| 1876 - 1924 |
| |
1876
|
Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone,
and obtains one of the most valuable patents in history |
|
1882
|
William S. Burroughs
leaves his job at a bank to pursue the invention of an accurate
and efficient adding machine. |
Tabulating Machine - IBM Corporate Archives
|
1889
|
Herman Hollerith patents his Tabulating
Machine, which is used to expedite the processing of census data
in 1890.
|
| |
1895
|
Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi sends
and receives his first radio signal, demonstrating the feasibility
of wireless communication |
Courtesy of Douglas W. Jones at the University
of Iowa
|
1901
|
The keypunch, which cuts holes or notches
in a punch card, emerges in the form it remains for the next 50
years.
|
| |
1904
|
John A. Fleming builds on Thomas Edison's
work, and invents the diode vacuum tube, which converts AC signals
to DC signals. |
|
1906
|
The National Electrical
Signaling Company's radio station in Massachusetts hosts the first
broadcasted radio program of speech and music on Christmas Eve
|
|
1911
|
The Calculating, Tabulating,
and Recording Company (CTR) is established |
Getty Images/ PhotoDisk 2003
|
1915
|
Physicist Manson Benedicks discovers
that AC can be converted to DC using the germanium crystal, providing
basis for microchips
|
| |
1919
|
W.H. Eccles and F. W. Jordan invent
the electronic trigger circuit, or today's flip-flop switching
circuit. |
|
1920-1921
|
Playwright Karl Capek introduces the
word "robot" in his work "Rossum's Universal Robots." |
IBM Corporate Archives
|
1924
|
The Calculating, Tabulating, and Recording
Company is renamed by T.J. Watson to International Business Machines,
or IBM
|
