Computing & Medicine / Biology Timeline Outline

Computing within the Context of Biology
(1844)

Having Refused to Support Babbage, the British Government Pays for a Difference Engine Produced in Sweden
(1859)

The First Instance of a Printing Calculator Used Extensively to do Original Work
(1864)

Discovery of DNA
(1869 – 1871)

A Physician-Librarian Suggests the Idea for Electric Punched Card Tabulating
(1882)

The Basis for Computed Tomography
(1917)

First Application of Electric Punched Card Tabulating Equipment in Crystal Structure Analysis
(1941 – 1946)

The First Mathematical Model of a Neural Network
(1943)

"The Program has to Build the Machinery to Execute Itself"
(March 1943 – 1944)

Cybernetics: The First Widely Distributed Book on Electronic Computing
(1948)

Comparing the Functions of Genes to Self-Reproducing Automata
(September 20, 1948)

One of the Earliest Projects in Library Automation
(April 1949)

The First Application of an Electronic Computer to Molecular or Structural Biology
(July 9 – July 12, 1951)

The Idea of a Genetic Code
(1953 – 1954)

The Beginning of Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
(1953)

Intelligence Amplification by Machines
(1956)

First International Congress on Cybernetics
(June 26 – June 29, 1956)

On Protein Synthesis
(September 1957)

The First Solution of the Three-Dimensional Molecular Structure of a Protein
(1958 – 1960)

Early Expert Systems for Medical Diagnosis
(July 3, 1959)

The First Self-Contained Internally Powered Artificial Pacemaker Implanted in a Human
(1960)

Bionics
(September 13 – September 15, 1960)

The Genetic Code
(1961)

Changes in Tissue Density Can be Computed
(1963 – 1964)

The First Large Scale Computer-Based Retrospective Search Service Available to the General Public
(January 1964)

First Consumer Product with an Integrated Circuit
(February 14, 1964)

The Invention of Digital Image Processing
(1966)

First System for Interactive Display of Molecular Structures
(1966)

Invention of Three-Dimensional Image Processing
(January 1968)

CT
(1971)

The First Patent for MRI
(March 17, 1972)

The First Practical Method for Cloning a Gene
(1973)

The Beginnings of Magnetic Resonance Imaging
(1973)

The First Whole-Body CT Scanner
(1973)

The Brain-Computer Interface
(1973)

Code of Fair Information Practice
(July 1973)

Foundation of the Biotechnology Industry
(1974)

The Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA
(February 1975)

Genetech is Founded
(April 7, 1976)

A Technique for Sequencing DNA
(1977)

The Sanger Method of Rapid DNA Sequencing
(1977)

Making MRI Feasible
(1977)

Blade Runner
(1982)

The First Whole Genome Shotgun Sequence
(1982)

Defining a General Framework for Studying Complex Biological Systems
(1982)

Origins of the Human Genome Project
(December 1984 – April 1987)

The First Semi-Automatic DNA Sequencer
(1986)

The First Map of the Functioning Structure of an Entire Brain
(November 12, 1986)

The First DNA Sequencing Machine
(1987)

Proposals to Sequence the Human Genome
(1987)

The National Center for Biotechnology Information is Founded
(November 4, 1988)

Expressed Sequence Tags
(1991)

Venter Founds TIGR
(1992)

Venter Founds Celera Genomics
(May 1998)

IBM's Blue Gene
(December 1999)

The Most Extensive Computation Ever Undertaken in Biology
(June 26, 2000)

IBM Forms a Life Sciences Division
(August 2000)

Publication of the Human Genome Sequence
(February 15 – February 16, 2001)

Attempting to Use an Ink-Jet Printer to Print Living Tissue. . . .
(2005)

The Genetic Code of Avian Flu Virus H5N1 is Deciphered
(October 5, 2005)

Using Currency Movements to Predict the Spread of Infectious Disease
(January 26, 2006)

Molecular Animation
(July 30, 2006 – August 3, 2007)

Data-Storing Bacteria Could Last Thousands of Years
(February 27, 2007)

Watson's Genome
(May 31, 2007)

Discovery of a Set of Mutations that Might Have Caused a Cancer
(November 6, 2008)

Analysis of Web Search Queries Track the Spread of Flu Faster than Traditional Surveillance Methods
(November 11, 2008)

Scientists Sequence Woolly Mammoth Genome--the First of an Extinct Animal
(November 19, 2008)

Robot Scientist becomes the First Machine to Discover New Scientific Knowledge
(April 3, 2009)

Using Air Traffic and Currency Tracking Data in Epidemiology
(May 3, 2009)

The Cost of DeCoding a Human Genome Drops to $50,000
(August 10, 2009)

"The Data-Driven Life"
(April 20, 2010)

The First MRI Video of Childbirth
(November 2010 – June 2012)

Culturomics Introduced by the Cultural Observatory
(December 16, 2010)

Walmart Buys Kosmix.com, Forming @WalmartLabs
(April 18, 2011)

Construction of the Francis Crick Institute Begins
(July 2011)

Toward Cognitive Computing Systems
(August 18, 2011)

The First Commercial Application of the IBM Watson Question Answering System: Medical Diagnostics
(September 12, 2011)

The Cost of Sequencing a Human Genome Drops to $10,500
(November 30, 2011)

IBM's Watson Question Answering System to Team with Cedars-Sinai Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute
(December 16, 2011)

The Cost of Sequencing a Human Genome Drops to $1000
(January 10, 2012)

The First Book Stored in DNA and then Read
(August 16, 2012)

The Human Genome is Packed with At Least 4,000,000 Gene Switches
(September 6, 2012)

The FDA Approves the First Medical Robot for Hospital Use
(January 26, 2013)

"The Human Brain Project" is Launched, with the Goal of Creating a Supercomputer-Based Simulation of the Human Brain
(January 28, 2013)