The Innovators: How A Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution -- Walter Isaacson, 2014.

The Innovators: How A Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution -- Walter Isaacson, 2014.

Now that I've read several books on semiconductors, development of the computer, now it's fun to go back and look again at the time line Isaacson provided with thumbnail photos:
1843: Ada, Countess of Lovelace, publishes "Notes" on Babbage's Analytical Engine
1847: George Boole
1890: Herman Hollerith -- census tabulated on his punch-card machines
 

Then, look at this long jump:

Things don't happen overnight. It would be interesting to connect dots from 1929, the huge crash, and then how the early 30's played out.

1931: Vannevar Bush -- devises the Differential Analyzer, an analog electromechanical computer

1935: Tommy Flowers -- pioneers use of vacuum tubes (VALVES) as on-off switches in circuits.

 1937: pivotal year -- Alan Turing publishes On Computable Numbers.

1937: Claude Shannon -- describes how circuits of switches can perform tasks of Boolean algebra.

11937: Howard Aiken proposes constrution of large digital computer and discovers parts of Babbage's Difference Engine at Harvard.

1937: John Vincent Atansasoff puts together concepts for an electronic computer during a long December night's drive.

1938: William Hewlett and David Packard form company in Palo Alto garage. 

MEMO to self: look at Stanford University history. Wiki here. Founded 1885, first students admitted 1891. Following World War II, university provost Frederick Terman inspired an entrepreneurial culture to build a self-sufficient local industry (later Silicon Valley). In 1951, Stanford Research Park was established in Palo Alto as the world's first university research park.

1939: Atanasoff finishes model of electronic computer with mechanical storage drums.

1939: Turing arrives at Bletchley Park to wok on breaking German codes.

1941: Konrad Zuse  completes Z3, a fully functional electromechanical programmable digital computer.

1941: John Mauchly visits Atanasoff in Iowa, see computer demonstrated.

 1942: Atanasoff completes partly working computer with 300 vacuum tubes, leaves for Navy.

1943: Colossus, a vacuum-tube computer to break German codes, is completed at Bletchley Park.

1944: Harvard Mark 1 goes into operation.

1944: John von Neumann goes to Penn to work on ENIAC.

1945: Von Neumann writes "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC" describing a stored-program computer.

1945: six women programmers of ENIAC are sent to Aberdeen for training.

1944: Vannevar Bush publishes "As We May Think," describing personal computer.

1945: Bush publishes "Science, the Endless Frontier," proposing government funding of academic and industrial research.

1945: ENIAC is fully operational.

1947: Transistor invented at Bell Labs. Famous photo of Shockley +2.  

1950: Turing publishes article describing a test for artificial intelligence.

1952: Grace Hopper develops first computer compiler.

1952: Von Neumann completes modern computer at the Institute for Advanced Study.

1952: UNIVAC predicts Eisehower election victory.

1954: Turing commits suicide.

1954: Texas Instruments introduces silicon transistor and helps launch Regecy radio. 

1956: Shockley Semiconductor founded. 

1956: First artificial intelligence conference.

1957: Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and others form Fairchild Semiconductor.  

1957: Russia launches Sputnik.

1958: Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) announced.

1958: Jack Kilby demonstrates integrated circuit, or microchip.

1959: Noyce and Fairchild colleagues independently invent microchip. 

1961: President Kennedy proposes sending man to the moon. 

And then several more pages through calendar year 2011.