History of Computing and Technology Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering key milestones, historical figures, and landmark technologies in the history of computing.

Salamis Tablet

An early calculating tool invented between 300-500 CE that originated in Greece.

Abacus

A hand-held wooden device with rows of beads originating in ancient Rome around 500 CE that enabled vendors and tax collectors to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.

Blaise Pascal

A French mathematician and philosopher who invented the Pascaline, a mechanical digital calculator, in 1642.

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz

A mathematician who designed a calculating machine in 1663 and was the founder of the binary system.

Charles Babbage

The designer who created the first automatic computing engine in 1833.

Ada Lovelace

A mathematician who published a translated article on the Analytical Engine in 1843 and is widely referred to as the first Programmer.

Herman Hollerith

The inventor who introduced the first electromechanical punched card data machine in 1890 for the U.S. Census and founded IBM in 1924.

Dr. John V. Atanasoff and Clifford Berry

Engineers who built the first electronic digital computer in 1939, laying the foundation for future digital computing advances.

Konrad Zuse

The inventor who introduced the Z3 in 1941, recognized as the first programmable fully automatic computer.

ENIAC

Standing for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, built between 1943-1945 as the first large-scale computer to run at electronic speed without mechanical delay.

Colossus

A WWII computer system developed to help break German codes and mark the beginning of the computer age.

UNIVAC 1

A computer designed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly in 1951, which went online for the U.S. Government Census Bureau.

Integrated Circuit (Microchip)

First manufactured in 1959 by Jack St. Clair Kilby and Robert Noyce of Texas Instruments (founders of Intel), enabling personal computers and mobile devices.

Ken Olsen

Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation who introduced the first minicomputer in 1963.

Altair

The first commercially successful personal computer, designed in 1975 by Ed Roberts using the Intel 8080 processor.

Adam Osborne

The creator who completed the Osborne I in 1981, known as the first portable computer weighing 24 pounds and costing $1,795.

Commodore 64

An 8-bit home computer introduced in 1982, recognized by the 2006 Guinness Book of World Records as the single greatest selling computer model of all time.

Macintosh

A personal computer launched by Apple Computer in 1984, recognized as the first successful mouse-driven computer.

Tim Berners-Lee

The developer who created HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) during the birth of the World Wide Web in 1990.

Marc Andreessen

The software engineer who developed Mosaic, one of the earliest graphical web browsers.

Yahoo

An internet services company founded in 1994 by David Filo and Jerry Yang.

eBay

An online auction and shopping website founded in 1996 by Jeff Skoll and Pierre Omidyar.

Google

A search engine developed in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

Mark Zuckerberg

The founder who launched Facebook at Harvard University in 2004.

OpenAI

An artificial intelligence research laboratory that published research in 2018 and released ChatGPT in 2020.