Phil 101: Computing History

Read more about this topic at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

• between 205 BC – 87 BC: Antikythera Mechanism (recovered from shipwreck in 1901)
  special-purpose “analog computer” to calculate astronomical positions

• early 1300s: astronomical clocks in Europe (a bit earlier in China and Muslim world)

• early-to-mid 1880s: Charles Babbage’s Difference Engines

  • special-purpose mechanical calculators
  • v1 designed in 1822, v2 designed in 1849, construction started but never completed in his lifetime
  • similar machines were constructed a bit later by others
  • the London Science Museum built a working model of v2 in 1991

• Babbage’s Analytical Engine (more)

  • designed in 1830s, construction started but never completed
  • would be first general-purpose computer

• 1843: Ada Lovelace
  mathematician daughter of Byron; published first computer program for Babbage’s Analytical Engine

• 1930s: Work in logic by Gödel, Church, Turing, others
  Turing Machines are a form of abstract mathematical description of algorithms/programs

• 1939-early 50s: first electronic computers, using vacuum tubes (1947 transistors, 1958 integrated circuits/chips)

• 1950: Turing’s article proposing Imitation Game (Turing Test)

• 1953: Grace Hopper develops first “computer language,” becomes COBOL

• 1966: ELIZA (first “chatbot”), see links

• 1969: Unix

• 1971: email over networks

• 1974-80: first major “AI winter”

• mid 70s-early 80s: home computers

• mid 80s: internet becoming well-established

• 1987-2000: second major “AI winter”

• early 90s: World Wide Web

• 1996-8: Google started
  Social media sites begin around the same time (Facebook not until 2004)

• 1997: Deep Blue beats world chess then-champion Gary Kasparov

• 2000: smartphones (iPhone not until 2007)

• 2010s: machine learning renaissance (2018 OpenAI’s first “GPT”)

• Nov 2022: ChatGPT released, receives major hype