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The milestones of modern technology

date: 11 May 2017
reading time: 3 min

We are all aware that many devices we use and own right now, have been developed and thoroughly tested. However, which inventions marked our past the most?

Should the people who invented windmills in 600 C.E. had known that in centuries ahead people would be staring at a flat screen, they would have shaken their heads in disbelief. Yet, clicking on a mouse-looking device became our bread and butter.

So, what steps have helped us lead the lives we know now?

1950s The 1st Electronic Computer

The first commercially produced computer was built by Remington-Rand and was called ERA 1101. It was supposed to be extremely fast for its times. Inside, you could find a magnetic drum which stored up to 1 million bits of information.

1960s The development of ARPANET

The ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was the predecessor of the Internet. It was the first to use TCP/IP protocol and packet switching – the network where little chunks of data (packets) are sent multiple times via network to its destination address. ARPANET’s data transfer rate was 56 kB/s.

1980s IBM’s 1st Personal Computer

IBM PC, model number 5150, came into our market in 1981 and started the era of personal computers. It was compatible with 3 operating systems with IBM’s original BIOS. Its most basic model had 16K on-board RAM and used an audio cassette to load and save data.

1989 The invention of WWW (World Wide Web)

The WWW was created to ease the communication between scientists at universities and institutes around the world. It was founded at CERN by Tim Berners-Lee. The first WWW website described its basic features and how to use it. By 1990, its creator added other concepts – URL, HTTP, and HTML.

Late 1993 500 websites in the WWW

In 1993, the WWW became a public domain. In just a few months, it generated up to 500 servers and webpages. In 1994, the traffic increased even more – there were around 10,000 servers and 10 million users.

1998 The birth of Google

From rags to riches – Google came into existence as a students’ research project in 1996. It got patented in 1999. At that time, Google indexed around 60 million pages.

1999 The beginning of home WiFi

In that very year, WiFi was introduced to the public. Its first version was called 802.11b which allowed for a transfer rate of 11 Mbit/s. However, it worked quite decently, due to the lack of any additional mobile connected devices.

As you can see, the glorious 20th century was a time of rapid development of computerisation. Useful advancements entered the market almost each year. The examples presented above are those that were, in our opinion, the most significant. If there is anything we omitted, please feel free to tell us in the comments section below.

Source: http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/
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