Mechanical Calculators History.

5000bc		Oldest evidence that mankind uses items (pebbles etc) to count.
3000bc		Simple tools to assist with counting (carved wooden sticks / bones)
1100bc	China	Use of the Abacus as counting tool.
100bc	Greece	A complex planet position tool was constructed. Found in 1900 at the shipwreck near island Antikythera.
500	India - Arabian	Discovery of the decimal numbering system.
1096	Arabian - Europe	Via the crusaders and the More settlement in Spain the decimal numbering system came to Europe.
1500		Europe changed from the Roman- to decimal numbering system.
1617	John Napier, Scotland	Napier bones (square wooden numbered rods) use for calculation. The amount of sticks represent the amount of digits.
1620	Edmund Gunter, England	Constructs the predecessor of the Calculating Ruler.
1621	William Oughtred, England	Constructs the Calculating ruler with two movable sliders, logarithmic numbered.
1623	Wilhelm Schickard,Tübingen, Germany,	First mechanical calculator the "Rechenuhr". Wilhelm Schickard constructs the first mechanical calculator.
1642	Blaise Pascal, Paris, France,	First Adding machine with tens-cary. He made a considerable number of machines.
1672	Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Germany	Discovery of the Stepped Drum. Together with Isaac Newton he shares the credit for the development of Calculus. The first four rule calculating machine. Two of them were build but were never came in practical use or in serial production. He established the binary calculation, which is the basic form for all current digital computers.
1709	G. Poleni, Italia	Discovery of the Pin Wheel. He didn't succeed in building calculators with it.
1709	C. L. Gersten	Discovery and building a calculator machine with the Rocking Segment technology
1726	Antonius Braun, Vienna, Austria	Braun and Hahn build a calculator machine based on Leibnitz Wheels to make the first dependable four rule calculating machine. The counting wheels are concentric arranged around one stepped drum. Probably the first usable device produced in mass production. This concept is used by mr. C. Hamann in his Gauss and in the Curta of mr. C. Herzstark.
1772	Philipp Mathäus Hahn, Echterdingen, Germany
1820	Charles Xavier Thomas, Colmar, France	Build a better calculator than Hahn, based on Stepped drum technology. Thomas de Colmar is more commonly known for the first reliable machine which came in serial production, named Arithmometer. It is a four digit multiplicand and six in the product. A remarkable aspect: The first machine did not have a crank for rotating the actuators, as did all the Thomas's subsequent machines; it was driven by pulling on a belt on the lower left corner of the machine. By 1865 500 machines have been made and more than 1000 the next 13 years. The machines build in 1870 soled to many countries including the US.
1821	Micheal Faraday, UK	Discovery of the Electro motor
1821	Charles Babbage and JH Müller, UK	Presented the concepts of the difference engine an automatic sequence control machine. The objective of the machines was the: - computation and - printing of mathematical tables, by automatic sequential addition of multiple order of differences.
1834	Charles Babbage, UK	Presented a design for the "Analytical Engine". A mechanical machine having all the basic functions of a computer. Later he presented his design of the difference engine. He received enormous financially support, but he had never seen the machine working. (Please see item at 1853 as well.)
1853	Pehr-Georg Scheutz and son Edvard, Stockholm, Sweden	Build the first dependable /reliable difference Machine (link to details), on his own expenses. After reading the publications of Charles Babbage. The first printable calculation machine for mathematical tables. Although not confirmed: "one of the keys to their success was the use of ball bearings, to reduce the friction energy".
1861	Johan Philipp Reis	Presented first practical telephone. 1876 Gream Bell Patented the application.
1868		First QWERTY keyboard.
1872	Frank Stephen Baldwin, St Louis, Missouri, USA	Mr. Baldwin got his patent of his pin wheel construction. Having completed his first machine in 1873, he moved to Philadelphia rented a small shop and sold his first 10 machines. In 1875 he made a rotary four-rules calculator which became known as the "Baldwin principle". This marked the beginning of the calculating machine industry in the US.
1874	Odhner, St. Petersburg, Russia,	Construct and build the first commercial Pin Wheel calculator. The "Original-Odhner" building rights were in 1886 sold to "Grimme, Natalis & Co" in Braunschweig Germany and from 1892 sold to the german market as "Brunsviga".
1878	Arthur Burghardt, Glashütte, Sachsen, Germany	Improved the Thomas de Colmar calculator and build the first calculator factory in Glashütte, Germany. Often seen as the origin for the German calculator industry (Stepped Drum technology) Many followed in: Saxonia 1895,Peerless / Badina 1904,Gauss /Hamann 1905, Archimedes 1906, TIM 1907, Hermes 1911, Record 1913, Rheinmetall 1924. In Austria: Graber 1905, Austria 1906 (founded by father of Curt Herzstark), Delton 1908 (used Burghardts machines to assemble)
1884	Herman Hollerith, USA	Constructor of the first punch card machine. The Hollerith's Tabulating Machine Company was established
1886	Dorr E. Felt, USA	He patented the Comptometer. It was the first successful key-driven adding machine. (No lever or crank is needed). In 1887, he joined with Robert Tarrant to form the Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company.
1888	William S. Burroughs, USA,	The in 1885 successfully ended developed, Mr. Burroughs got his adding machines on 21 of august 1888 patented. The first Rocking Segment machine with industrial potentials.
1897	Joseph John Thomson	Discovery of the vacuum tube to carefully investigate the nature of cathode rays, which resulted in his discovery, published in 1897. Others gave the credits to Karl Ferdinand Braun. On survey Mr Thomson discovered the Electron!!!
1892	William S. Burroughs, USA	He began his adding and listing machine. He became one of the leading manufacturers of the adding and listing machines.
1898	Christal Hamann, Berlin, Germany	Developed the Gauss and the Berolina. Worked on the Proportional lever mechanism
1900	Alexander Rechnitzer	The Czechoslovakia Alexander Rechsnitzer, constructed the first electro motor driven Calculator. He own several patents in many countries. He moved over to Berlin in 1905. In 1910 he established in Vienna Austria the Autarith GmbH. Production quantities of the first Autarith, based on stepped drum technology, are low. He was find dead in New York 1022. His patents are used after in many calculators, Madas is one of them.
1901	William W. Hopkins, St. Louis, USA	The Standard Adding Machine company made the first 10 key keyboard for an adding and listing machine. The Sundstrand company arranged the keys in the now known layout.
1905	Otto Steiger, Munich, Germany	Otto Steiger invented the Millionaire. This machine has a multiplying body which made direct multiplying possible. It was widely sold to europe and the USA.
1906	Christal Hamann, Euklid-Mercedes, Berlin, Germany	Mr Hamann developed a series of Euklid machines which embodies the proportional lever technology. In 1909 he build a difference engine for logarithmic tables
1911	IBM established	The Hollerith's Company was acquired by a new company. They changed name in 1924 to international Business Machines (IBM)
1912	Monroe, USA,	The first entirely handmade Monroe type was a prototype of the splitted stepped drum technology. It was the beginning of a very successful product. Manufacturer Nisa copied this technology.
1914	Edwin Jahnz, Hans W. Egli SA, Zurich Swiss	The first commercial success of the improved Rechsnitzer division control, was the Madas machine. Developed by Edwin Jahnz. Hans W. Egli SA produced the Millionaire (direct multiplication) as well.
1919	W H Eccles, F W Jordan	Publish the first flip-flop circuit design. An function crucial for electronic solid state memories
1923	Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, Germany	Discovery of the transistor as semiconductor , (germanium was used, he didn't published his findings, that's why the Bell labs, who did this are often mentioned as discoverers.)
1925	Christal Hamann, DeTeWe, Hamann Manus, Berlin, Germany	Hamann Manus was introduced in 1925. Designer was Christel (Christian) Hamann (1870-1947) worked at that time for DeTeWe in Berlin. In 1922 he developed a new type of calculating mechanism, so called Schaltklinke (switching-latch-wheel), Before becoming chief engineer of DeTeWe he designed several calculators. Hamann Manus looks like and Odhner type pinwheel calculator from the outside but the mechanism was entirely different. Production continued until the 1970s when the calculator division was sold to the American Smith-Corona Co.
1925	Burroughs portable adding machine	The Burroughs company produces a line of portable adding and listing machines. Prior to those, the machines were quit havy to call them portable.
1935	Tape Recorder	Germany's AEG introduces the first tape recorder
1938	Conrad Zuze, Germany	First Mechanical Calculator automat the Z1.
1939	HP, Palo Alto USA	Two Stanford university graduates William Hewlett an David Packard form their Hewlett-Packart company in Palo Alto Ca. USA
1940	Conrad Zuze, Germany	Sucessor of the Z1 the Mechanical Calculator automat the Z2.
1941	Conrad Zuze, Germany	First Mechanical "Programmable" calculator automat the Z3.
1944	IBM, USA	Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper of IBM unveils the first computer programmed by punched paper tape, the Harvard Mark I
1945	Stored Program Architec-ture	John Von Neumann designs a computer that holds its own instructions, the "stored-program architecture
1946	Curt Herzstark, Germany - Lichtenstein,	First pocket calculator the Curta 1. The curta 2 was the follow up.
1946	USA	First, non-military, electronic computer (vacuum tubes) Digital calculator automat named: ENIAC ("Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer"), is unveiled, built by John Mauchly and Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania
1946		John von Neumann proposed his Computer Architecture. Stil the basic of modern computers.
1947	Bell Labs, USA	First publication of the Transistor by Bardeen & Bratain at the team of William Shockley (see also 1923)
1948	- William B. Shockley and - Walter Brattain and - John Bardeen, at Bell labs, in Murray Hill, in New Jersey, USA	*First practical application of a Transistor. In 1954 the first silicon transistor was build at Texas Instruments. In 1956 the Nobel price of Physics* is rewarded to the three gentleman.
1948	USA	Claude Shannon founds Information Theory and coins the term "bit
1949	Werner Jacobi, Siemens, Germany	Discovery of the IC (Integrated Circuit). A number of transistors on the same substrate, in this case 5 transistors on geranium, as amplifier. The application was a hearing aid.
1950	Remington Rand USA	Remington Rand purchases Eckert-Mauchly Computer. in 1955 Remington Rand merges with Sperry to form Sperry Rand
1951	USA	The first commercial computer is built, the Univac (the Universal Automatic Computer)
1951	Jay Forrester, at MIT	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
1953	USA	First computer with magnetic tape memory. And invention of the core memory
1954	Texas Instruments, USA	First silicon transistor was build
1954	Remington Rand, USA	Remington Rand introduces UNIVAC 1103, the first computer with magnetic-core RAM
1956	IBM, USA,	IBM's San Jose labs invent the hard-disk drive
1956	Mountain View, CA, USA	William Shockley founds the Shockley Transistor Corporation in Mountain View to produce semiconductor-based transistors to replace vacuum tubes, and hires Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore and others. You might call it the first step of establishing Silicon Valley.
1956	IBM, USA	Werner Buchholz of IBM coins the term "byte
1957	IBM, USA	Apr 1957: John Backus of IBM introduces the FORTRAN programming language, the first practical machine-independent language
1957	Fairchild Semiconductor in Mountain View, CA, USA	Oct 1957: Several engineers (including Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore) quit the Shockley Transistor laboratories and form Fairchild Semiconductor in Mountain View, using funding from Fairchild Camera and Instrument
1957	Germany	First Full Transistor Computer named 2002.
1958	Jack Kilby, at Texas Instruments, and Robert Noyce Fairchild, Ca, USA	First working planar transistor the basic technology fo the IC (first on geranium substrate) demonstrated. He won the 2000 Nobel price in Physics. Mr. Robert Noyce was a half a year later, at Fairchild, with his IC on silicon substrate. The later milestone were related to the scale of integration. SSI, MSI, LSI, VLSI. From small to very large scale integration. The number of transistor on a chip follows the Moore law, it doubles every 2 years.
1961	Comptometer, Fa Sumlock UK	First desktop all electronic calculator with nixie display, named Anita.
1961	Fairchild, USA	First 4 transistor IC (Integrated Circuit) The first commercial available IC or the "chip" was born.
1968	Frederico Faggin, Fairchild, USA,	First silicon gate IC technology, with the self aligned gates, which is the basic circuit-technology for all the current Computer chips. He moved to Intel and developed the first CPU (Central Processing Unit). We use the name Chip as general name for an IC. The name comes from the slice of a pure silicon bar, as tin as a potatoes chip. The slice is called wafer. The number of IC's on a wafer is decreasing by the year.
1968	Intel, Santaclara, Ca, USA	Gorden Moore and Robert Noyce, both came from Fairchild, found Intel
1969	Ca, USA	The computer network Arpanet is inaugurated with four nodes, three of which are in California (UCLA, Stanford Research Institute and UC Santa Barbara) Arpanet was the predecessors of the internet
1969	Sanyo, Japan,	First Pocket electronic calculator.
1970	Edgar Codd, IBM, USA	Edgar Codd at IBM introduces the concept of a relational database
1970	Intel, Santaclara, Ca, USA	Intel introduces the first commercially successful 1K DRAM chip type number 1103
1970	USA	The first practical optical fiber is developed by glass maker Corning Glass Works
1971	Frederico Faggin, Ted Hoff & Mazor of Intel, Santa Clara, Ca, USA	First first universal Microprocessor / CPU (Central Processing Unit) named Intel 4004. and had 2300 transistors.
1971	Alan Shugart and David Noble, IBM	IBM invents the floppy disk
1972	Intel, Santaclara, Ca, USA	Intel introduces the 8008 microprocessor, whose eight-bit word allowed to represent 256 characters, including all ten digits, both uppercase and lowercase letters and punctuation marks
1972	DoD, USA	The Global Positioning System (GPS) is invented by the USA military, using a constellation of 24 satellites for navigation and positioning purposes. The inventers: Bradford Parkinson, Roger L. Easton, and Ivan A. Getting
1972	USA	Ray Tomlinson at Bolt, Beranek and Newman invents e-mail for sending messages between computer users, and invents a system to identify the user name and the computer name separated by a "@"
1973	AES, Canada	Automatic Electronic Systems of Canada introduces the "AES-90", a "word processor" that combines a CRT-screen, a floppy-disk and a microprocessor
1973	Motorola, USA	Martin Cooper at Motorola invents the first portable, wireless or "cellular" telephone
1973	Stanford Uni, Ca, USA	Vinton Cerf of Stanford University coins the term "Internet" and Robert Metcalf of the Palo Alto Researce Center built a networking system: the Ethernet. Until 1979 he promoted the ethernet as standard for persanal computers, at several companies.
1973	Intel, Santaclara, Ca, USA	Intel introduces a CPU named 8088
1973	Sharp, Japan	Japan's Sharp develops the LCD or "Liquid Crystal Display" technology
1974	MITS, USA	Ed Roberts invents the first personal computer, the Altair 8800
1974	USA	The Scelbi-8H, the Mark-8 and the IBM 5100 Are consumer computers seen daylicht in the same year.
1974		Donald Chamberlin at IBM's San Jose laboratories invents SQL (SQL = Structured Query Language a database language)
1975		Microsoft founded
1974		Ed Roberts invents the first personal computer, the Altair 8800
1975		HCC founded by Steve Worziak
1976	Apple, USA	Apple founded and production of the Apple I.
1976		MOS silicon technology used for 6502 microprocessor
1977		Apple II based on the 6502, 8 bits micromprocessors
1977		Berkley Unix
1977		Oracle founded
1978		First 16-bits microprocessor 20 000 transistors
1979		The Compact Disk or CD was born.
1980		3.5 inch flopy DSDD
1981	IBM, USA,	First MS DOS PC .
1982		Sun workstations
1983		The Apple Lisa computer
1983		Lotus 123 spreadsheet program for DOS
1984		The Mac or the Apple Macintosh with a GUI (Grafical User Interface)
1985		MS Windows
1993	USA,	Alpha, Power PC and Pentium. All three 32-bits microprocessors.