Timeline: The History of Technology and Silicon Valley

Discover some of the pioneers of technology and products that changed the world.

Frederick Terman joins Stanford University to teach electronics electrical engineering and encourages his students to start businesses in California. 

John Atanasoff at Iowa State College conceives the electronic digital computer.

Fred Terman's students William Hewlett and David Packard start a company to produce their audio-oscillator. 

Tommy Flowers and others build the Colossus, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer.

Howard Aiken of IBM unveils the first computer programmed by punched paper tape, the Harvard Mark I.

The first non-military computer, ENIAC, or "Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer", is unveiled, built by John Mauchly and Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania.

Norbert Wiener founds Cybernetics.

Claude Shannon founds Information Theory and coins the term "bit".

Remington Rand purchases Eckert-Mauchly Computer.

First commercially available computer released, the Ferranti Mk 1.

The first commercial computer is built, the Univac.

A team led by Jay Forrester at the MIT builds the "Whirlwind" computer, the first real-time system and the first computer to use a video display for output. 

IBM introduces its first computer model, the 704. 

IBM's San Jose labs invent the hard-disk drive.

Berkeley's professor Harry Huskey designs Bendix's first digital computer, the G-15. 

Werner Buchholz of IBM coins the term "byte".

John Backus of IBM introduces the FORTRAN programming language, the first practical machine-independent language.

Dean Watkins of Stanford's ERL founds Watkins-Johnson, one of the first venture-capital funded companies in the Santa Clara Valley.

Frank Rosenblatt conceives the "Perceptron", a neural computer that can learn by trial and error.

Rockefeller Brothers invests in Fairchild Semiconductor, the first venture-funded startup of the Bay Area. 

Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Kack Kilby of Texas Instruments independently invents the integrated circuit, a micro-sized silicon device containing a large number of electronic switches.

Draper, Gaither and Anderson is founded, the first professional venture-capital firm in California.

Jean Hoerni at Fairchild Semiconductor invents the planar process that enables great precision in silicon components, and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor designs a planar integrated circuit.

Frank Chambers founds the venture-capital company Continental Capital.

Digital Equipment introduces the first minicomputer, the PDP-1 (Program Data Processor), that comes with a keyboard and a monitor. 

Charles Bachman at General Electric develops the first database management system, IDS.

General Motors unveils "Unimate", the first industrial robot.

Tommy Davis founds one of Santa Clara Valley's first venture-capital firms with Arthur Rock, Davis & Rock. 

The first commercial modem is manufactured by AT&T.

Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute builds the first prototype of the "mouse". 

IBM introduces the first "mainframe" computer, the 360, and the first "operating system", the OS/360.

John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz (at Dartmouth College) invent the BASIC programming language). 

American Airlines' SABRE reservation system, developed by IBM, is the first online transaction processing.

Gordon Moore predicts that the processing power of computers will double every 18 months ("Moore's law"). 

The Digital Equipment Corporation unveils the first successful mini-computer, the PDP-8, that uses integrated circuits.

European computer manufacturer Olivetti introduces the first affordable programmable electronic desktop computer, the P101.

John McCarthy opens the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL).

Hewlett-Packard enters the business of general-purpose computers with the HP-2116.

Robert Taylor, the acting director of ARPA’s research division launches the ARPAnet project, which according to the Internet Hall of Fame, is “the foundation for today’s Internet.”

Jack Kilby (at Texas Instruments) develops the first hand-held calculator.

Barclays Bank installs networked "automated teller machines" or ATMs.

Philip Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andy Grove found Intel ("Integrated Electronics") to build memory chips.

Doug Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute demonstrates the NLS ("oN-Line System"), the first system to employ the mouse 

Construction begins at 3000 Sand Hill Road, in Menlo Park, soon to become the headquarters of the venture-capital community. 

Lee Boysel at Four Phase Systems designs the AL1, a commercial microprocessor (an 8-bit CPU).

Five of the seven largest USA semiconductor manufacturers are located in Santa Clara Valley.

Xerox opens the Palo Alto Research Center or PARC.

David Noble at IBM invents the floppy disk.

Intel unveils the first commercially available microprocessor, the 4004. 

Nolan Bushnell invents the first videogame, "Pong", an evolution of Magnavox's Odyssey, and founds Atari. 

Ray Tomlinson at Bolt, Beranek and Newman invents email for sending messages between computer users, and invents a system to identify the user name and the computer name separated by a "@".

Motorola invents the first portable, wireless or "cellular" telephone.

Vinton Cerf of Stanford University coins the term "Internet".

Ed Roberts invents the first personal computer, the Altair 8800. 

Bill Gates and Paul Allen develop a version of BASIC for the Altair personal computer and found Microsoft.

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs form Apple Computer and build the first microcomputer in Jobs' garage in Cupertino. 

27,000 people are employed in the Semiconductor industry of Silicon Valley. 

Larry Ellison founds the Software Development Laboratories, later renamed Oracle Corporation.

Atari introduces a videogame console, the 2600, based on the 6502 processor.

Dennis Hayes of National Data Corporation invents the PC modem, a device that converts between analog and digital signals.

Apple goes public for a record $1.3 billion.

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (for sending email) published.

The IBM PC is launched, running an operating system developed by Bill Gates' Microsoft.

Andreas Bechtolsheim at Stanford University builds a workstation running Unix and networking software 

Time's "Man of the Year" is "The Computer".

Gavilan, founded by Manuel Fernandez, former CEO of Zilog, introduces the first portable computer marketed as a "laptop". 

Cisco is founded by Leonard Bosack and Sandra Lerner.

Michael Dell, a student at University of Texas at Austin, founds PCs Limited, later renamed Dell, to sell custom PC-compatible computers by mail-order only. 

Apple introduces the Macintosh, which revolutionizes desktop publishing.

The CDROM is introduced by Sony and Philips.

Jim Kimsey founds Quantum Computer Services (later renamed America Online) to provide dedicated online services for personal computers.

The World-Wide Web debuts on the Internet.

The "Information Tapestry" project at Xerox PARC pioneers collaborative filtering, a use of "big data" that make suggestions based on past preferences.

Adobe Systems introduces Acrobat and the file format PDF (or Portable Document Format) 

There are 315 public companies in Silicon Valley.

Stanford student Jerry Yang founds Yahoo.

The White House gets its first website, an “interactive citizens’ handbook” that allows users to find the latest presidential statements and browse pictures of the First Family. Bill Clinton and Al Gore are the first POTUS and VPOTUS respectively to have official email addresses: president@whitehouse.gov and vice-president@whitehouse.gov.

Netscape, the company founded by Marc Andreesen, goes public even before earning money and starts the "dot.com" craze and the boom of the Nasdaq. 

Microsoft introduces Internet Explorer and starts the browser wars.

Amazon.com is launched on the web as the "world's largest bookstore", except that it is not a bookstore, it is a website.

Nokia introduces the first "smartphone".

Reed Hastings founds Netflix to rent videos via the Internet.

Two Stanford students, Larry Page and Russian-born Sergey Brin, launch the search engine Google. 

Apple launches the iPod, with the slogan '1000 songs in your pocket'. 

Jimmy Wales founds Wikipedia, a multilingual encyclopedia that is collaboratively edited by the Internet community. 

Skype is founded in Europe by Niklas Zennstroem and Janus Friis to offer voice over IP, a system invented by Estonian engineers.

Mark Zuckerberg founds the social networking service Facebook at Harvard University (soon relocated to Palo Alto). 

Silicon Valley accounts for 14% of the world's venture capital.

Jack Dorsey creates the social networking service Twitter. 

Wikileaks founded by Julain Assange and others.

Apple launches the iPhone.

Airbnb is founded in San Francisco.

Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp launch the smartphone app Uber. 

Google's market value is more than $140 billion.

Apple introduces the tablet computer iPad that sells one million units in less than one month. 

Facebook goes public, the biggest high-tech IPO in history. 

90% of the world's data has been created in the last two years.

The US Federal Trade Commission adopts laws to allow companies to restrict internet access (the end of Net Neutrality).