlwind computer, constructed under the leadership of Jay Forrester at MIT to be the first real-time computer, is placed in service during the third quarter. It contained 5,000 vacuum tubes.


1949 EDSAC (Electronic Delayed Storage Automatic Computer), a stored-program computer built by Maurice Wilkes at Cambridge University, England, performs its first calculation on May 6.

1949 Short Order Code, developed by John Mauchly, is thought to be the first high-level programming language.

1950 The Pilot ACE is completed at England’s National Physical Laboratory and runs its first program on May 10.


1948 — 1950

1950 Remington Rand buys the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation.

1950 The Standards Western Automatic Computer (SWAC), built under Harry Huskey’s leadership, is dedicated at UCLA on August 17.

1950 Alan Turing publishes an article in the journal Mind establishing the criteria for the Turing Test of machine intelligence.


Smithsonian 0Institution

1951 The first Univac I is delivered to the US Census Bureau in March.


1951 Jay Forrester files a patent application for the matrix core memory on May 11.

Center for the History of Electrical Engineering


1950-1951








Bell Laboratories

1951 William Shockley invents the junction transistor.

1951 David Wheeler,

Maurice Wilkes, and Stanley Gill introduce sub-programs and the “Wheeler jump” as a means to implement them.


1951 Betty Holberton creates a sort-merge generator, a predecessor

of the compiler.






1951 Maurice Wilkes originates the concept of micro-programming, a technique

providing an orderly approach to designing a computer system’s control section.











1951-1952

Grace Murray Hopper develops A-0, the first compiler.


1951-1952