Software Timeline Outline

The Analytical Engine
(1834)

Poe Writes Maelzel's Chess Player
(April 1836)

The Most Famous Image in the Early History of Computing
(1839)

The First Published Computer Programs
(1842)

Translated and Augmented by Lord Byron's Daughter
(1843)

"Without being Worked out by Human Head & Hands. . ."
(July 10, 1843)

The Most Complete Work on Babbage's Computers
(1889)

The First High-Level Non-Von Neumann Programming Language
(1943 – 1948)

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

Possibly the First Computer to Run Programs in the U.S.
(September 1943)

Aiken's Harvard Mark 1 is Operational
(May 1944)

The ENIAC is Operational
(Circa May 1945)

The First Theoretical Description of a Stored-Program Computer
(June 30, 1945)

The First Use of "Bug" in the Context of Computing
(September 9, 1945)

Turing's ACE
(Circa October 1945)

The First Confidential Report on the Completed ENIAC
(November 30, 1945)

Among the Earliest Published Examples of Computer Programs
(1946)

Von Neumann Begins the Princeton IAS Computer Project
(March 1946)

Ideas to be Incorporated into the Princeton IAS Design
(June 28, 1946)

The Earliest Work Leading toward Machine Translation
(1947)

First Theoretical Discussion of Programming a Stored-Program Computer
(April 1947)

The Earliest Document on Programming an Electronic Digital Computer
(April 24, 1947)

The First Computer that Could Modify a Stored Program
(January 1948)

The First Operational Stored-Program Computer Runs its First Program
(June 21, 1948)

"Intelligent Machinery"
(July – August 1948)

Alan Turing, Chief Programmer
(September 1948)

Hopper Joins Eckert-Mauchly
(1949)

The First Software to Allow a Computer to be Operated by a Keyboard
(1949)

First Program Run on the First Stored-Program Electronic Computer in the U.S.
(February 1949)

Among the Earliest Extant Programs for a Stored-Program Computer
(March 15 – March 21, 1949)

The First Easily Used Fully Functional Stored-Program Computer to Run a Program
(May 6, 1949)

The First High-Level Programming Language
(Circa June 1949)

Proof that a Program Could Reproduce Itself
(December 1949)

The First Treatise on Software for an Operational Stored-Program Computer
(1950)

The Hamming Codes
(1950)

The First Technical Paper on Computer Chess
(March 1950)

The First OCR System: "GISMO"
(1951)

One of the Earliest Computer Games
(February – October 1951)

Maurice Wilkes Introduces Microprogamming
(July 9 – July 12, 1951)

The First Demonstration of Computer Music
(August 7 – August 9, 1951)

First Stored-Program Computer to Run Business Programs on a Routine Basis
(November 17, 1951)

The First Compiler
(1952)

"The Education of a Computer"
(1952)

UNIVAC Short Code II
(October 24, 1952)

The First Computer to be Sold to a Non-Governmental Customer in the U.S.
(1954)

The First High-Level Algebraic Language
(1954)

Grace Hopper Organizes the First Symposium on Software
(May 13 – May 14, 1954)

The First Use of a Computer to Write Literary Texts
(October 1954)

The First Independent Software Company
(1955)

Origins of The Term "Software"
(1956 – January 1958)

The First Artificial Intelligence Program
(July 1956)

Chomsky's Hierarchy of Syntactic Forms
(September 1956)

Control Unit Based on Microprogramming
(1957)

The First English-Language Data-Processing Compiler
(1957)

FORTRAN: The First High-Level Programming Language to Achieve High Use
(1957)

Chomsky's Syntactic Structures
(1957)

Automatic Document Indexing Program
(1958)

The First Digital Poetry
(1959)

COBOL
(May 28 – May 29, 1959)

Pioneering Computer-Assisted Legal Research
(1960)

LISP
(1960)

The First Software Patent
(1960 – November 20, 1968)

The First Published Report on COBOL
(April 1960)

One of the Earliest Computer Text Editors
(December 1960)

COBOL Allows Compatibility Between Computers Made by Different Manufacturers
(December 6 – December 7, 1960)

Special-Purpose Typesetting Computer
(1961)

Precursor of Word Processing and Email
(1961)

The First Word Processing Program
(1961 – 1962)

First of the "Ten Greatest Software Bugs of All Time"
(July 28, 1962)

The First CAD Program
(December 1962)

ASCII is Promulgated
(1963)

The First Graphical User Interface
(1963)

Foundation of Engelbart's Augmentation Research Center
(1963)

"A Computer Technique for the Production of Animated Movies"
(1963 – 1964)

The First Commercial Computers to Use Integrated Circuits
(1964)

The First Online Reservation System
(1964)

BASIC
(1964)

The Beginning of "Word Processing"
(1964)

Origins of Automated Facial Recognition
(1964 – 1966)

The IBM System/360 Family
(April 7, 1964)

TYPESET and RUNOFF: Text Formatting Program and Forerunner of Word Processors
(November 6, 1964)

Email Begins
(1965)

Coining the Terms Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Hyperlink
(1965)

The U.S. Postal Services Introduces OCR
(1965)

Programming Language for Education and Games
(1965 – 1969)

The Cooley-Tukey FFT Algorithm
(April 1965)

Memory Caching
(April 1965)

The First "Actual Network Experiment"
(October 1965)

A Computer-Assisted Full-Text Inventory System
(1966)

Lockheed's DIALOG
(1966)

An Experiment in Packet Switching
(1967)

Full-Text Interactive Search Service
(1967)

The First Hypertext Editing System
(1967)

The Museum Computer Network
(1967)

The Viterbi Algorithm
(1967)

The Beginning of Automated Essay Scoring
(1967)

Introduction of the Term "Packet"
(October 1967)

Unbundling Gives Rise to the Software and Services Industry
(1968)

The First U.S. Conference on Museum Computing
(April 1968)

Software Engineering
(October 7 – October 11, 1968)

Hypertext, Text Editing, Windows, Email and a Mouse
(December 8, 1968)

UNIX is Developed, Making Open Systems Possible
(1969)

Generalized Markup Language is Introduced
(Circa 1969)

Peer to Peer Architecture
(April 7, 1969)

Xerox PARC is Founded
(1970)

The Definitive Model for Relational Database Management Systems
(June 1970)

Speech Recognition Technology
(1971)

The C Programming Language
(1971)

The First Computer Virus
(1971)

Gouraud Shading Method for Polygon Smoothing
(June 1971)

The First Email Management Program
(July 1971)

Editing Terminals for Newspapers
(1973)

CP/M
(1973 – 1974)

Precursor to "Micro-Soft"
(1973 – 1974)

Systems Network Architecture
(1974)

SQL
(1974)

Virtual Machines
(1974)

The First Omni-Font Optical Character Recognition System
(1974)

SGML is Invented
(1974)

TCP
(May 1974)

The First Computer Language Written for a Personal Computer
(1975)

Invention of Ethernet
(1975)

The Roots of the PostScript Page Description Language
(1975 – 1978)

The First Demonstrations of TCP/IP
(1975 – November 1977)

The First Computer Text Adventure Game
(1975 – 1976)

The Warez Scene
(Circa 1975)

"The Mythical Man-Month"
(1975)

Gates and Allen Officially Found "Micro-Soft" (Microsoft)
(April 4, 1975)

The First Word Processing Program for a Personal Computer
(1976)

First Print-to-Speech Reading Machine
(1976)

The First Journal on Software for Personal Computers
(January 1976)

An Open Letter to Hobbyists
(February 3, 1976)

First CRT Based Word Processor
(June 1976)

Ellison Founds Software Development Laboratories
(1977)

Inaugurating the Concept of Office Automation
(1977)

Zork
(1977 – 1979)

TEX and Metafont
(1977 – 1979)

dBase
(1978)

The First Computer Worm
(1978)

The First Dial-UP CBBS
(February 16, 1978)

The First Spreadsheet Program
(1979)

Robert Metcalf Founds 3Com
(1979)

The First Widely Used Music Scheduling System
(1979)

The First Graphical Computer Adventure Game
(1979 – 1980)

Bjarne Stroustrup Develops the C++ Programming Language
(1979 – 1983)

The First Flight Simulator Program for a Personal Computer
(January 1980)

QDOS becomes Microsoft PC-DOS
(December 1980)

The First Dance Notation Software
(1981)

Flexible Image Transport System (FITS)
(1981)

The First Commercially Successful "Portable" Computer
(April 1981)

Quick and Dirty Operating System Becomes MS-DOS
(July 1981)

IBM Introduces the IBM 5150- The IBM PC
(August 12, 1981)

Lotus Development Corporation is Founded
(1982)

IBM DB2
(1982)

TCP/IP as the Basis for ARPANET
(1982)

The First Computer Virus Spread by Floppy Disk
(1982)

The First IBM PC Compatible Computer
(June 1982)

The First Cheap Home Computer
(August 1982)

Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.0
(November 1982)

Foundation of Adobe Systems
(December 1982)

Oracle Corporation
(1983)

Keyboarding over 350,000,000 Characters
(1983)

Early Form of Digital Rights Management
(1983)

The First Commercially Available IBM PC Compatible ROM Bios
(1983 – May 1984)

A Computer's Operating System Can be Protected by Copyright
(1983)

The First "Killer App" for the PC
(January 1983)

ARPANET Requires TCP/IP
(January 1, 1983)

Microsoft Word 1.0
(September 1983)

Free Software
(September 23, 1983)

Domain Name System
(November 1983)

Coining the Term Computer Virus
(November 10, 1983)

The First Desktop Publishing Program
(1984)

Scalable PostScript Type Fonts
(1984)

The First Book Written by a Computer Program
(1984)

Groupware
(December 7, 1984)

The First Laserprinter for a Microcomputer
(January 1985)

The GNU Manifesto
(March 1985)

Quantum Computer Services, Precursor of AOL, Launches an Online Bulletin-Board Service
(May 1, 1985)

The First Widely-Used Desktop Publishing Program
(July 1985 – 1986)

The Free Software Foundation
(October 4, 1985)

Windows 1.0
(November 20, 1985)

First PC Virus Epidemic
(January 1986)

SGML Standard is Accepted
(October 1986)

Origins of Adobe Photoshop
(1987 – February 1990)

One of the First Successful Hypermedia Systems Before the Web
(1987)

The First Commercial Network-Based Groupware Program
(1988)

Mathematica 1.0
(1988)

The Unicode Universal Character Set
(August 29, 1988)

The First Computer Worm to Attract Wide Attention
(November 2, 1988)

The First Web Page
(November 13, 1990)

The First Web Browser and Web Server
(December 25, 1990)

The PDF
(1991)

TrueType Fonts
(1991)

The Beginning of the Linux Open-Source Operating System
(April – August 26, 1991)

Berners-Lee Makes Web Server and Web Browser Software Available at No Cost
(August 6, 1991)

The Mosaic Web Browser
(March 4, 1993)

The First Tablet Computer with Wireless Connectivity
(April 1993 – July 1994)

The First Graphics-Based Web Browser
(April 22, 1993)

CERN Releases Rights to World Wide Web Software
(April 30, 1993)

The First Web Search Engine?
(November 30, 1993)

HTTP Packets Surpass FTP Traffic
(1994)

The First Company to Exploit the Economic Potential of the Web
(April 4, 1994)

The First Full Text Web Search Engine
(April 20, 1994)

HTTP Cookies
(June 1994)

The First Web Analytics Vendor
(June 1994)

The First Commercially Available Web Browser
(October 13, 1994)

PlayStation
(December 3, 1994)

The First Web Page Tagging System
(1995)

Apache HTTP Server is Released
(April 1995)

The Beginning of the "Dot-Com Bubble"
(August 9, 1995)

The IBM DB2 Universal Database
(1996)

Speech Recognition Technology from 6,700 Characters
(1996)

A Search Engine Initially Called "BackRub"
(January 1996)

The First Web Analyzer with Drill-Down and Ad-Hoc Analysis
(1997)

W3C Releases XML
(1998)

Bluetooth
(1999)

Origins of Google Earth and Google Maps
(2001)

The BitTorrent Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing Protocol
(July 2, 2001)

Xbox
(November 15, 2001)

BitTorrent is Commercialized
(September 22, 2004)

NarusInsight Supercomputer Network Monitoring Software
(2005)

Over 102 Million Units Shipped
(March 31, 2005)

The Amazon Mechanical Turk
(November 2, 2005)

Making Handwritten Manuscripts Searchable
(February 9, 2006)

Google Apps are Introduced
(August 2006)

Photosynth Demonstrated
(March 2007)

The World Wide Telecom Web for Illiterate Populations
(August 2007)

DROID, an Archives Analysis and Identification Tool
(September 27, 2007)

The iTunes App Store Opens
(July 10, 2008)

The First Android Phone is Introduced
(September 23, 2008)

More than 200,000,000 Apps Downloaded
(October 21, 2008)

BitTorrent was Responsible for 27-55% of All Internet Traffic
(February 2009)

Reinventing Email and Internet Communication
(May 28, 2009)

Piracy of Internet Filtering Software?
(June 13, 2009)

More than 2 Billion Apps Downloaded in 15 Months
(July – November 2009)

3 Billion iPhone and iPod Apps Were Downloaded in less than 18 Months
(January 5, 2010)

Exploit Code for Attacks on Google Released on the Internet
(January 15, 2010)

$1,300,000,000 Verdict in Software Copyright Infringement Suit Partially Vacated
(November 23, 2010 – September 1, 2011)

An App the Promotes the Value of Impermanence
(2011 – 2013)

More than Ten Billion Apps are Downloaded from the Apple App Store
(January 22, 2011)

Confession: A Roman Catholic iPhone App
(February 2011)

The Impact of Automation on Legal Research
(March 4, 2011)

A Program for Signing and Inscribing Ebooks
(April 2011)

Interactive Reading and Spelling on the iPad
(August 18, 2011)

Google Maps 6.0 for Android Introduces Indoor Maps and a "My Location" Feature
(November 29, 2011)

More than 10 Billion Android Apps Downloaded
(December 6, 2011)

Windows 8, With Touch Screen Features, is Released
(October 26, 2012)

The Youngest Person to Create a Mobil Game App
(January 17, 2013)

Smartphone Interactive Reading Device Will Track Eyes to Scroll Pages
(March 4, 2013)

On the Twentieth Anniversary CERN Restores the First Website
(April 30, 2013)