HISYORYOF THE COMPUTER AND THE INTERNET

Christopher7th period

Who invented the computer? • This is not a real question with a simple answer.

The real answer is that many inventors contributed to the history of computers and that a computer is a complex piece of machinery made up of many parts, each of which can be considered a separate invention.

• This series covers many of the major milestones in computer history with a concentration on history of personal home computers.

The internet

• The internet was the result of some visionary thinking by people in the early 1960s who saw great potential value in allowing computers to share information on research and development in scientific and military fields. J.C.R. Licklider of MIT, first proposed a global network of computers in 1962, and moved over to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in late 1962 to head the work to develop it.

When was the first computer invented!

• Unfortunately this question has no easy answer because of all the different types of classification and types of computers. Therefore this document has been created with a listening of each of the first programmable computer leading up to the computers of today. Keep in mind that early inventions such as the abacus, calculators, tablet machines, difference machine, ect, are not accounted for in this document.

Computer history

• In the 1980s, I wrote dozens of letters to companies asking for more information on their products. Some of them manufactured hardware or wrote software while others were vendors of other companies’ products. I kept all the materials they sent me, from catalogs of software to brochures for new products, in a stack which eventually grew to over a foot high with hundreds of sheets of paper.

labtops• It is a little hard to determine what was the first portable or

labtop computer, the first portable computers did not look like the booksized and folding labtops that we are familiar with today, however, they were both portable and labable, and lead to development of notebook style labtops. Designed in 1979 by a Briton, William Moggridge, for Grid Systems Corperation, the Grid Compass was one fifth the weight of any model equivalent in performance and was used by NASA on the space shuttle program in early1980s. A 340K byte bubble memory lab-top computer with die-cast magnesium case folding electroluminescent graphics display screen.

Computer companies