IT & AI HistoryA Chronicle of AI and Information Technology

Overview · 72 events

A General History of Information Technology

An abstraction that once lived in equations migrated, decade by decade, into vacuum tubes, into silicon, into networks, into screens, and finally into the pocket. ChatGPT brought generative AI to a household scale, and from the EU AI Act through DeepSeek-R1, Stargate, and the AI-related Nobel Prizes, the late 2020s have woven geopolitics and AI into a single story. This chronicle takes the long view—lists only the era-marking events; the detailed lineages live in the genre timelines.

1940s

Across the 1940s the computer began to turn from a machine you rewired into a machine you reprogrammed through its memory. ENIAC was still set up with cables and switches for each problem, while the EDVAC draft described, in purely logical terms, a design that kept instructions and numbers in one store, and a small experimental machine at Manchester ran a program stored in electronic memory that could be rewritten. Bell Labs, meanwhile, produced both a solid-state rival to the vacuum tube and a theory that measured information in bits. ENIAC's named inventors would spend the next decade selling computers.

  1. EVT.001T1First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC — The Day the Stored Program Was Written DownA History of Semiconductors and HardwareRead more →
  2. EVT.002T1ENIAC Unveiled — The Electronic Computer You Programmed With CablesA History of Semiconductors and HardwareRead more →
  3. EVT.003T1The Point-Contact Transistor — Bell LabsA History of Semiconductors and HardwareRead more →
  4. EVT.004T1The Manchester Baby — A Program Runs Out of MemoryA History of Semiconductors and HardwareRead more →
  5. EVT.005T1A Mathematical Theory of Communication — Information Gets a UnitRead more →

1950s

In the 1950s the computer went to work outside the laboratory and gained layers that let people address it in something closer to their own notation. A US government bureau took delivery of a commercial machine; Grace Hopper ran a routine on that same machine that bound subroutines from a library into one program; IBM shipped a compiler that turned formulas into fast machine code. Disk storage let business records be reached directly rather than by winding through tape. Shannon, who had defined the bit in 1948, co-signed the proposal that named artificial intelligence, and the transistor moved onto a single piece of semiconductor as a whole circuit.

  1. EVT.006T1The Turing Test — The Paper That Turned "Can Machines Think?" into a GameA History of Artificial IntelligenceRead more →
  2. EVT.007T1UNIVAC I Accepted — The Day the Computer Became a ProductA History of Semiconductors and HardwareRead more →
  3. EVT.008T1The A-0 System — When "Compiler" Meant Something ElseA History of Programming LanguagesRead more →
  4. EVT.009T1The Dartmouth Workshop — Naming Artificial IntelligenceA History of Artificial IntelligenceRead more →
  5. EVT.010T1IBM 305 RAMAC — The First Commercial Hard Disk DriveA History of Semiconductors and HardwareA History of DatabasesRead more →
  6. EVT.011T1FORTRAN ReleasedA History of Programming LanguagesRead more →
  7. EVT.012T1The Integrated CircuitA History of Semiconductors and HardwareRead more →

1960s

The 1960s turned the computer from a single-owner tool into something shared and inherited. ALGOL 60 defined a language's syntax with a formal notation, and Simula gathered classes and inheritance into one language. IBM sold compatibility, so programs could move across a product line, and at Dartmouth BASIC and time-sharing first ran in the same moment. Engelbart showed people working through a mouse and windows with the machine and with distant colleagues. In 1969 work on UNIX began at Bell Labs and ARPANET carried its first two letters: the operating-system and network lineages that run to the present start here.

  1. EVT.013T1The ALGOL 60 Report — Defining a Language by Its GrammarA History of Programming LanguagesRead more →
  2. EVT.014T1IBM Announces System/360 — Compatibility as the ProductA History of Semiconductors and HardwareRead more →
  3. EVT.015T1BASIC First Runs at DartmouthA History of Programming LanguagesRead more →
  4. EVT.016T1Simula 67 — Classes and Inheritance Enter a Programming LanguageA History of Programming LanguagesRead more →
  5. EVT.017T1Engelbart's Demo — Ninety Minutes of Interactive ComputingA History of the Internet and the WebA History of Operating SystemsRead more →
  6. EVT.018T1The Birth of UNIX — Bell LabsA History of Operating SystemsA History of Open Source and Free SoftwareRead more →
  7. EVT.019T1ARPANET's First MessageA History of the Internet and the WebRead more →

1970s

In the 1970s ideas nurtured on mainframes and research networks shrank to the scale of one person at a desk. Bell Labs rewrote UNIX in C, making an operating system something that could be carried to other machines. Xerox PARC linked bitmapped, mouse-driven Altos by Ethernet and used them every day without ever selling one. Meanwhile a company was founded around a BASIC interpreter for the Altair, and the Apple II, with BASIC in ROM, moved from hobbyists to office desks. Diffie and Hellman showed that one key could be made public. What Apple saw at PARC would surface in the Macintosh.

  1. EVT.020T1The C Language — Dennis RitchieA History of Programming LanguagesRead more →
  2. EVT.021T1The Xerox Alto — The Machine That Was Never SoldA History of Semiconductors and HardwareA History of Operating SystemsRead more →
  3. EVT.022T1The Ethernet Memo — One Cable Through the BuildingA History of the Internet and the WebRead more →
  4. EVT.023T1The Altair 8800 — The Personal Computer That Started on a Magazine CoverA History of Semiconductors and HardwareRead more →
  5. EVT.024T1Microsoft FoundedA History of MicrosoftRead more →
  6. EVT.025T1New Directions in Cryptography — Sharing a Secret Without Delivering a KeyA History of CybersecurityA History of the Internet and the WebRead more →
  7. EVT.026T1The Apple II — A Finished Machine With Colour and SlotsA History of Semiconductors and HardwareRead more →
  8. EVT.027T1VisiCalc — The Spreadsheet That Gave People a Reason to Buy a PCA History of Semiconductors and HardwareRead more →

1980s

In the 1980s the personal computer spread as a standard rather than as one company's product. IBM built from off-the-shelf parts, published its technical references and left Microsoft free to license the operating system to others, so clone makers and MS-DOS shaped the market. The Macintosh brought PARC-style graphical interaction down to a consumer price. On the network side, ARPANET switched wholesale to TCP/IP, and NSF's academic backbone grew in sites and speed while its usage policy kept commercial traffic out. In 1989 a hypertext proposal circulated at CERN. PCs, networks and documents would meet in the next decade.

  1. EVT.028T1The Birth of MS-DOS — PC DOS 1.0 and the IBM PCA History of Operating SystemsA History of MicrosoftRead more →
  2. EVT.029T1The IBM Personal Computer 5150 — An Open Design and the Market It LostA History of Semiconductors and HardwareRead more →
  3. EVT.030T1NEC PC-9801 — The 16-Bit Machine That Became Japan's Standard PCA History of Semiconductors and HardwareRead more →
  4. EVT.031T1The Switch to TCP/IP — 'Flag Day'A History of the Internet and the WebRead more →
  5. EVT.032T1The Macintosh — The GUI Goes MainstreamA History of Operating SystemsRead more →
  6. EVT.033T1NSFNET — The Decade in Which a Research Network Became the Public InternetA History of the Internet and the WebRead more →
  7. EVT.034T1The World Wide Web Proposed — CERNA History of the Internet and the WebRead more →

1990s

In the 1990s networks and documents that had belonged to researchers opened to everyone. Mosaic, which set images inside the text, put the Web in front of ordinary users, and in 1995 the NSFNET backbone was switched off. The same year Windows 95 drew midnight queues for an operating system. As the Web swelled, Google entered search by weighing pages through the links between them. Linux, begun as a student's hobby, grew under the GPL with contributions from around the world. Deep Blue beat the world champion mainly through search and a largely hand-tuned evaluation; learning would take centre stage in the 2010s.

  1. EVT.035T1Linux — Linus Torvalds' 21-Year-Old AnnouncementA History of Operating SystemsA History of Open Source and Free SoftwareRead more →
  2. EVT.036T1NCSA Mosaic — A Web Browser That Showed ImagesA History of the Internet and the WebA History of Open Source and Free SoftwareRead more →
  3. EVT.037T1Windows 95 ReleasedA History of Operating SystemsA History of MicrosoftRead more →
  4. EVT.038T1Deep Blue Defeats Garry KasparovA History of Artificial IntelligenceRead more →
  5. EVT.039T1Google FoundedA History of the Internet and the WebA History of Search EnginesRead more →

2000s

Three events in the 2000s rearranged where computing lives and how people reach it. Amazon began renting out infrastructure it had built for its own retail business, with no upfront payment and metered prices. The iPhone dropped the physical keyboard and put a touch screen at the centre of the phone. A year later Android supplied a Linux-kernel operating system to handset makers, the opposite of Apple's approach. The UNIX lineage begun in 1969 runs inside both camps, through OS X on one side and Linux on the other. In the next decade Microsoft would shift its own weight toward the cloud.

  1. EVT.040T1The Y2K Problem — Two-Digit Years and a Worldwide FixA History of Programming LanguagesRead more →
  2. EVT.041T1The Dot-Com Bubble Peaks and Bursts — NASDAQ 5,048.62A History of the Internet and the WebRead more →
  3. EVT.042T1Amazon S3 Launches — AWS's Cloud Begins with StorageA History of Cloud ComputingRead more →
  4. EVT.043T1The Original iPhone Goes on SaleA History of the iPhoneA History of Operating SystemsA History of Mobile Phones and SmartphonesRead more →
  5. EVT.044T1Android 1.0 and the HTC DreamA History of Operating SystemsA History of Mobile Phones and SmartphonesRead more →

2010s

The 2010s were the decade in which teaching computers to learn began to produce visible results. At the 2012 image-recognition challenge a convolutional network trained on two NVIDIA GPUs finished far ahead of conventional methods, and in 2016 AlphaGo, combining tree search with deep reinforcement learning, beat Lee Sedol at Go. Set beside Deep Blue's 1997 search with hand-tuned evaluation, the direction of change is plain. Meanwhile Microsoft under Nadella moved its weight from Windows toward the cloud and, from 2019, put large sums into OpenAI. One of AlexNet's authors and the maker of its GPUs would both return to the headlines in the 2020s.

  1. EVT.045T1AlexNet — The Deep-Learning Era BeginsA History of Artificial IntelligenceA History of Semiconductors and HardwareRead more →
  2. EVT.046T1Satya Nadella Becomes CEO of MicrosoftA History of MicrosoftRead more →
  3. EVT.047T1AlphaGo Defeats Lee SedolA History of Artificial IntelligenceRead more →

2020s

In the 2020s generative AI became an everyday tool and, at the same moment, a matter of state. Within a few years of ChatGPT's release, US executive policy on AI was signed, revoked and turned inside out, and the EU adopted a comprehensive law. NVIDIA, whose cards had trained AlexNet, briefly topped every other listed company by market value; a shut nuclear unit was slated to restart under a power deal with Microsoft; the US government became an Intel shareholder. An open-weight Chinese model built on export-limited GPUs, an order cutting foreign access to two named models, and the TikTok joint venture show technology and geopolitics woven together.

  1. EVT.048T1PlayStation 5 ReleasedA History of Game Consoles and Game TechnologyRead more →
  2. EVT.049T1Elon Musk Acquires Twitter for US$44 BillionA History of the Internet and the WebA History of Social MediaRead more →
  3. EVT.050T1ChatGPT LaunchedA History of Artificial IntelligenceAI and Society: A HistoryRead more →
  4. EVT.051T1The 2023 Tech Layoffs — The Month a Decade of Hiring EndedAI and Jobs: A HistoryRead more →
  5. EVT.052T1Anthropic Releases Claude — A Safety-First Rival LLMA History of Artificial IntelligenceRead more →
  6. EVT.053T1Geoffrey Hinton Leaves Google to Warn About AI's DangersA History of Artificial IntelligenceAI and Society: A HistoryRead more →
  7. EVT.054T1Biden's Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AIA History of Artificial IntelligenceAI and Society: A HistoryRead more →
  8. EVT.055T1The OpenAI Coup — Altman Fired, Reinstated in Five DaysA History of Artificial IntelligenceRead more →
  9. EVT.056T1AI Goes to War — OpenAI Policy Reversal and the Anthropic-Palantir-AWS PactA History of Artificial IntelligenceAI and Society: A HistoryRead more →
  10. EVT.057T1EU AI Act Adopted — The EU's Comprehensive AI RegulationA History of Artificial IntelligenceAI and Society: A HistoryRead more →
  11. EVT.058T1NVIDIA Briefly Becomes the World's Most Valuable CompanyA History of Semiconductors and HardwareRead more →
  12. EVT.059T1The CrowdStrike Falcon Outage — The Largest IT Outage in HistoryA History of Cloud ComputingA History of CybersecurityRead more →
  13. EVT.060T1The Three Mile Island Unit 1 Restart Deal — Data Centres Call a Reactor BackA History of Artificial IntelligenceAI and Society: A HistoryA History of Cloud ComputingRead more →
  14. EVT.061T1Nobel Prizes for AI — Physics and Chemistry in the Same WeekA History of Artificial IntelligenceAI in Medicine: A HistoryRead more →
  15. EVT.062T1The DeepSeek-R1 Shock — A Low-Cost Chinese Reasoning Model Rocks the MarketA History of Artificial IntelligenceRead more →
  16. EVT.063T1The Trump AI Pivot — Biden's Order Rescinded, Stargate's $500 Billion PledgeA History of Artificial IntelligenceA History of Cloud ComputingRead more →
  17. EVT.064T1Nintendo Switch 2 ReleasedA History of Game Consoles and Game TechnologyRead more →
  18. EVT.065T1Bartz v. Anthropic — Training an LLM Is Fair Use; Stocking a Library with Pirated Books Is NotA History of Artificial IntelligenceAI and Society: A HistoryAI and Copyright: A HistoryRead more →
  19. EVT.066T1The United States Becomes an Intel Shareholder — CHIPS Act Grants Turned into EquityA History of Semiconductors and HardwareRead more →
  20. EVT.067T1Windows 10 End of SupportA History of Operating SystemsRead more →
  21. EVT.068T1OpenAI's Recapitalisation — The For-Profit Becomes a PBC, the Nonprofit Keeps ControlA History of Artificial IntelligenceRead more →
  22. EVT.069T1TikTok's US Business Passes to a Joint Venture — The Divest-or-Ban Law Actually FiresA History of Social MediaRead more →
  23. EVT.070T1A Turing Award for Quantum Information Science — Bennett and Brassard Win for 2025Read more →
  24. EVT.071T1Executive Order 14409 — 'Covered Frontier Models' and a Voluntary Pre-Release FrameworkA History of Artificial IntelligenceAI and Society: A HistoryA History of CybersecurityRead more →
  25. EVT.072T1Commerce Puts Two Anthropic Models Under Export Control — Nineteen Days DarkA History of Artificial IntelligenceAI and Society: A HistoryA History of CybersecurityRead more →