Computing in five headlines

1946

On 14 February 1946, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer — ENIAC — was formally unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania, built by John Presper Eckert and John Mauchly for the US Army. Weighing 30 tonnes and occupying 167 square metres of floor space, it contained 18,000 vacuum tubes and could perform 5,000 additions per second. ENIAC is widely regarded as the first general-purpose programmable electronic digital computer and the direct ancestor of all modern computing.

1971

Ray Tomlinson, an engineer at Bolt Beranek and Newman, sent the first networked electronic mail message in late 1971, using the @ symbol to distinguish the user from the host computer. The system he developed allowed messages to be sent between different computers on ARPANET. Tomlinson later said he could not remember exactly what the first message said, but it was probably 'QWERTYUIOP' — the top row of letters on a keyboard.

1995

On 24 August 1995, Microsoft launched Windows 95, its landmark consumer operating system featuring the Start button, taskbar, and native 32-bit architecture, to extraordinary public fanfare. Customers queued overnight outside computer stores across the United States, Britain, and Australia, and the launch was accompanied by a marketing campaign that licensed the Rolling Stones' Start Me Up. Windows 95 introduced millions of ordinary users to the personal computer and laid the groundwork for the browser-based internet era.

1997

In May 1997, IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game rematch, winning two games, drawing three, and losing one. It was the first time a reigning world chess champion had been beaten by a computer under standard tournament conditions. The match was seen as a landmark moment in the history of artificial intelligence and sparked widespread debate about machine intelligence.

2022

OpenAI launched ChatGPT on 30 November 2022, releasing to the public a large language model capable of generating remarkably fluent and coherent text on almost any subject. The chatbot reached one million users within five days and 100 million users within two months, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history. ChatGPT's capabilities ignited a global debate about the future of artificial intelligence, education, creative work and employment.