1957 - DEC founded

- DEC is founded initially to make electronic modules for test, measurement, prototyping and control markets. Its founders were Ken and Stan Olsen, and Harlan Anderson. 

1956 - the first keyboard input to computers

- the first make-shift computer keyboard is used.

- the Librascope an early example of a ‘personal computer,’ that is, a computer made for a single user.

- The TX-0 (“Transistor eXperimental - 0”) is the first general-purpose programmable computer built with transistors.

1955 - DEUCE computer introduced

- A commercial version of Alan Turing's Pilot ACE, called DEUCE—the Digital Electronic Universal Computing Engine -- is used mostly for science and engineering problems and a few commercial applications

1954 - alan turning found dead

- English mathematician Alan Turing is found dead in his bed with a cyanide-laced apple on his night stand. Turing had published a seminal paper, On Computable Numbers, in 1936 in which he theorized about the nature of human and machine intelligence. During World War II, Turing applied his mathematical genius to codebreaking efforts, including solving the riddle of the German ENIGMA encryption machine.

1953 - early transistorized copmuter

- Working under Tom Kilburn at England’s Manchester University, Richard Grimsdale and Douglas Webb demonstrate a prototype transistorized computer, the "Manchester TC", on November 16, 1953. The 48-bit machine used 92 point-contact transistors and 550 diodes.


- The Johnniac computer is one of 17 computers that followed the basic design of Princeton's Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) computer.

1952 - one of the first computer games

- Alexander Douglas designed one of the earliest computer games, a version of Tic-Tac-Toe called OXO.

- The Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) computer is a multi-year research project conducted under the overall supervision of world-famous mathematician John von Neumann. The notion of storing both data and instructions in memory became known as the ‘stored program concept’ to distinguish it from earlier methods of instructing a computer. The IAS computer was designed for scientific calculations and it performed essential work for the US atomic weapons program.

1951 - australias first computer

- The CSIRAC was Australia's first computer.

- The title of “first commercially available general-purpose computer” probably goes to Britain’s Ferranti Mark I for its sale of its first Mark I computer to Manchester University. 

1950 - ERA 1101

One of the first commercially produced computers, the company´s first customer was the US Navy. The 1101, designed by ERA but built by Remington-Rand, was intended for high-speed computing and stored 1 million bits

1947 - first high speed electronic memory

Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn develop the Williams-Kilburn tube. The tube, tested in 1947, was the first high-speed, entirely electronic memory.

1946 - the first computer

The first electronic, general-purpose, digital computer, ENIAC, was built starting in 1943 and was announced in 1946.