A Brief History of the Computer

by John Dixon

For over a millenium, humanity has used devices for computation. One of the earliest machines that could perform arithmetic calculations was the Chinese abacus, invented about 5000 years ago. In 1623, the first mechanical calculator was invented by Wilhelm Schickard, and the computing era began. Take a nostalgic trip down memory lane and read about the people, machines, technologies, programming languages and games that defined the history of the computer.