Timeline
Artifacts in the catalog, in the order they appeared.
Jacquard Loom
Joseph Marie Jacquard. A weaving loom that read its patterns from chains of punched cards, the first widely used machine controlled by a stored program.
Babbage Difference Engines
Charles Babbage. A mechanical calculator designed to print mathematical tables without human arithmetic errors, never completed in Babbage's lifetime and built from his plans in 1991.
Analytical Engine
Charles Babbage. A general-purpose mechanical computer that Charles Babbage first described in 1837 and never finished.
Hollerith Tabulating Machine
Herman Hollerith. An electric punched-card tabulator used for the 1890 US census, which finished counting years sooner than the 1880 census had.
Enigma machine
Scherbius & Ritter. A German rotor cipher machine sold from 1923 and used by Germany's military in World War II, broken first by Polish mathematicians.
Zuse Z3
Konrad Zuse. A German electromechanical computer designed by Konrad Zuse in 1938 and completed in Berlin in 1941.
Colossus
Government Code and Cypher School, Bletchley Park. British codebreaking computers that used vacuum tubes to attack the German Lorenz cipher from 1943.
ENIAC
University of Pennsylvania Moore School; J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly. The first large general-purpose electronic computer in the United States, built to calculate artillery firing tables for the US Army.
Manchester Baby
University of Manchester. The first electronic stored-program computer, which ran its first program on 21 June 1948.
EDSAC
University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory. A stored-program computer built at Cambridge by Maurice Wilkes that ran its first programs on 6 May 1949.
UNIVAC I
Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation; Remington Rand. The first computer built for sale to businesses and government in the United States, and the machine that CBS used on election night in 1952.
Whirlwind
MIT Servomechanisms Laboratory; Jay Forrester. An MIT computer that ran in real time, pioneered magnetic-core memory and became the basis of the SAGE air defense system.
Magnetic-Core Memory
Jay Forrester and others at MIT. The dominant form of computer memory from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, made from tiny magnetized rings threaded onto wires.
Fortran
IBM. A programming language for science and engineering, first documented by IBM in 1956.
IBM 305 RAMAC
IBM. The first commercial computer with a moving-head hard disk drive, announced on September 14, 1956.
SAGE AN/FSQ-7
IBM; MIT Lincoln Laboratory. The computer at the center of the US air defense network of the Cold War, and the largest vacuum-tube computer ever built.
COBOL
CODASYL committee; Grace Hopper and others. A programming language designed in 1959 so that business programs could be written in English-like statements and run on different makes of computer.
DEC PDP-1
Digital Equipment Corporation. DEC's first computer, an 18-bit machine shown in December 1959 and the home of Spacewar!.
IBM 1401
IBM. A decimal business computer announced on October 5, 1959, with more than 12,000 units produced.
Spacewar!
Steve Russell and the Tech Model Railroad Club. A space combat game written in 1962 for the PDP-1 at MIT, the first video game played at many computer sites.
Engelbart's Mouse and the 1968 Demo
Douglas Engelbart and Bill English, Stanford Research Institute. A wooden-shelled pointing device built at SRI and shown to the public in 1968 as part of a demonstration of interactive computing.
IBM Solid Logic Technology Module
IBM. A small ceramic circuit module that packed transistors and resistors into a standard unit, used throughout the System/360 family.
IBM System/360
IBM. A family of compatible computers announced in April 1964 that let customers upgrade without rewriting their programs.
DEC PDP-8
Digital Equipment Corporation. The first computer to sell for under $20,000, introduced on March 22, 1965 at $18,500.
Apollo Guidance Computer
MIT Instrumentation Laboratory; Raytheon. The computer that navigated Apollo spacecraft to the Moon, with about 74 kilobytes of memory and software woven into wire.
ELIZA
Joseph Weizenbaum, MIT. An early conversational program that imitated a psychotherapist by rephrasing what users typed, and surprised its author with how seriously people took it.
ARPANET Interface Message Processor
Bolt Beranek and Newman for ARPA. The refrigerator-sized minicomputer that connected the first four ARPANET sites in 1969, the ancestor of the internet's routers.
Unix
Bell Labs. A multitasking, multi-user operating system begun in 1969 at Bell Labs and rewritten in C in 1973.
DEC PDP-11
Digital Equipment Corporation. A 16-bit minicomputer line sold from 1970 into the late 1990s, with around 600,000 sold.
Datapoint 2200
Computer Terminal Corporation. A desktop terminal and computer announced in 1970 whose instruction set shaped the Intel 8008 and later the x86 chips in PCs.
Intel 4004
Intel; designed by Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, Stan Mazor and Masatoshi Shima. The first commercial microprocessor, a complete 4-bit processor on a single chip, built for a Japanese calculator.
Kenbak-1
Kenbak Corporation. An 8-bit machine with 256 bytes of memory and no microprocessor, sold from 1971 for $750 and often called the first commercial personal computer.
Magnavox Odyssey
Magnavox; designed by Ralph Baer. The first home video game console, sold from 1972, built from analog circuits without a microprocessor.
Pong
Atari. A 1972 table tennis arcade game created by Allan Alcorn and widely called the first commercially successful video game.
Ethernet
Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs, Xerox PARC. A method for connecting computers on a shared cable, first described in a memo from May 1973.
Micral N
Réalisation d'Études Électroniques (R2E). A French microcomputer built around the Intel 8008 and sold from February 1973 for 8,500 francs, one of the first commercial non-kit microprocessor computers.
Xerox Alto
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. An experimental personal workstation with a bitmapped display, mouse and Ethernet that defined the look of later personal computers.
CP/M
Digital Research. A disk operating system created in 1974 by Gary Kildall that became the standard for 8-bit business microcomputers.
Intel 8080
Intel. An 8-bit microprocessor released in April 1974 that powered the Altair 8800 and was the first target of CP/M.
BYTE magazine
Byte Publications. A monthly magazine on small computers, started in 1975, that covered the entire field through the 1980s.
MITS Altair 8800
MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems). A mail-order computer kit built around the Intel 8080 that started the personal computer hobby when it appeared on a magazine cover in January 1975.
Utah Teapot
Martin Newell, University of Utah. A computer model of a white teapot that became a standard test object for 3D graphics.
Apple I
Apple Computer; designed by Steve Wozniak. A hand-built circuit board sold by Apple in 1976, which owners completed with their own keyboard, display and case.
Cray-1
Cray Research; designed by Seymour Cray. A vector supercomputer in a C-shaped cabinet, installed first at Los Alamos in 1976.
Apple II
Apple Computer. A home computer with color graphics and eight expansion slots that went on sale in June 1977 and sold about 6 million units over 16 years.
Atari 2600
Atari, Inc.. A home game console with swappable cartridges that launched in September 1977 and sold an estimated 30 million units by 1992.
Commodore PET 2001
Commodore. An all-in-one computer with a 6502 chip, built-in BASIC, keyboard and monitor, shown at the January 1977 Consumer Electronics Show.
TRS-80 Model I
Tandy Corporation (Radio Shack). A ready-to-use home computer that Radio Shack announced in August 1977, sold from $399, and that drew 250,000 waiting-list deposits.
VAX-11/780
Digital Equipment Corporation. The first VAX computer, a 32-bit superminicomputer introduced on October 25, 1977.
Disk II
Apple Computer. A 5.25 inch floppy disk drive for the Apple II that Steve Wozniak designed and Apple sold from June 1978 for $495.
Intel 8086
Intel. A 16-bit microprocessor released in June 1978 that began the x86 family still used in computers today.
Space Invaders
Taito. A 1978 arcade shooter by Tomohiro Nishikado that began the golden age of arcade games.
Space-Cadet Keyboard
MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. A keyboard with extra modifier keys, designed at MIT for Lisp machines, whose key names still appear in the Emacs editor.
Atari 400 and 800
Atari, Inc.. Home computers launched by Atari in 1979, with graphics and sound that beat most rivals of the time.
Sony Walkman
Sony. A pocket cassette player that Sony launched in July 1979 and that sold about 220 million cassette units.
VisiCalc
Software Arts and VisiCorp. The first spreadsheet program for personal computers, released for the Apple II on October 17, 1979.
Commodore VIC-20
Commodore Business Machines. An 8-bit home computer announced in September 1980 and the first computer of any kind to sell one million units.
Pac-Man
Namco. A maze arcade game released in Japan on May 22, 1980 that has earned over $14 billion.
BBC Micro
Acorn Computers. A British microcomputer launched in December 1981 for the BBC's Computer Literacy Project that sold over 1.5 million units.
Hayes Smartmodem
Hayes Microcomputer Products. A 300 bits per second modem from 1981 that took commands over the serial line, a method still used in modems today.
IBM Personal Computer (5150)
IBM. The IBM computer of August 1981 whose open design and Microsoft operating system set the pattern for the PC industry.
MS-DOS
Microsoft. The main operating system for IBM PC compatibles in the 1980s, released by IBM in 1981 as PC DOS 1.0.
Osborne 1
Osborne Computer Corporation; Adam Osborne and Lee Felsenstein. A 24-pound portable computer sold with software included, shown in April 1981.
Sinclair ZX81
Sinclair Research. A very cheap British home computer launched in March 1981 that sold more than 1.5 million units.
TI-99/4A
Texas Instruments. A home computer released in June 1981 from the maker of the first 16-bit home computer, the TI-99/4.
Xerox Star
Xerox Corporation. The first commercial personal computer built around a bitmapped display, windows, icons and a mouse, introduced on April 27, 1981.
Commodore 64
Commodore International. A home computer with 64 kilobytes of memory and good graphics and sound that sold in the millions starting in 1982.
ZX Spectrum
Sinclair Research. A low-cost British home computer with a rubber keyboard that sold over five million units after its April 1982 release.
Apple Lisa
Apple Computer. An expensive 1983 business computer that was the first mass-market machine run with a graphical interface and a mouse, and a sales failure.
Compaq Portable
Compaq Computer Corporation. One of the first IBM PC compatible computers, a 28-pound luggable that sold 53,000 units in its first year.
Lotus 1-2-3
Lotus Development Corporation. A spreadsheet that became the first killer application of the IBM PC and the business standard of the 1980s.
Nintendo Entertainment System
Nintendo. An 8-bit console released in Japan on July 15, 1983 as the Famicom and sold in the United States from 1985.
Symbolics 3600 Lisp Machine
Symbolics, Inc.. A workstation built to run the Lisp programming language, sold from 1983 for artificial intelligence research.
Apple Macintosh
Apple Computer. An all-in-one personal computer with a graphical interface and a mouse, launched in January 1984.
Amiga 1000
Commodore International. The first Amiga, introduced July 23, 1985 at a gala with Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry.
Atari ST
Atari Corporation. A line of 16 and 32-bit home computers from 1985 that was the first with a bitmapped color graphical interface.
Commodore 128
Commodore Business Machines. The last 8-bit home computer from Commodore, introduced in January 1985 with 128 KB of RAM.
Cray-2
Cray Research. A four-processor supercomputer from 1985, the fastest in the world at 1.9 gigaflops, cooled by liquid that flowed over its circuits.
Intel 80386
Intel. The first 32-bit processor in the x86 line, sampled to developers in October 1985.
Tetris
Alexey Pajitnov. A puzzle game written by Soviet engineer Alexey Pajitnov in the mid-1980s, now the best-selling video game of all time.
Connection Machine CM-1
Thinking Machines Corporation; Danny Hillis. A parallel computer with 65,536 tiny processors, housed in a black cube with blinking red lights.
Pixar Image Computer
Pixar. A $135,000 graphics computer built by the group that became Pixar, which sold about 120 units by 1988.
Connection Machine CM-2
Thinking Machines Corporation. A cube-shaped supercomputer with up to 65,536 simple processors, the successor to the CM-1.
Sega Genesis
Sega. A 16-bit console released in Japan in October 1988 as the Mega Drive and in North America in August 1989 as the Genesis.
Game Boy
Nintendo. A handheld console with a black and white screen and swappable cartridges that Nintendo sold with Tetris from 1989.
World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee. A linked information system invented by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989 and opened to the public in 1993.
NeXTcube, the First Web Server
NeXT, Inc.; used by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN. The NeXT computer at CERN where Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first web browser and ran the first web server.
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Nintendo. A 16-bit console released in Japan on November 21, 1990 and in North America on August 23, 1991.
Linux kernel
Linus Torvalds. A free operating system kernel first released on 17 September 1991 by Linus Torvalds.
IBM Simon
IBM. A cellular phone and handheld assistant with a touchscreen, released in 1992 and called the first true smartphone.
Apple Newton
Apple Computer. A series of handheld assistants sold from 1993 to 1998, the first with handwriting recognition.
Atari Jaguar
Atari Corporation. A home console released in North America in November 1993 and marketed as the world's first 64-bit game system.
NCSA Mosaic
National Center for Supercomputing Applications. A web browser released in 1993 that was the first to show images inline with text and helped popularize the Web.
Netscape Navigator
Netscape Communications Corporation. A web browser first sold in 1994 that was the dominant browser of the 1990s.
Sony PlayStation
Sony Computer Entertainment. A home console released in Japan on December 3, 1994 and built around 3D polygon graphics.
Windows 95
Microsoft. A consumer operating system released to retail on August 24, 1995 that introduced the taskbar and Start menu.
Nintendo 64
Nintendo. A 64-bit home console released in Japan on June 23, 1996, with a thumbstick controller and four controller ports.
Tamagotchi
Bandai; created by Aki Maita and Akihiro Yokoi. A pocket-sized egg-shaped digital pet that went on sale in Japan in November 1996.
Deep Blue
IBM. An IBM chess computer that beat world champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match in 1997.
PalmPilot
Palm Computing. The second generation of Palm handheld organizers, launched on March 10, 1997 and sold over a million units by 1998.
Sega Dreamcast
Sega. Sega's final home console, released in Japan on November 27, 1998, and the first to include a built-in modem.
iMac G3
Apple Computer. A translucent blue all-in-one computer from 1998 that dropped the floppy drive for USB and helped bring Apple back.
Xbox
Microsoft. Microsoft's game console brand, introduced in November 2001 with the original Xbox.
iPod (first generation)
Apple Computer. A pocket music player with a 5 gigabyte hard drive that Apple unveiled on October 23, 2001 and put on sale that November.
iPhone (first generation)
Apple Inc.. The 2007 phone with a multi-touch screen and no physical keyboard, sold for $499 or $599 with a two-year contract.
iPad (first generation)
Apple Inc.. A 9.7 inch touchscreen tablet announced on January 27, 2010 that sold a million units in about a month.
Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi Foundation. A small, low-cost single-board computer made to teach computer science, with over 75 million sold as of March 2026.
Apple Watch
Apple. A line of smartwatches whose first model went on sale in April 2015 and quickly became the best-selling wearable device.
IBM Summit
IBM. An IBM supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory that held the number 1 spot on the TOP500 list from June 2018 to June 2020.