The pre-history of computers. The first computer was the abacus which was first developed in 2800 B.C. It was the zenith of calculating technology until the 1st century. In the early 1600’s, John Napier invented the Napier’s bones which were multiplication tables inscribe on wood. He also invented logarithms. In 1621 William Oughtred used Napier’s logarithms as the basis for his invention, the slide rule. In 1642, Blaise Pascal developed the “Pascaline.” 1694 when Gottfried Leibnitz invented the “stepped reckoner.” Theoretically this machine could handle the four arithmetic functions, had delayed carrying device, and contained the stepped drum principle, which 150 years later was used in the first commercially successful calculator. In the 1700’s man
y calculators emerged. It was in the 1800’s when things started to happen. Joseph Jacquard invented the “jacquard loom.” Charles Babbage, also known as the father of computing, contributed to the basic design of the computer through his analytic machine. In 1867 the first typewriter was developed
in April 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft (which was to achieve a certain notoriety over the coming years), and in July of that year, MITS announced the availability of BASIC 2.0 on the Altair 8800. This BASIC interpreter, which was written by Gates and Allen, was the first reasonably high-level computer language program to be made available on a home computer.
When home computers first began to appear, existing manufacturers of large computers t
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