Some say the very first piece of computer hardware was the abacus, a counting device used by the Babylonians in 500 BC. A few thousand years later, Johannes Gutenberg came up with the printing press in the year 1400. In 1502, we get the world’s first watch, and the 1600’s brought many inventions which helped us add, subtract, multiply and divide mechanically. The 1700’s brought us electricity, punch cards (used in textile looms), the telegraph and Charles Babbage, who invented the charmingly named Difference Machine.

A few of the technological advances in the 1800’s include photography, the telegraph, a calculating machine, the typewriter, phonograph, microphone, liquid crystal, and a rotating field motor (the technology to create and distribute AC power that we still use today). In 1896 a man named Herman Hollerith started the Tabulating Machine Company, which later became known as IBM.

The 1900’s were so jam-packed that we’ll just go with a few highlights: the first lithium battery in 1912, radio broadcasting in 1920, the first Radio Shack store in 1921, the first binary digital computers, then electronic digital computers, and, for what it’s worth, television!

After 1950 the increase in technological advances was exponential, with developments in programmable calculating machines, different kinds of tubes which could store bits of information, and basically all the parts of what have come to be the computer as we know it today. The Apple Computer Company was founded in1976, spawning their own revolution.

In the 1970’s a computer used by a typical business could fill an entire room, spitting out reams of long, specialized computer paper. Today we have the Apple iPad which is smaller than most library books, but holds a universe of information and entertainment at your fingertips. To the non-technically inclined, it’s almost as if the history of computer development has gone from mechanics and electronics right into the realm of magic. But to the brilliant developers all along the way, it’s just been hard work and hardware, one step at a time.