{
  "name": "Timeline of computer science",
  "description": "Key dates in the history of computer science, from Babbage to modern AI.",
  "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/",
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "attribution": "computerscience.co.uk",
  "generated": "2026-07-21T09:38:33.892Z",
  "lastReviewed": "2026-07-10",
  "sources": [
    {
      "title": "Timeline of Computer History, Computer History Museum",
      "url": "https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/"
    },
    {
      "title": "Computer, Encyclopaedia Britannica",
      "url": "https://www.britannica.com/technology/computer"
    }
  ],
  "count": 23,
  "events": [
    {
      "year": 1837,
      "id": "1837-analytical-engine",
      "era": "mechanical-computing",
      "title": "Babbage describes the Analytical Engine",
      "description": "Charles Babbage sets out the design for a general-purpose mechanical computer with a store for numbers and a mill to process them, anticipating the structure of the modern computer by more than a century.",
      "people": [
        "charles-babbage"
      ],
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1837-analytical-engine",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/mechanical-computing/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1843,
      "id": "1843-first-program",
      "era": "mechanical-computing",
      "title": "Lovelace writes the first published algorithm",
      "description": "In her notes on the Analytical Engine, Ada Lovelace includes a method for computing Bernoulli numbers, widely regarded as the first published computer program, and argues that such a machine could do more than arithmetic.",
      "people": [
        "ada-lovelace",
        "charles-babbage"
      ],
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1843-first-program",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/mechanical-computing/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1936,
      "id": "1936-turing-machine",
      "era": "foundations",
      "title": "Turing defines the universal machine",
      "description": "Alan Turing's paper \"On Computable Numbers\" introduces the Turing machine and proves that a single machine can compute anything computable, giving computer science its theoretical foundation.",
      "people": [
        "alan-turing"
      ],
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1936-turing-machine",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/foundations/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1937,
      "id": "1937-shannon-circuits",
      "era": "foundations",
      "title": "Shannon links logic to circuits",
      "description": "Claude Shannon shows that Boolean algebra can describe electrical switching circuits, establishing the basis for all digital logic design.",
      "people": [
        "claude-shannon"
      ],
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1937-shannon-circuits",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/foundations/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1943,
      "id": "1943-colossus",
      "era": "foundations",
      "title": "Colossus breaks ciphers at Bletchley Park",
      "description": "Colossus, the first programmable electronic digital computer, begins operating at Bletchley Park to break German wartime ciphers.",
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1943-colossus",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/foundations/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1945,
      "id": "1945-stored-program",
      "era": "foundations",
      "title": "Von Neumann describes the stored-program computer",
      "description": "John von Neumann's \"First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC\" sets out the stored-program architecture, in which instructions and data share the same memory, used by almost every computer built since.",
      "people": [
        "john-von-neumann"
      ],
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1945-stored-program",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/foundations/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1946,
      "id": "1946-eniac",
      "era": "foundations",
      "title": "ENIAC is unveiled",
      "description": "ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, is completed at the University of Pennsylvania and revealed to the public.",
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1946-eniac",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/foundations/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1948,
      "id": "1948-manchester-baby",
      "era": "foundations",
      "date": "1948-06-21",
      "title": "The Manchester Baby runs the first stored program",
      "description": "The Small-Scale Experimental Machine at the University of Manchester runs the world's first stored program, proving the von Neumann architecture in hardware.",
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1948-manchester-baby",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/foundations/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1950,
      "id": "1950-turing-test",
      "era": "foundations",
      "title": "Turing proposes the imitation game",
      "description": "Turing's paper \"Computing Machinery and Intelligence\" asks whether machines can think and proposes the test now known as the Turing test.",
      "people": [
        "alan-turing"
      ],
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1950-turing-test",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/foundations/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1952,
      "id": "1952-first-compiler",
      "era": "programming-languages",
      "title": "Hopper writes the first compiler",
      "description": "Grace Hopper builds the A-0 system, the first compiler, which translates symbolic instructions into machine code and opens the way to high-level programming languages.",
      "people": [
        "grace-hopper"
      ],
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1952-first-compiler",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/programming-languages/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1956,
      "id": "1956-artificial-intelligence",
      "era": "programming-languages",
      "title": "The term \"artificial intelligence\" is coined",
      "description": "The Dartmouth Summer Research Project brings together the researchers who name and launch the field of artificial intelligence.",
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1956-artificial-intelligence",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/programming-languages/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1957,
      "id": "1957-fortran",
      "era": "programming-languages",
      "title": "FORTRAN is released",
      "description": "IBM releases FORTRAN, the first widely used high-level programming language, making scientific computing accessible to non-specialists.",
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1957-fortran",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/programming-languages/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1958,
      "id": "1958-lisp",
      "era": "programming-languages",
      "title": "McCarthy designs LISP",
      "description": "John McCarthy creates LISP, a language built on recursion and symbolic processing that becomes central to artificial intelligence research.",
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1958-lisp",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/programming-languages/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1962,
      "id": "1962-first-cs-department",
      "era": "programming-languages",
      "title": "The first computer science department opens",
      "description": "Purdue University establishes the first department of computer science in the United States, marking the field's arrival as an academic discipline.",
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1962-first-cs-department",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/programming-languages/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1965,
      "id": "1965-moores-law",
      "era": "programming-languages",
      "title": "Moore states his law",
      "description": "Gordon Moore observes that the number of transistors on a chip roughly doubles every two years, a trend later named Moore's law that guides the industry for decades.",
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1965-moores-law",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/programming-languages/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1969,
      "id": "1969-arpanet",
      "era": "internet-age",
      "title": "The first message crosses ARPANET",
      "description": "ARPANET carries its first message between two university computers, laying the groundwork for the internet.",
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1969-arpanet",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/internet-age/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1970,
      "id": "1970-relational-model",
      "era": "programming-languages",
      "title": "Codd publishes the relational model",
      "description": "Edgar Codd sets out the relational model for databases, the foundation of the SQL systems that store much of the world's data.",
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1970-relational-model",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/programming-languages/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1971,
      "id": "1971-microprocessor",
      "era": "programming-languages",
      "title": "Intel ships the first microprocessor",
      "description": "The Intel 4004 puts a complete central processing unit on a single chip, starting the microprocessor era that leads to the personal computer.",
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1971-microprocessor",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/programming-languages/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1972,
      "id": "1972-c-language",
      "era": "programming-languages",
      "title": "Ritchie creates the C language",
      "description": "Dennis Ritchie develops C at Bell Labs. It becomes the language of operating systems and the ancestor of much of modern programming.",
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1972-c-language",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/programming-languages/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1983,
      "id": "1983-tcp-ip",
      "era": "internet-age",
      "date": "1983-01-01",
      "title": "The internet adopts TCP/IP",
      "description": "ARPANET switches to the TCP/IP protocol suite, the moment often cited as the birth of the modern internet.",
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1983-tcp-ip",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/internet-age/"
    },
    {
      "year": 1989,
      "id": "1989-world-wide-web",
      "era": "internet-age",
      "title": "Berners-Lee proposes the World Wide Web",
      "description": "Tim Berners-Lee proposes the World Wide Web at CERN. The first website goes live in 1991 and the web soon reaches the public.",
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#1989-world-wide-web",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/internet-age/"
    },
    {
      "year": 2012,
      "id": "2012-deep-learning",
      "era": "internet-age",
      "title": "Deep learning breaks through",
      "description": "A neural network named AlexNet wins the ImageNet image-recognition competition by a wide margin, setting off the deep learning revolution in artificial intelligence.",
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#2012-deep-learning",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/internet-age/"
    },
    {
      "year": 2017,
      "id": "2017-transformer",
      "era": "internet-age",
      "title": "The transformer arrives",
      "description": "The paper \"Attention Is All You Need\" introduces the transformer architecture, which underpins the large language models that follow.",
      "url": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/timeline/#2017-transformer",
      "eraUrl": "https://computerscience.co.uk/history/internet-age/"
    }
  ]
}