The Digital Century

Seventies

1970 The floppy disk is introduced. Intel develops the first memory chip, which stores 1024 bits of data. Xerox establishes its Palo Alto Research Center. The daisy wheel printer appears on the market. Bell Labs develops Unix.

1971 Texas Instruments introduces the pocket calculator. Dot matrix printers appear. Niklaus Wirth develops PASCAL. The first speech-recognition software, Hearsay, is developed in India.

1972 Ray Tomlinson invents e-mail. The first home video games are designed for use on the TV, and Atari releases the first arcade game, Pong. Programmers at Bell Labs develop the computer language C.

1974 Congress passes the Privacy Act, which gives the public greater control over the collection and use of personal information.

1975 First widely marketed personal computer, the Altair 8800, debuts. Liquid crystal displays are marketed. Bob Metcalfe at Xerox develops Ethernet. The first word-processing software, the Electric Pencil, is developed. The federal government's antitrust suit against IBM goes to trial; the government will drop the case in 1982, but not before producing some 30 million pages of documentation. IBM introduces the laser printer. Microsoft, the unofficial partnership of Bill Gates and Paul Allen, achieves sales of $16,000.

1976 Data General unveils its computer chips in the navel of a belly dancer at the National Computer Conference in New York. Gary Kildall develops CP/M. IBM develops the ink jet printer. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs form Apple Computer.

1977 Bill Gates and Paul Allen officially found Microsoft. Apple introduces the Apple II, the first preassembled personal computer; the Apple II will lead the PC market until the IBM PC appears in 1981. Tandy and Commodore release PCs with built-in monitors--no need for a TV hookup.

1978 WordStar is released and quickly becomes the most popular word processing program.

1979 Steve Jobs visits Xerox PARC. Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston introduce VisiCalc ("visible calculator"), the first killer app.