1940 to 1950 Timeline Outline

The Nyquist-Shannon Sampling Theorem
(1940)

Actress Hedy Lamarr Invents Spread-Sprectrum
(1940)

The Top-Secret Heath Robinson Cryptographic Computer
(1940 – 1941)

The First Process-Controlled Computer
(1940)

Complex Number Calculator
(January 8, 1940)

The Rapid Arithmetical Machine Project
(March 7, 1940)

Does Language Influence Thought?
(April 1940)

The Fitzwilliam Museum Exhibition of Printing: Precursor to "Printing and the Mind of Man"
(May 6 – May 16, 1940)

Sealing of the Crypt of Civlization
(May 25, 1940)

The Second Armistice at Compeigne forms the Vichy Government
(June 22, 1940)

Design and Principles of the ABC Machine
(August 1940)

The First Demonstration of Remote Computing
(September 11, 1940)

All the Features of an Electronic Digital Computer Except a Stored Program
(September 23, 1940)

Mauchly Meets Atanasoff
(December 1940)

An Improved Bombe
(Circa December 1940)

Converting Zuse's Logical Designs into Switching Circuits
(1941)

A Typewriter with Proportional Spacing
(1941)

Borges' Universe as a Library, or Universal Library or Archive
(1941)

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

The Nazis Destroy the National Library of Serbia
(April 6, 1941)

Zuse's Z3: The First Turing-Complete Electromechanical Computer
(May 12, 1941)

Eckert and Mauchly Begin their Collaboration
(Circa June 1941)

Applying Electromechanical Calculating to Data Processing
(October 8, 1941)

Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor; U.S. Declares War on Japan
(December 7, 1941)

Atanasoff Abandons Work on his ABC Machine
(1942)

Communication Theory as a Statistical Problem
(1942)

The Z4
(1942)

Containing 2000 Vacuum Tubes and Weighing 100,000 Pounds
(1942)

The Library of Congress Catalogue
(1942 – 1953)

The Birth of Ecosystem Ecology
(1942)

High Speed Vacuum Tube Devices for Calculating
(August 1942)

"Waldo" : Imagining Remote Manipulators and TeleRobotics
(August 1942)

Alan Turing Consults in New York
(1943)

The First Complete Machine to Perform Arithmetic Electronically
(1943)

Project Whirlwind Begins
(1943)

The First Mathematical Model of a Neural Network
(1943)

Walter Pitts Works with Norbert Wiener
(1943)

The First Computing Journal
(1943)

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

The Harvard Mark 1 is Operational at IBM's Endicott Labs
(January 1943)

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

The Proposal to Build the ENIAC
(April 8, 1943)

Promoting the Rumor that the ENIAC is a "White Elephant"
(May 31, 1943)

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

Computer Prototype Damaged and Lost
(November 11, 1943)

The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior
(1944)

Using Microforms to Conserve Library Space
(1944)

The Colossus
(January 1944)

Electronic Memory
(January 29, 1944)

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

The Colossus Mark II is Operational
(June 1, 1944)

The ENIAC is Partly Operational
(July 1944)

John von Neumann Visits the ENIAC in Development
(September 1944)

Authorship of the ENIAC Design
(September 27, 1944)

The U.S. Army Funds Development of the EDVAC
(October 1944)

Repeated Dispersal and Eventual Burning of the Greatest Library in Poland
(October 1944)

The Fastest Digital Calculators in the U.S.
(December 1944)

Zuse's Z4
(1945)

The Use of Telegraphy Peaks in the U.S.
(1945)

Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems
(1945 – 1949)

The Hinman Collator
(1945 – 1949)

The Initial Interrogations of the Nazi Rocket Team and the First Publication Outside of Nazi Germany of Rocketry Research at Peenemunde East
(1945)

An Antiquarian Bookseller Predicts an Alternative to the Printed Codex
(1945)

Bombing of Dresden Destroys Books and Manuscripts
(February – March 1945)

The Collapse of the Third Reich
(April 27, 1945)

The ENIAC is Operational
(Circa May 1945)

VE Day
(May 8, 1945)

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

"As We May Think"
(July 1945)

The Illustrated Version of "As We May Think"
(September 1945)

World War II Ends
(September 2, 1945)

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

Turing's ACE
(Circa October 1945)

The First Mathematical Tables Calculated by a Programmed Automatic Computer
(Circa October 1945)

Communication by Geosynchronous Satellites Predicted
(October 1945)

From Analog to Digital
(Circa November 1945)

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

The Moore School Lectures Take Place
(1946)

Among the Earliest Published Examples of Computer Programs
(1946)

Six TV Stations
(1946)

Automatic Computing Engine (ACE)
(1946)

The First Working Phototypesetting Machine and the First Book it Typeset
(1946 – 1953)

The First Commercial Television Network
(1946 – 1956)

The Macy Conferences
(1946 – 1953)

The ENIAC Meets the Public
(February 14, 1946)

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

The World's First Electronic Computer Company
(March 15, 1946)

Bigelow joins von Neumann and Goldstine
(June 1946)

The Williams Tube: The First Random-Access Memory
(June 1946 – March 1947)

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

Max Newman Founds the Computer Laboratory at Manchester
(July 1946)

A Single Erasable High-Speed Memory
(July 15, 1946)

The First Electronic Computer Company Receives its first Grant
(September 1946)

A Soroban Beats an Electric Calculator
(November 12, 1946)

The ENIAC Becomes an Elementary Stored-Program Computer
(1947)

EDVAC is Declassified
(1947)

Couffignal Decides against Building a Stored-Program Computer
(1947)

Design of the Whirlwind I Begins
(1947)

The Earliest Work Leading toward Machine Translation
(1947)

The First Phototypesetter
(1947)

The Most Advanced Small Mechanical Calculator
(1947)

Discovery of the "Dead Sea Scrolls"
(1947 – 1956)

The Society of Archivists (England) is Founded
(1947)

ILAB
(1947)

Invention of Holography
(1947)

Documentary Film on Letterpress Book Production
(1947)

Probably the Oldest Interactive Electronic Game
(1947)

The ENIAC is Moved from the Moore School to the Aberdeen Proving Ground
(January – August 1947)

First Large Conference on Electronic Computers
(January 7 – January 10, 1947)

"Practical Versions of the Universal Machine"
(February 20, 1947)

Warren Weaver Suggests Applying Cryptanalysis Techniques to Translation
(March 4 – May 9, 1947)

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

Von Neumann's First Draft Bars Patenting the ENIAC
(April 8, 1947)

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

Naming UNIVAC
(May 24, 1947)

The von Neumann Architecture
(Circa June 1947)

Eckert & Mauchly Apply for a Patent on the Stored-Program Computer
(June 26, 1947)

Predecessor of the ACM
(September 15, 1947)

Northrop Places the Contract for the BINAC
(October 1947)

Patenting the Mercury Acoustic Delay-Line Electronic Memory
(October 31, 1947)

The First Brochure Advertising an Electronic Computer
(Circa November 1947)

Invention of the Transistor
(December 1947)

Origins of NLM's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
(December 1947)

Contract for Production of the UNIVAC
(1948)

First Assemblage of Digital Electronics Replaceable as a Unit
(1948)

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

The First Magnetic Drum Memory
(1948)

The First Electronic Autonomous Robots
(1948)

The First Long Playing Record (LP)
(1948)

Final Edition of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum
(1948)

The "Survivor's Talmud" Published by the U.S. Army
(1948)

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

Introduction of Cable Television
(June 1948)

"Mr. Television" Causes the Sale of TV Sets to Double
(June 1948)

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

"Intelligent Machinery"
(July – August 1948)

A Mathematical Theory of Communication
(July – October 1948)

Alan Turing, Chief Programmer
(September 1948)

Innovations in the BINAC
(September 9, 1948)

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

The First Popular Book on Electronic Computers
(1949)

Hopper Joins Eckert-Mauchly
(1949)

10,000,000 TV Sets
(1949)

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

Automated Detection and Interception System
(1949)

The First Xerographic Copier
(1949)

The ABAA is Founded
(1949)

"Nineteen Eighty-Four"
(1949)

Classic of the Environmental Movement
(1949)

Transposing a System from Commercial and Statistical Uses to the Sorting of Words in a Literary Text: The Origins of Humanities Computing
(1949 – 1951)

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)

One of the Earliest Projects in Library Automation
(April 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)

The Differences between Computers and the Human Brain
(June 9, 1949)

The Origin of Statistical Machine Translation
(July 15, 1949)

The First Press Release Ever Issued for the Sale on an Electronic Computer
(August 22, 1949)

Developing Vannevar Bush's Rapid Selector, and How it Worked
(November 1949)

The First Stored-Program Computer in Australia
(November 1949)

Proof that a Program Could Reproduce Itself
(December 1949)