- 350 millions years ago to 1000 B.C. Numerous mechanical and conceptual developments enabled counting and calculation. For example, the word "calculate" comes from the Latin word for pebble. The most important development during this time period was not a thing but a concept that life could be improved and advantage gained by recalling things, remembering and using a set sequence of things and inventing a better sequence. This is the original meaning of calculate, and is still used today when the fictional literature refers to the phrase, "a calculating person."
- 1000 BC to 500 BC.
(technology to support mathematics
begins)
The first portable counting mechanism was the abacus. Some claim it originated with the Chinese, but most scholars argue that it was invented by the Babylonians (Encyclopædia Britannica). The concept was first implemented with pebbles and sand or dust on a rock, hence its origins in the Phoenician word abak or sand. Of course if it was a windy day, you couldn't calculate the big figures. As the technology of that period improved, carrying a bag of pebbles, waiting for the right weather, then finding a nice pile of dust or sand and then placing a design on it was no longer necessary. The early Roman abacus (picture) to the right created a permanent sand pile grid, the clay tablet. This development led to something better to deal with the problem of easy to lose and displace pebbles. This tablet technology was improved on by putting the pebbles on a string or rod. This design put a number of thinking functions into one highly portable device where they could not get lost and made it easy to quickly move things to the beginning of the sequence. This was the first handheld computer. See thousands of images of different abacus models using Google image search for abacus. 
- 1500s AD: Leonardo da Vinci's designs a Mechanical Calculator (picture ; Google images)
- 1600s: John Napier creates Napiers Bones (multiplication tables on wood or paper) and logarithms. (picture)
- 1621: William Oughtred invents the slide rule, an early analog computer (picture ; Google images).
- 1642: Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician and philosopher, invents the first operating model of mechanical digital calculator using gears, called the Arithmetic Machine. It used addition to subtract, multiple and divide (picture).
- 1665: Robert Hooke writes in Micrographia of how our use of eye glasses suggests extensions for all senses (technology conceived to support sense of sight extended to all senses)
- 1804: Joseph Marie Jacquard used punch cards to automate a weaving loom (pictures ; Google images).
- 1812: Charles P. Babbage, the "father of the computer", discovered that many long calculations involved many similar, repeated operations. Therefore, he designed a machine, the difference engine which would be steam powered, fully automatic and commanded by a fixed instruction program. In 1833, Babbage quit working on this machine to concentrate on the analytical engine (picture ; Google images).
- 1840s: Augusta Ada is known as "the first programmer" because she suggested that a binary system should be used for storage rather than a decimal system for Babbage's designs (Google images).
- 1850s: George Boole developed Boolean logic which would later become significant to the design of computer circuitry and as a method for refining the searching of information (Google images).
- 1874: first commercial typewriter was released in 1874, having been patented in 1867 (Google images).
- 1890: Hollerith's tabulator
1890: Dr. Herman Hollerith introduced the first electromechanical, punched-card data-processing machine which was used to compile information for the 1890 U.S. census. Hollerith's tabulator became so successful that he started his own business to market it. His company would eventually become International Business Machines (IBM). (picture ; Google images) (this paper based machine represents the origin of computer database software) 
- 1906: Lee De Forest invents the vacuum tube which is used as an early form of computer memory holding the values of zero and one by being on or off (picture ; Google pictures).
- 1910: first commercial implementation of teletype or teleprinters, between New York City and Boston (pictures; Google pictures)
- 1939: Dr. John V. Atanasoff and his graduate assistant Clifford Berry build the first electronic digital computer (Google images).
- 1940: The first example of remote computing, using a teleprinter to reach across a telephone line to a computer in New Hampshire which returned answers to New York. The teleprinter is not a computer but connects with and displays interactions with the computer. (picture ; Google images).
- 1941: Konrad Zuse from Germany, introduced the first programmable computer which solved complex engineering equations. This machine, called the Z3, was also the first to work on the binary system instead of the decimal system. (Google images)
- 1947: The giant ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator) machine was developed by John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, Jr. at the University of Pennsylvania. It used 18,000 vacuum tubes, punch-card input, weighed thirty tons and occupied a thirty-by-fifty-foot space. It was only programmable by changing the wiring, not through software changes, but was productive from 1946 to 1955 and was used to compute artillery firing tables. (Google images)
- 1947: William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain of Bell Labs invented the transistor. In the next decade, vacuum tubes will be replaced by transistors for which they will receive the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956. (images ; Google images)
