Inventors of Computer Hardware
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Inventors Of Computer Hardware
(1) Key board Herman Hollerith, first keypunch device in 1930s
(2) Transistor John Bardeen, Walter Brattain & Wiliam Shockley (1947 - 1948)
(3) RAM An Wang and Jay Forrester (1951)
(4) Trackball Tom Cranston and Fred Longstaff (1952)
(5) Hard Disk IBM , The IBM Model 350 Disk File (1956 )
(6) Integrated Circuit Jack Kilby & Robert Noyce (1958)
(7) Computer Mouse Douglas Engelbart (1964)
(8) Laser printer Gary Stark weather at XEROX in (1969)
(9) Floppy Disk Alan Shugart & IBM( 1970)
(10) Microprocessor Faggin, Hoff&Mazor Intel 4004
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The First Computer Mouse
The first computer mouse was invented in 1963 by Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute. (He is also one of the inventors of hypertext.) The first mouse used two wheels positioned at a 90-degree angle to each other to keep track of the movement (see picture below). The ball mouse wasn’t invented until 1972, and the optical mouse was invented circa 1980, although it didn’t come to popular use until much later.
The First Trackball
The trackball was actually invented 11 years BEFORE the mouse, in 1952. It was invented by Tom Cranston and Fred Longstaff as part of a computerized battlefield information system called DATAR, initiated by the Canadian Navy. It used a standard five-pin bowling ball as its trackball, which is smaller than the more common 10-pin bowling ball.
The First Portable Computer
Well, perhaps that should be “movable” computer… The IBM 5100 Portable Computer was introduced in 1975, weighed 25 kg (55 lb), was the size of a small suitcase and needed external power to operate. It held everything in the same unit, packing in a processor, ROM (several hundreds of kilobytes) and RAM (16 – 64 KB), a five-inch CRT display, keyboard, and a tape drive, which was an amazing feat at the time. It also came with built-in BASIC and/or APL. The different models of the IBM 5100 sold for $8,975 – $19,975.
The First Laptop Computer
The first laptop computer (or notebook) was the Grid Compass 1100 (called the GRiD) and was designed in 1979 by a British industrial designer, Bill Moggridge. The computer didn’t start selling until 1982, then featuring a 320×200 screen, an Intel 8086 processor, 340KB of magnetic bubble memory (a now obsolete, non-volatile memory type), and a 1200 bps modem. It weighed 5 kg (11 lb) and cost $8,000 –$10,000. The GRiD was mainly used by NASA and the US military.
The First IBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer was introduced in 1981 as the IBM 5150. The platform became so pervasive in the 80s that although the term “personal computer” had been in use since the early 70s, a PC became synonymous with an IBM PC-compatible computer.
The First Apple Computer
The first Apple personal computers (Apple I) were designed and hand-built by Steve Wozniak. The Apple I went on sale in 1976 for the price of $666.66. Only about 200 units were produced. The Apple I was basically just a motherboard with a processor, a total of 8KB of RAM, a display interface, and some additional functionality. To have a working computer, the buyer would have to add a power supply, a keyboard, and a display (and a case to keep mount it all in).
In 2018, Apple claimed to be the first trillion-dollar company. Check our article on how Apple reinvented the laptop.
The First RAM
Arguably the first (writable) random access memory was Magnetic Core Memory (also called Ferrite-Core Memory) and was invented in 1951 as a result of work done by An Wang at Harvard University’s Computation Lab and Jay Forrester at MIT.
The First Hard Disk Drive
The IBM Model 350 Disk File was the first hard disk drive and was part of the IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control) computer that IBM started delivering in 1956 (mainly intended for business accounting). It had 50 24-inch discs that together could store about 4.4MB of data. The Model 350 spun at 1200 rpm, had a data transfer rate of 8,800 characters per second and an access time of approximately one second.
The First Laser Printer
The laser printer was invented by Gary Starkweather at XEROX in 1969. His initial prototype was a modified laser copier where he had disabled the imaging system and introduced a spinning drum with eight mirrored sides. The first commercial implementation of a laser printer didn’t happen until IBM released the IBM model 3800 in 1976. It could pretty much fill up a room on its own and had a speed of 20,000 lines per minute. This machine was mainly used for high-volume documents (for example, preparing bank statements).
The First Web Server
And since the Web is such an integral part of today’s computer experience, we couldn’t help but include another first; the first web server was a NeXT workstation that Tim Berners-Lee used when he invented the World Wide Web at CERN. The first web page was put online on August 6, 1991.