Some people consider this frame with beads strung on wires to be the first true computing aid.
What is the abacus?
100
This electronic device worked very similar to a light bulb and could take very weak signals and make them stronger and also start and stop the flow of electricity instantly.
What is a vacuum tube?
100
Three scientists working at AT&T's Bell Labs invented this electronic device that replaced the vacuum tube.
What is the transistor?
100
This electronic device packs a huge number of transistors onto a single chip.
What is the integrated circuit?
100
This single chip could do all the processing of a full-scale computer.
What is a microprocessor?
200
This French government official built an adding and subtracting machine in 1642 that could figure taxes. In his honor, a computer programming language was named for him.
Who is Pascal?
200
This first generation computer built by Eckert and Mauchly used thousands of vacuum tubes, was 100 feet long and 10 feet tall, and generated a tremendous amount of heat.
What is ENIAC?
200
These are five advantages transistors had over vacuum tubes.
What is faster, more reliable, smaller, cheaper to build, and no heat.
200
This element is the principal component of most integrated circuits.
What is silicon?
200
One of the first personal computers, it was purchased as a do-it-yourself kit.
What is the Altair 8800?
300
This mathematician's idea for the Analytical Engine is amazingly similar to the computers we know today. He is known as the Father of Computers.
Who is Charles Babbage?
300
This computer's concept of storing different programs on punched cards instead of rewiring computers for different tasks led to the computers that we know today.
What is EDVAC?
300
One of these replaced 40 vacuum tubes.
What is the transistor?
300
Jack Kilby of this company was one of the first to develop the computer chip.
What is Texas Instruments?
300
Tim Berners-Lee's work led to the explosion of this.
What is the World Wide Web?
400
Herman Hollerith formed the Tabulating Machine Company in 1896. It was later sold and became this multinational computer and technology corporation.
What is IBM?
400
This first commercially available computer was used by the U.S. Census Bureau.
What is the UNIVAC?
400
The first computer game.
What is Space War?
400
This "Grandfather to the Internet" was created by MIT and the US Department of Defense.
What is ARPANET?
400
These inventors and entrepreneurs founded the Apple company.
Who are Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak?
500
In 1944, Howard Aiken built what is considered to be the first computer. It contained over 500 miles of wire and 750,000 parts.
What is the Mark I?
500
It was this creative mathematician who began the practice of storing data and instructions in binary code.
Who is John Von Neumann?
500
Before this code for information exchange between computers was developed in the 1960's, different computers had no way to communicate with one another.
What is ASCII?
500
These are three improvements made to computers in the 3rd generation by the use of integrated circuits.
What is increased power, lowered cost, and miniaturization.
500
This region in northern California is the site of many of the most important modern computer innovations and is home to many of the world's largest technology companies.