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From Gutenberg to the Internet Timeline An Annotated Chronology of the History of Information from about 30,000 B.C.E. to the present, by Jeremy M. Norman. |
| 1920194019501960 |
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1957 |
The Burroughs “Atlas Guidance” computer is used to control the launch of the Atlas missile. It is one of the first computers to use transistors. |
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IBM phases out vacuum tubes in computer design: “It shall be the policy of IBM to use solid-state circuitry in all machine developments. Furthermore, no new commercial machines or devices shall be announced which make primary use of tube circuitry.” |
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EDSAC 2, the first large-scale computer with a control unit based on microprogramming, becomes operational in Cambridge, England. |
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The first SAGE AN/FSQ7 is operational for the SAGE Air Defense System on a limited basis. The system allows online access, in graphical form, to data transmitted to and processed by its computers. Fully deployed by 1963, the IBM-built early warning system will remain operational until 1984. With 23 direction centers situated on the nation’s northern, eastern, and western boundaries, SAGE pioneers the use of computer control over large, geographically distributed systems. |
| Hans Peter Luhn of IBM publishes A Statistical Approach to Mechanized Encoding of Library Information. | |
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Commercial transistorized computers, including the UNIVAC Solid State 80 and the Philco TRANSAC S-2000, are introduced. These inaugurate the so-called second generation of electronic computers. |
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Hopper writes the first English-language data-processing compiler, B-0 (FLOW-MATIC) for the UNIVAC II. |
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John Backus and his team at IBM ship FORTRAN for the IBM 704. This software is proprietary to IBM. It becomes the first high-level programming language to achieve high use. |
February 8 |
John von Neumann dies at the age of fifty-four. |
September |
Crick delivers his paper “On Protein Synthesis,” published in Symp. Soc. Exp. Biol. 12 (1958): 138-63. In it Crick proposes two general principles: 1) The Sequence Hypothesis: “The order of bases in a portion of DNA represents a code for the amino acid sequence of a specific protein. Each ‘word’ in the code would name a specific amino acid. From the two-dimensional genetic text, written in DNA, are forced the whole diversity of uniquely shaped three-dimensional proteins” (gnn.tigr.org.timeline), and 2) The Central Dogma: “Information is transmitted from DNA and RNA to proteins but information cannot be transmitted from a protein to DNA.” This paper “permanently altered the logic of biology.” (Judson) |
October 4 |
The Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite. |
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| 1920194019501960 |
(This page was last revised on
January 24, 2006. Please report errors
and broken links to jnorman@jnorman.com.) |
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