Computer Timeline – Page 39 – Yet another site for bright people, crafted by Georgi Dalakov

22 Jun 1963

John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz

In 1962, John George Kemeny (a Jewish-Hungarian American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator, born as János György Kemény) (1926–1992), chairman of the Dartmouth College Mathematics Department, and his colleague Thomas Eugene Kurtz (b. 1928) submitted a grant to NSF, for the development of a new time-sharing system, with the aim..Read More

11 Jan 1965

Ted Nelson

The USA philosopher, sociologist, and pioneer of information technology Theodor Holm “Ted” Nelson (born on 17 June 1937 to Ralph Nelson, a film and television director, producer, and actor, and his wife—Academy Award-winning actress Celeste Holm) is a rather controversial figure not only in the computing world. He used to..Read More

11 Oct 1965

Joshua Lederberg

In the early 1960s, the biologist Joshua Lederberg (1925-2008), a 1958 Nobel Prize laureate for his discoveries of genetic transfer in bacteria, started working with computers. Over the summer of 1962, he learned to program on BALGOL (Burroughs Algol) for the Burroughs 220 computer (a 1957 vacuum-tube computer with core..Read More

11 Nov 1965

Donald Davies

Three people can be credited as inventors of packet-switched networks, thus laying foundations for the Internet: Paul Baran, Leonard Kleinrock, and Donald Davies. Little known to these men, at the time of inventing these networks, was exactly how much of an impact it would play on mankind. Arguably their impact..Read More

11 Nov 1965

Eric Arthur Johnson – touch screen

The concept of the finger-driven touchscreen interface was put into words in 1965, by the British engineer Eric Arthur Johnson. He worked at the Royal Radar Establishment in Malvern, England, and was interested in developing a touchscreen for air traffic control, as the UK National Air Defense was in need..Read More

14 Jun 1966

Joseph Weizenbaum

When in 1966, the German-American computer scientist and professor at MIT Joseph Weizenbaum (1923-2008) wrote the first chatbot, Eliza, with one variant called Doctor, modeled on simple psychotherapy, he was horrified when his secretary didn’t want him to see her conversation with the Doctor, and then, when other computer scientists..Read More

01 Sep 1966

James Russell (compact disk)

The first workable digital compact disc device, the precursor to now ubiquitous CD/DVDs, was invented in the late 1960s by the American physicist James Russell, who was quite frustrated with the wear and tear of his vinyl records and their poor sound quality and tried to improve the record player...Read More

22 Jun 1967

Irving Becker

The Computer Trainer Model 650 (named also CT-650), was developed at the beginning of 1967 by a man named Irving Becker (1917-2005), whose company produced a number of radios. CT-650 is considered to be one of the earliest digital personal computers, although it was not a personal computer, as we..Read More

01 Nov 1967

Larry Roberts

Larry Roberts (1937-2018) is sometimes called the “father of the ARPANET.” He earned this nickname by directing the team of engineers that created the ARPANET. Roberts was also the principal architect of the ARPANET. awrence (Larry) Gilman Roberts was born on 21 December 1937 in Westport, Connecticut, as the son..Read More

04 Oct 1968

Thomas Osborne (personal computer)

The funny thing is that the first “personal computer” in the world was (in fact) a calculator. It seems the earliest documented use of the term personal computer was in the 4 October 1968, issue of Science (Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of..Read More