timeline.pdf, Lecture notes of History

Download timeline.pdf and more Lecture notes History in PDF only on Docsity! Timeline of Computing History o commemorate the 50th year of modern computing and the Computer Society, the timeline on the following pages traces the evolution of computing and computer technology. Timeline research by Bob Carlson, Angela Burgess, and Christine Miller. Timeline design and production by Larry Bauer. We thank our reviewers: Ted Biggerstaff, George Cybenko, Martin Campbell-Kelly, Alan Davis, Dan O’Leary, Edward Parrish, and Michael Williams. T In 2012 the timeline was augmented through 2010 by the Society's History Committee. Janice Hall did the update graphics. 4000 B.C. — 1300 4000-1200 B.C. Inhabitants of the first known civilization in Sumer keep records of commercial transactions on clay tablets. 3000 B.C. The abacus is invented in Babylonia. 250-230 B.C. The Sieve of Eratosthenes is used to determine prime numbers. About 79 A.D. The “Antikythera Device,” when set correctly according to latitude and day of the week, gives alternating 29- and 30-day lunar months. About 1300 The more familiar wire-and-bead abacus replaces the Chinese calculating rods. IB M A rc h iv e s T h e U n iv e rs it y M u se u m , U n iv e rs it y o f P e n n sy lv a n ia 1811 — 1822 1811 Luddites destroy machinery that threatens to eliminate jobs. 1822 Charles Babbage begins to design and build the Difference Engine. 1820 The Thomas Arithmometer, based on Leibniz’ stepped- drum principle, is demonstrated to the French Academy of Science. It becomes the first mass-produced calculator and sells for many years. IB M A rc h iv e s 1829 — 1838 1829 William Austin Burt patents an awkward but workable typewriter, the first writing machine in America. 1838 In January Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail demonstrate elements of the telegraph system. 1832 Babbage and Joseph Clement produce a portion of the Difference Engine. 1834-35 Babbage shifts his focus to designing the Analytical Engine. IB M A rc h iv e s IB M A rc h iv e s 1842 — 1854 1847-1849 Babbage completes 21 drawings for the second version of the Difference Engine but does not complete construction. 1854 George Boole publishes “An Investigation of the Laws of Thought,” describing a system for symbolic and logical reasoning that will become the basis for computer design. 1844 Samuel Morse sends a telegraph message from Washington to Baltimore. 1842-1843 Augusta Ada, Countess of Lovelace, translates Luigi Menabrea’s pamphlet on the Analytical Engine, adding her own commentary. T h e C o m p u te r M u se u m S m it h so n ia n I n st it u ti o n P h o to N o . 8 9 -2 2 1 6 1 1904 — 1911 1904 John A. Fleming patents the diode vacuum tube, setting the stage for better radio communication. 1908 British scientist Campbell Swinton describes an electronic scanning method and foreshadows use of the cathode-ray tube for television. 1911 Dutch physicist Kamerlingh Onnes at Leiden University discovers superconductivity. 1907 Gramophone music constitutes the first regular radio broadcasts from New York. 1906 Lee de Forest adds a third valve to control current flow to Fleming’s diode to create the three-electrode vacuum tube. 1911 Hollerith’s Tabulating Machines Co. and two other companies combine to form C-T-R— Calculating, Tabulating, and Recording Co. S m it h so n ia n I n st it u ti o n P h o to N o . 3 5 1 IB M A rc h iv e s 1912 — 1924 1912 The Institute of Radio Engineers, which will eventually merge with other organizations to form the IEEE, is established. 1924 T.J. Watson renames CTR to IBM and popularizes the “Think” slogan he coined at National Cash Register. 1915 Use of microchips is foreshadowed as physicist Manson Benedicks discovers that the germanium crystal can be used to convert alternating current to direct current. 1920-1921 The word “robot” (derived from the Czech word for compulsory labor) is first used by Karel Câpek in his play RUR (Rossum’s Universal Robots). 1919 Eccles and Jordan, US physicists, invent the flip-flop electronic switching circuit critical to high-speed electronic counting systems. IB M A rc h iv e s IB M A rc h iv e s 1927 — 1934 1927 Herbert Hoover’s face is seen on screen during the first demonstration of television in the US. Accompanying voice transmission uses telephone wires. 1934 In Germany, Konrad Zuse seeks to build a better calculating machine than those currently available. 1930 The Differential Analyzer, devised by Vannevar Bush and colleagues at MIT, solves various differential equations. 1931 Reynold B. Johnson, a high school teacher in Michigan, devises a way to score multiple-choice tests by sensing conductive pencil marks on answer sheets. IBM later buys the technology. 1929 Color television signals are successfully transmitted. 1928 The quartz crystal clock makes possible unprecedented time-keeping accuracy. C e n te r fo r th e H is to ry o f E le ct ri ca l E n g in e e ri n g 1940 — 1944 1943 On May 31, 1943, construction begins on the ENIAC at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering in Philadelphia. 1943 OIn December, Colossus, a British vacuum tube computer, becomes operational at Bletchley Park through the combined efforts of Alan Turing, Tommy Flowers, and M.H.A. Newman. It is considered the first all-electronic calculating device. 1941 Zuse completes the Z3, the first fully functional program-controlled electromechanical digital computer. 1940 Konrad Zuse completes the Z2, which uses telephone relays instead of mechanical logical circuits. 1944 The Harvard Mark I (a.k.a. IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator [ASCC]), produced by Howard Aiken, is dedicated at Harvard University on August 7, 1944. B le tc h le y P a rk M u se u m IB M A rc h iv e s 1945 1945 In July, Vannevar Bush’s As We May Think is published in the Atlantic Monthly. 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 Zuse’s Z4 survives World War II and helps launch postwar development of scientific computers in Germany. 1945 John von Neumann introduces the concept of a stored program in a June 30 draft report on the EDVAC design. 1945 By spring of the year, ENIAC is up and running. 1945 J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly sign a contract to build the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer). IE E E A n n a ls o f H is to ry o f C o m p u ti n g 1946 1946 Arthur Burks, Herman Goldstine, and John von Neumann write “Preliminary Discussion of the Logical Design of an Electronic Computing Instrument.” 1946 ENIAC, designed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, is unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania on February 14. 1946 Alan Turing publishes a report on his design for ACE (Automatic Computing Engine), featuring random extraction of information. 1946 The American Institute of Electrical Engineers establishes a Subcommittee on Large-Scale Calculating Devices—the origin of today’s IEEE Computer Society. C e n te r fo r th e H is to ry o f E le ct ri ca l E n g in e e ri n g T h e C o m p u te r M u se u m U S A rm y P h o to 1948 — 1950 1948 The SSEC (Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator), using both electronics and relays, is dedicated on January 24. 1950 The Pilot ACE is completed at England’s National Physical Laboratory and runs its first program on May 10. 1949 Short Order Code, developed by John Mauchly, is thought to be the first high-level programming language. 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 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. T h e C o m p u te r M u se u m IB M A rc h iv e s 1950 — 1951 1950 Alan Turing publishes an article in the journal Mind establishing the criteria for the Turing Test of machine intelligence. 1950 The Standards Western Automatic Computer (SWAC), built under Harry Huskey’s leadership, is dedicated at UCLA on August 17. 1950 Remington Rand buys the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation. 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. C e n te r fo r th e H is to ry o f E le ct ri ca l E n g in e e ri n g S m it h so n ia n 0 In st it u ti o n 1951 — 1952 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. 1951-1952 Grace Murray Hopper develops A-0, the first 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 William Shockley invents the junction transistor. B e ll L a b o ra to ri e s 1953 — 1954 1953 After several years of development, LEO, a commercial version of EDSAC built by the Lyons Company in the UK, goes into service. 1953 Kenneth Olsen uses Jay For- rester’s ferrite-core memory to build the Memory Test computer. 1954 Earl Masterson’s Uniprinter, or line printer, developed for computers, executes 600 lines per minute. 1954 Texas Instruments introduces the silicon transistor, pointing the way to lower manufacturing costs. 1953 The IBM 650, known as the Magnetic Drum Calculator, debuts and becomes the first mass- produced computer. IE E E A n n a ls o f H is to ry o f C o m p u ti n g D ig it a l E q u ip m e n t C o rp o ra ti o n T e x a s In tr u m e n ts I n co rp o ra te d 1954 — 1957 1954 The Univac 1103A becomes the first commercial machine with a ferrite-core memory. 1956 A Univac with transistors and designed for commercial use is introduced. 1956 Fuji Photo Film Co. in Japan develops a 1,700- vacuum-tube computer for lens design calculations. 1957 John Backus and colleagues at IBM deliver the first Fortran (formula translator) compiler to Westinghouse. 1956 John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky chair a meeting at Dartmouth College at which the concept of artificial intelligence is developed. 1956-1957 IBM introduces and begins installing the RAMAC (random-access method of accounting and control) for hard disk data storage. c c Hello, world. c Program Hello implicit none logical DONE DO while (.NOT. DONE) write(*,10) END DO 10 format(‘Hello, world.’)END c c Hello, world. c Program Hello implicit none logical DONE DO while (.NOT. DONE) write(*,10) END DO 10 format(‘Hello, world.’) END IB M A rc h iv e s h tt p :/ /w w w .l a te c. e d u /~ a cm /H e ll o W o rl d .s h tm l 1957 1957 Japan’s Electrotechnical Laboratory develops a transistor computer, the ETL Mark III, that uses 130 transistors and 1,700 diodes. 1957-1958 Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, and others found Fairchild Semiconductor. 1957 The Atlas Guidance Computer from Burroughs, one of the first computers using transistors, helps control the launch of the Atlas missile. 1957 Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. develops the Musasino-1, the first parametron computer. It uses 519 vacuum tubes and 5,400 parametrons—logic elements based on the principle of parametric excitation and invented by Eiji Goto in 1954. 1957 Russia launches Sputnik I into orbit on October 4, and the “space race” begins. 1957 Control Data is incorporated on July 8. 1957 John McCarthy forms MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Department. 1959 1959 Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments designs a flip-flop IC. 1959 On July 30, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore file a patent application for integrated circuit technology on behalf of the Fairchild Semiconductor Corp. 1959 UNESCO sponsors the first major international computer conference. 1959 General Electric produces the GE ERMA to process checks in a banking application via magnetic ink character recognition. T e x a s In st ru m e n ts I n co rp o ra te d C h a rl e s B a b b a g e i n st it u te , U n iv e rs it y o f M in n e so ta , M in n e a p o li s 1960 1960 Working at Rand Corp., Paul Baran develops the packet-switching principle for data communications. 1960 Standards for Algol 60 are established jointly by American and European computer scientists. 1960 In November, DEC introduces the PDP-1, the first commercial computer with a monitor and keyboard input. 1960 At Cornell University, Frank Rosenblatt builds a computer—the Perceptron—that can learn by trial and error through a neural network. 1960 The Livermore Advance Research Computer (LARC) by Remington Rand is designed for scientific work and uses 60,000 transistors. BEGIN FILE F (KIND=REMOTE); EBCDIC ARRAY E [0:11]; REPLACE E BY “HELLO WORLD!”; WHILE TRUE DO BEGIN WRITE (F, *, E); END; END. http://www.latec.edu/~acm/HelloWorld.shtml D ig it a l E q u ip m e n t C o rp o ra ti o n R a n d C o rp . 1961 1961 Georg C. Devol patents a robotic device, which Unimation soon markets as the first industrial robot. It is first used to automate the manufacture of TV picture tubes. 1961 IBM’s 7030, or Stretch, computer is completed and runs about 30 times faster than the 704, leading to further exploration of supercomputing. 1961 Fernando Corbató at MIT develops a way for multiple users to share computer time. IB M A rc h iv e s T h e C o m p u te r M u se u m 1964 1964 IBM announces the System/360 “third-generation” line of computers. 1964 Basic (Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is developed at Dartmouth by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz. It spawns many variations. 1964 IBM’s seven-year-long Sabre project, allowing travel agents anywhere to make airline reservations, is fully implemented. 10 print “Hello World!” 20 goto 10 IB M A rc h iv e s IB M A rc h iv e s http://www.latec.edu/~acm/HelloWorld.shtml 1964 1964 With a speed of 9 megaflops, Control Data Corp.’s CDC 6600, designed by Seymour Cray, claims the title of first commercially successful supercomputer. 1964 IBM develops a computer- aided design system. 1964 Doug Engelbart invents the mouse. U n iv e rs it y o f V ir g in ia B o o ts tr a p I n st it u te 1965 1965 DEC debuts the first minicomputer, the PDP-8, which used transistor circuitry modules. 1965 J.A. Robinson develops unification, the underpinning of logic programming and important to many of today’s programming technologies. 1965 Maurice Wilkes proposes the use of a cache memory on the basis of an idea by Gordon Scarott. 1965 At the University of Belgrade, Rajko Tomovic makes one of the earliest attempts to develop an artificial limb with a sense of touch. 1965 Project MAC, a large collaborative time-sharing project, leads to the Multics operating system. T h e C o m p u te r M u se u m T h e C o m p u te r M u se u m T h e C o m p u te r M u se u m 1969 — 1970 1969 The US Department of Defense commissions Arpanet for research networking, and the first four nodes become operational at UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, SRI, and the University of Utah using BBN-developed packet switches. 1969 The RS-232-C standard is introduced to facilitate data exchange between computers and peripherals. 1970 Shakey, developed at SRI International, is the first robot to use artificial intelligence to navigate. 1970 Winston Royce publishes “Managing the Development of Large Software Systems,” which outlines the waterfall development method. T h e C o m p u te r M u se u m T h e C o m p u te r M u se u m 1970 1970 Unix is developed at Bell Labs by Dennis Ritchie and Kenneth Thomson. 1970 The Computer Group News becomes Computer, a monthly magazine for all Computer Society members. 1970 RCA’s MOS (metal-oxide semiconductor) technology promises cheaper and smaller ICs. 1970 E.F. Codd describes the relational model. 1970 Xerox establishes the Palo Alto Research Center at Stanford University for computer research. 1970 The floppy disk and the daisywheel printer make their debut. IB M A rc h iv e s B e ll L a b o ra to ri e s B e ll L a b o ra to ri e s 1971 1971 The team of Ted Hoff, S. Mazor, and F. Faggin develops the Intel 4004 microprocessor—a “computer on a chip.” 1971 Don Hoefler writes a series of articles for Electronic News called “Silicon Valley USA,” using in print the name that had been adopted to describe the area. 1971 Niklaus Wirth develops Pascal, a predecessor to Modula-2. 1971 David Parnas describes the principle of information hiding. 1971 Ray Tomlinson of Bolt Beranek and Newman sends the first network e-mail message. 1971 The IEEE Computer Group becomes the IEEE Computer Society. Program Hello (Input, Output); Begin Writeln (‘Hello World!’); End. http://www.latec.edu/~acm/HelloWorld.shtml In te l C o rp o ra ti o n B o lt B e ra n e k a n d N e w m a n 1972 — 1973 1972 Steve Wozniak builds a “blue box” tone generator to make free phone calls and sells them in the dorm at UC Berkeley. 1973 Alan Kay develops a forerunner of the PC. His “office computer,” based on Smalltalk, employs icons, graphics, and a mouse. 1973 Work begins on the Transmission Control Protocol at a Stanford University laboratory headed by Vinton Cerf. 1973 Researchers at Xerox PARC develop an experimental PC called Alto that uses a mouse, Ethernet, and a graphical user interface. X e ro x P A R C T h e C o m p u te r M u se u m 1973 — 1974 1973 John Vincent Atanasoff is recognized as the creator of the modern computer when a federal judge invalidates Eckert and Mauchly’s ENIAC patent. 1973 Robert Metcalfe writes a memo on “Ether Acquisition,” which describes the Ethernet as a modified Alohanet. 1973 Through a technique called large- scale integration, 10,000 components are placed on a 1-sq-cm chip. 1974 A 4-Kbit D-RAM chip becomes commercially available. 1974 In Stockholm, chess-playing computers engage in their first tournament. 1974 At Xexoc PARC, Charles Simonyi writes the first WYSIWYG application, Bravo. 1974 An article in Radio Electronics describes how to build a “personal minicomputer,” the Mark-8. R o b e rt M e tc a lf e 1975 1975 The first PC, an Altair 8800, available as a kit, appears on the cover of Popular Electronics in January. 1975 Frederick Brooks writes The Mythical Man-Month, which describes software development as “the mortal struggle of great beasts in the tar pits” and advises that adding more people to a late project only makes it later. 1975 IBM introduces the laser printer. 1975 John Cocke works on the 801 project at IBM to develop a minicomputer with the yet-unnamed RISC architecture. 1975 Michael Jackson describes a method to treat a program’s structure as a reflection of a problem’s structure, a precursor to the Jackson System Development method. T h e C o m p u te r M u se u m T h e G e o rg e C . P a g e M u se u m , © L A C M N H 1977 — 1978 1977 PCs from Tandy and Commodore come with built-in monitors and thus require no television hookup. 1978 DEC introduces the VAX 11/780, a 32-bit computer that becomes popular for technical and scientific applications.T h e C o m p u te r M u se u m T h e C o m p u te r M u se u m D ig it a l E q u ip m e n t C o rp o ra ti o n 1978 — 1979 1978 Wordstar is introduced and goes on to become a widely used word processor with CP/M systems and later on DOS computers. 1978 Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adelman propose the RSA cipher as a public-key cryptosystem for enciphering digital transmissions. 1978 Intel’s first 16-bit processor, the 8086, debuts. 1978 Tom DeMarco’s Structured Analysis and System Specification popularizes structured analysis. 1979 Benoit Mandelbrot continues his research into fractals by generating a Mandelbrot set, derived from z(n + 1) = z(n) * z(n) - (0). p jc a rl sn @ ix .n e tc o m .c o m 1979 1979 The first electronic spreadsheet program, Don Bricklin’s and Bob Franston’s VisiCalc, is unveiled on May 11 and proves to be the “killer app” for early PCs. 1979 Cellular telephones are tested in Japan and Chicago. 1979 Motorola introduces the 68000 chip, which will later support the Macintosh. 1979 Digital videodisks appear through the efforts of Sony and Philips. © 1 9 9 6 M o to ro la M u se u m o f E le ct ro n ic s T h e C o m p u te r M u se u m 1982 1982 Columbia Data Products produces the first IBM PC “clone.” Compaq soon follows with its own version. 1982 John Warnock develops the PostScript page-description language and with Charles Geschke founds Adobe Systems. 1982 Autodesk is founded and ships the first version of AutoCAD later that year. 1982 The Cray X-MP (two Cray-1 computers linked in parallel) proves three times faster than a Cray-1. 1982 Time magazine names the computer as its “Man of the Year.” A d o b e S y st e m s, I n c. C ra y R e se a rc h 1982 — 1983 1982 Japan launches its “fifth generation” computer project, focusing on artificial intelligence. 1983 A Josephson junction is developed on the basis of Brian Josephson’s 1962 prediction, bringing higher speed and lower power dissipation to ICs. 1983 Completion of the TCP/IP switchover marks the creation of the global Internet. 1983 By including graphics such as pie charts and bar graphs, Lotus 1-2-3 does for the IBM PC what VisiCalc did for the Apple II. 1983 The IBM PC-XT heads for market success, while the PC Junior faces quick extinction. 1982 Commercial e-mail service begins among 25 cities. 1982 In November, Compaq unveils an IBM-compatible portable PC. L o tu s 1983 1983 Though not destined for commercial success, Apple’s Lisa, launched in May, shows what can be done with a mouse, icons, and pulldown menus. 1983 Thinking Machines Corp. and Ncube are founded, providing a boost to parallel processing. 1983 At AT&T Bell Labs, Bjarne Stroustrup continues work on C++, an OO extension to C. #include int main() { char *s1, *s2; par { s1 = “hello, ”; s2 = “world\n”; } cout << s1 << s2 << endl; return(0); } h tt p :/ /w w w .l a te c. e d u /~ a cm /H e ll o W o rl d .s h tm l B e ll L a b o ra to ri e s A p p le C o m p u te r, I n c. 1985 1985 Supercomputer speeds reach 1 billion operations per second with the release of the Cray 2 and Thinking Machines’ parallel- processor Connection Machine. 1985 Inmos introduces transputers, featuring concurrent processing architecture. 1985 The National Science Foundation establishes four national supercomputing centers. 1985 The Omnibot 2000 from Tony Kyogo can move, talk, and carry objects. 1985 With the development of Windows 1.0, Microsoft brings Macintosh-like features to DOS-compatible computers. T h e C o m p u te r M u se u m 1985 1985 Paul Brainard’s PageMaker becomes the first PC desktop publishing program and is widely used, first on the Macintosh and later on IBM compatibles. 1985 In October, Intel introduces the 80386 chip with 32-bit processing and on-chip memory management. In te l C o rp o ra ti o n A d o b e S y st e m s, I n c. A d o b e S y st e m s, I n c. 1986 — 1987 1986 An article in the Wall Street Journal helps to popularize the concept and term CASE, for computer-aided software engineering. 1986 The four-processor Cray XP performs 713 million floating-point operations per second. 1987 Experimental 4-and 16-Mbit chips areintroduced. 1987 Watts Humphrey (pictured) and William Sweet, of the Software Engineering Institute, publish a “process maturity framework,” which becomes the Capability Maturity Model, designed to help predict a developer’s ability to produce reliable software. INITIAL REPEATABLE DEFINED MANAGED OPTIMIZING CONTROL DEFINITION MEASUREMENT CONTROL PROCESS EVOLUTION 1990 — 1991 1990 Scientists at Bell Labs demonstrate the first all-optical processor on January 29. 1990 Arpanet is officially decommissioned. 1991 Cray Research unveils the Cray Y-MP C90 with 16 processors and a speed of 16 Gflops. 1991 IBM, Motorola, and Apple’s PowerPC alliance is announced on July 30. 1991 The Japanese Ministry of Trade and Industry abandons its program to build a fifth-generation computer and plans instead for a sixth-generation computer to be based on neural networks. 1990 Hewlett-Packard and IBM both announce RISC-based computers. 1990 Berners-Lee writes the initial prototype for the World Wide Web, which uses his other creations: URLs, HTML, and HTTP. 1990 Intel’s i486 and iPSC/860, and Motorola’s 68040 become available. U n iv e rs it y o f V ir g in ia 1992 — 1993 1992 After generating great concern in early March, the Michelangelo virus results in little actual damage. 1992 In March, the first M-bone audio multicast is transmitted on the Net. 1992 DEC introduces the first chip to implement its 64-bit RISC Alpha architecture. 1993 Apple releases the Newton, the first popular personal digital assistant. It uses a stylus pen, and the first generation suffers from poor handwriting recognition. A p p le C o m p u te r, I n c. /J o h n L u n d D ig it a l E q u ip m e n t C o rp o ra ti o n 1993 — 1994 1993 Intel’s Pentium is introduced in March. 1993 Students and staff at the University of Illinois’ National Center for Supercomputing Applications create a graphical user interface for Internet navigation called NCSA Mosaic. 1994 In April, Jim Clark and Marc Andreesen found Netscape Communications (originally Mosaic Communications). 1994 Leonard Adleman of the University of Southern California demonstrates that DNA can be used as a computing medium. 1994 Netscape’s first browser becomes available in September and creates a rapidly growing body of Web surfers. In te l C o rp o ra ti o n U n iv e rs it y o f Il li n o is B o a rd o f T ru st e e s 1999 — 2000 1999 Napster launched, demonstrating the potential for peer-to-peer computing. 1999 SETI@home launched as the second large-scale distributed computing project. 2000 C# programming language announced with Anders Hejlsberg being primary designer. 2000 First USB flash drives sold. 2000 The Y2K problem comes and goes. 2001 — 2002 2001 Wikipedia founded, with content from tens of thousands of volunteers and substantially replacing pre-digital-age encyclopedias. 2001 iPod introduced, becoming a "game changer" for the world of portable music players. 2002 Earth Simulator highly parallel vector supercomputer system developed by the Japanese government for running global climate models. 2002 Indian computer scientists Manindra Agrawal, Neeraj Kayal, and Nitin Saxena discover the "Agrawal-Kayal-Saxena class" of algorithms for finding primes in polynomial time. 2002 One billion PCs have been sold (according to a Gartner study). 2002 MIT OpenCourseware introduced. 2003 — 2004 2003 iTunes store launched, bringing the recording industry into the Internet age with billions of singles sold. 2003 Mozilla Foundation formed, a spin-out from Netscape. 2004 Mark Zuckerberg’s creation Facebook is incorporated and over time gains more than a billion users, becoming the communication and sharing approach for young people of the early 21st century. 2004 Gmail introduced. 2003 Skype introduced as an inexpensive, easy-to-use way to make video and voice “phone calls” over the Internet. 2009 — 2010 2009 30th anniversary of the Annals of the History of Computing. 2010 Computer History Museum exhibits "Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing." 2010 iPad introduced, invigorating the tablet computer market. 52010 2 anniversary of the revolutionary T X typesetting and font design system. E Credits Deep Blue, 1997-1998: used with permission of IBM. Anders Hejlsberg, 1999-2000: used with permission of Microsoft. Earth Simulator, 2001-2002: photo coprighted by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology; used with permission of JAMSTEC. Kindle, 2007-2008: image by Matthias Bärwolff. Computer History Museum, 2009-2010: image provided by the CHM. TeX and Metafont book, 2009-2010: used with permission of the American Mathematical Society. Logos shown, 1997-2010: these belong to, respectively: distributed.net, Google, Napster, SETI@home, Wikipedia, Skype, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and ACM. The IEEE Computer Society History Committee members at the time of the committee's 2012 update of this timeline (through 2010) were Matthias Bärwolff, Stephen Diamond, Susan Hayden (Society staff), Lars Heide, Anne Marie Kelly (Society staff), Stanley Mazor, Raymond Miller, V. Rajaraman, Andrew Russell, Tom Van Vleck, Andreu Veà, David Walden (committee chair), Michael Williams, Akihiko Yamada, and Jeffrey Yost. This committee emphasizes that their timeline selections are not a yearly "best of" list but rather interesting examples of what was happening in the world of computing at the time. In particular, during the update years (1997-2010) applications of computing came more readily to mind than fundamental advances in technology. Send corrections and comments to historycontact@computer.org