From Cave Paintings to the Internet A Chronological and Thematic Database on the History of Information and Media Software Outline

The First Programmable Machine & the Earliest Known Mechanical Musical Instrument
(850)

The Analytical Engine
(1834)

Poe Writes Maelzel's Chess Player
(April 1836)

The First Published Computer Programs
(1842)

Translated and Augmented by Lord Byron's Daughter
(1843)

The Most Complete Work on Babbage's Computers
(1889)

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

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

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

The ENIAC is Operational
(Circa May 1945)

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

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

Turing's ACE
(Circa October 1945)

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

Among the Earliest Published Examples of Computer Programs
(1946)

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

Earliest Work Leading toward Machine Translation
(1947)

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

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

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

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

"Intelligent Machinery"
(July – August 1948)

Alan Turing, Chief Programmer
(September 1948)

Hopper Joins Eckert-Mauchly
(1949)

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

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)

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 First Treatise on Software for an Operational Stored-Program Computer
(1950)

The Hamming Codes
(1950)

The First Technical Paper on Computer Chess
(March 1950)

Maurice Wilkes Introduces Microprogamming
(July 9 – July 12, 1951)

The First Demonstration of Computer Music
(August 7 – August 9, 1951)

First Stored-Program Computer to Run Business Programs on a Routine Basis
(November 17, 1951)

The First Compiler
(1952)

"The Education of a Computer"
(1952)

UNIVAC Short Code II
(October 24, 1952)

First Computer to be Sold to a Non-Governmental Customer in the U.S.
(1954)

The First High-Level Algebraic Language
(1954)

Grace Hopper Organizes the First Symposium on Software
(May 13 – May 14, 1954)

The First Artificial Intelligence Program
(July 1956)

Control Unit Based on Microprogramming
(1957)

The First English-Language Data-Processing Compiler
(1957)

FORTRAN: The First High-Level Programming Language to Achieve High Use
(1957)

Automatic Document Indexing Program
(1958)

The Term "Software" Coined
(January 9, 1958)

COBOL
(May 28 – May 29, 1959)

Pioneering Computer-Assisted Legal Research
(1960)

"Computer Graphics"
(1960)

LISP
(1960)

The First Software Patent
(1960 – November 20, 1968)

The First Published Report on COBOL
(April 1960)

COBOL Allows Compatibility Between Computers Made by Different Manufacturers
(December 6 – December 7, 1960)

Special-Purpose Typesetting Computer
(1961)

Precursor of Word Processing and Email
(1961)

First of the "Ten Greatest Software Bugs of All Time"
(July 28, 1962)

The First CAD Program
(December 1962)

ASCII is Promulgated
(1963)

The First Graphical User Interface
(1963)

The First Online Reservation System
(1964)

BASIC
(1964)

The Beginning of "Word Processing"
(1964)

Origins of Automated Facial Recognition
(1964 – 1966)

The IBM System/360 Family
(April 7, 1964)

TYPESET and RUNOFF: Text Formatting Program and Forerunner of Word Processors
(November 6, 1964)

Email Begins
(1965)

Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Hyperlink
(1965)

The U.S. Postal Services Introduces OCR
(1965)

Programming Language for Education and Games
(1965 – 1969)

The Cooley-Tukey FFT Algorithm
(April 1965)

Memory Caching
(April 1965)

The First "Actual Network Experiment"
(October 1965)

A Computer-Assisted Full-Text Inventory System
(1966)

Lockheed's DIALOG
(1966)

An Experiment in Packet Switching
(1967)

The First Hypertext Editing System
(1967)

The Museum Computer Network
(1967)

The Viterbi Algorithm
(1967)

Introduction of the Term "Packet"
(October 1967)

Unbundling Gives Rise to the Software and Services Industry
(1968)

Software Engineering
(October 7 – October 11, 1968)

Hypertext, Text Editing, Windows, Email and a Mouse
(December 8, 1968)

UNIX: Making Open Systems Possible
(1969)

Generalized Markup Language is Introduced
(Circa 1969)

Peer to Peer Architecture
(April 7, 1969)

Xerox PARC
(1970)

The Definitive Model for Relational Database Management Systems
(June 1970)

Speech Recognition Technology
(1971)

The C Programming Language
(1971)

The First Computer Virus
(1971)

Gouraud Shading Method for Polygon Smoothing
(June 1971)

The First Email Management Program
(July 1971)

Editing Terminals for Newspapers
(1973)

CP/M
(1973 – 1974)

Systems Network Architecture
(1974)

SQL
(1974)

Virtual Machines
(1974)

The First Omni-Font Optical Character Recognition System
(1974)

SGML is Invented
(1974)

TCP
(May 1974)

First Computer Language Written for a Personal Computer
(1975)

Ethernet
(1975)

The Roots of the PostScript Page Description Language
(1975 – 1978)

The First Computer Text Adventure Game
(1975 – 1976)

The Warez Scene
(Circa 1975)

"The Mythical Man-Month"
(1975)

The First Word Processing Program for a Personal Computer
(1976)

First Print-to-Speech Reading Machine
(1976)

The First Journal on Software for Personal Computers
(January 1976)

An Open Letter to Hobbyists
(February 3, 1976)

First CRT Based Word Processor
(June 1976)

TCP/IP
(July 1976)

Ellison Founds Software Development Laboratories
(1977)

Gates and Allen Found Microsoft
(1977)

Inaugurating the Concept of Office Automation
(1977)

Zork
(1977 – 1979)

dBase
(1978)

The First Computer Worm
(1978)

The First Dial-UP CBBS
(February 16, 1978)

The First Spreadsheet Program
(1979)

Robert Metcalf Founds 3Com
(1979)

The First Widely Used Music Scheduling System
(1979)

The First Graphical Computer Adventure Game
(1979 – 1980)

QDOS becomes Microsoft PC-DOS
(December 1980)

The First Commercially Successful Portable Computer
(1981)

CSNET
(1981)

The First Dance Notation Software
(1981)

Quick and Dirty Operating System Becomes MS-DOS
(July 1981)

The IBM PC
(August 12, 1981)

Lotus Development Corporation is Founded
(1982)

IBM DB2
(1982)

TCP/IP as the Basis for ARPANET
(1982)

The First Computer Virus Spread by Floppy Disk
(1982)

The First Cheap Home Computer
(August 1982)

Foundation of Adobe Systems
(December 1982)

Oracle Corporation
(1983)

Keyboarding over 350,000,000 Characters
(1983)

Early Form of Digital Rights Management
(1983)

The First "Killer App" for the PC
(January 1983)

ARPANET Requires TCP/IP
(January 1, 1983)

Microsoft Word
(September 1983)

Free Software
(September 23, 1983)

Domain Name System
(November 1983)

Coining the Term Computer Virus
(November 10, 1983)

The First Desktop Publishing Program
(1984)

The First Scalable Type Fonts
(1984)

Groupware
(December 7, 1984)

The GNU Manifesto
(1985)

The First Laserprinter for a Microcomputer
(January 1985)

Origins of AOL
(May 1, 1985)

The First Widely-Used Desktop Publishing Program
(July 1985)

The Free Software Foundation
(October 1985)

Windows 1.0
(November 20, 1985)

SGML
(1986)

First PC Virus Epidemic
(January 1986)

The First IBM PC Compatible Virus
(January 1986)

SGML Standard is Accepted
(October 1986)

Forerunner of Photoshop
(1987)

One of the First Successful Hypermedia Systems Before the Web
(1987)

The First Commercial Network-Based Groupware Program
(1988)

The First Computer Worm to Attract Wide Attention
(November 2, 1988)

The First Web Page
(November 13, 1990)

The First Web Browser and Web Server
(December 25, 1990)

The PDF
(1991)

TrueType Fonts
(1991)

The Beginning of the Linux Open-Source Operating System
(April – August 26, 1991)

Berners-Lee Makes Web Server and Web Browser Software Available at No Cost
(August 6, 1991)

The Mosaic Web Browser
(March 4, 1993)

The First Tablet Computer with Wireless Connectivity
(April 1993)

The First Graphics-Based Web Browser
(April 22, 1993)

CERN Releases Rights to World Wide Web Software
(April 30, 1993)

The First Web Search Engine?
(November 30, 1993)

HTTP Packets Surpass FTP Traffic
(1994)

The First Company to Exploit the Economic Potential of the Web
(April 4, 1994)

The First Full Text Web Search Engine
(April 20, 1994)

HTTP Cookies
(June 1994)

The First Web Analytics Vendor
(June 1994)

The First Commercially Available Web Browser
(October 13, 1994)

PlayStation
(December 3, 1994)

The First Web Page Tagging System
(1995)

Apache HTTP Server is Released
(April 1995)

The Beginning of the "Dot-Com Bubble"
(August 9, 1995)

The IBM DB2 Universal Database
(1996)

Speech Recognition Technology from 6,700 Characters
(1996)

A Search Engine Initially Called "BackRub"
(January 1996)

The First Web Analyzer with Drill-Down and Ad-Hoc Analysis
(1997)

W3C Releases XML
(1998)

A New Kind of National Information Infrastructure
(March 1998)

Bluetooth
(1999)

Xbox
(November 15, 2001)

BitTorrent
(September 22, 2004)

Over 102 Million Units Shipped
(March 31, 2005)

The Amazon Mechanical Turk
(November 2, 2005)

Making Handwritten Manuscripts Searchable
(February 9, 2006)

Photosynth Demonstrated
(March 2007)

DROID
(September 27, 2007)

The iTunes App Store Opens
(July 10, 2008)

The First Android-Powered Phone
(September 23, 2008)

More than 200,000,000 Apps Downloaded
(October 21, 2008)

27-55% of All Internet Traffic
(February 2009)

Reinventing Email and Internet Communication
(May 28, 2009)

Piracy of Internet Filtering Software?
(June 13, 2009)

More than 2 Billion Downloads
(November 4, 2009)

3 Billion iPhone and iPod Apps Have Been Downloaded
(January 5, 2010)

Exploit Code for Attacks on Google Released on the Internet
(January 15, 2010)