Today's computers would not be possible without the immense amount of research and development that took place from the 1940s to the 1970s. Following are the major developments of those decades chronicled in this encyclopedia.
Year Model Contribution
1938 See Z1. Programmable
1942 See ABC. Binary
1946 See ENIAC. In operation
1949 See EDSAC. Binary
1950 See SEAC. Stored program
1951 See Whirlwind. Core memory
1951 See UNIVAC I. 1st commercial success
1952 See EDVAC. Stored program
1954 See IBM 650. 1st IBM success
1955 See STRETCH. Transistors
1956 See RAMAC. 1st hard disk
1958 See SAGE. Compute & radar
1959 See IBM 1401. 2nd IBM success
1964 See System/360. Huge IBM success
1965 See PDP. 1st minicomputer
1969 See System/3. IBM midrange computer
1969 See Nova. Data General minicomputer
1976 See Series/1. 1st IBM minicomputer
1977 See VAX. Full line from Digital