Chronology of Events - 1950s

The following is a chronological listing of significant events in the development of the field of Information Technology between 1950 and 1959.

1950

 * The first electronic stored program machines, the Standards East/West Automatic Computers (SEAC and SWAC), are built by Department of Defense National Bureau of Standards.

1951

 * EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Calculator), designed by J. Presper Eckert, J. Mauchley and John von Neumann, is built for Army ballistics calculations.
 * The Whirlwind computer is built at MIT for flight simulation. It contains a Vectorscope graphics display and random-access, magnetic core drum memory.
 * UNIVAC I, designed by J. Presper Eckert and J. Mauchley, and built by Remington Rand, is delivered to the U.S. Census Bureau.
 * The A-O compiler, designed by Grace M. Hopper, translates machine language into higher-order code.

1952
November 4, 1952 &mdash; UNIVAC I predicts the U.S. elections.


 * The IBM 701 (Defense Calculator) is built.
 * The Maniac I is built by LANL.
 * A.S. Douglas wrote created the first graphical computer game (a version of Tic-Tac-Toe).

1954
May 10, 1954 &mdash; Texas Instruments manufactures the first silicon transistor.


 * The IBM 650 is built for business use.

1956
November 8, 1956 &mdash; The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals overrules the FCC and holds that the Hush-a-phone can to be sold and used in conjunction with AT&T telephones. Many view this as the first step in the dissolution of AT&T's telephone monopoly.


 * TX-0, the first transistor-based computer, is built at MIT.
 * The LARC is built by Sperry Rand for atomic research.
 * Magnetic hard disk technology is developed by IBM.

1957
April 1957 FORTRAN (FORmula TRANSlation), the first high-level computer language, developed by John Backus, is released commercially by IBM.

October 4, 1957 &mdash; The U.S.S.R. launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite.


 * Field tests begin for the first pagers.

1958
February 7, 1958 &mdash; In response to Sputnik, President Eisenhower requests funds to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) with the mission of becoming the leading force in science and new technologies. It is approved as a line item in Air Force appropriations bill.

September 12, 1958 The integrated circuit is developed by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Gordon Moore at Fairchild Semiconductor.

October 18, 1958 William Higinbotham publicly shows the first video game, "Tennis for Two," which he invented. It runs on an analog computer connected to an oscilloscope.

December 1, 1958 SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) is operational. It is the first large-scale IT communications network. Whirlwind platforms are linked to remote radar in the North American Air Defense System. Innovations include: modems, digital phone-line transmission, system duplexing, software for real-time operations, and Cathode ray tube (CRT) screens.


 * The first computer-controlled missile is launched.

1959

 * Gordon Gould of Columbia University files a patent on the LASER (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation).

Source

 * Networking and Information Technology Research and Development: Advanced Foundations for American Innovation.