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@ -24,16 +24,27 @@ In 1792 Clause Chappe invented **[optical telegraph](optical_telegraph.md)**, al
By 1800 Alessandro Volta invented an **electric battery**. In 1827 André-Marie Ampère publishes a further work shedding light on [electromagnetism](electromagneticm.md). After this **[electric telegraph](telegraph.md)** would be worked on and improved by several people and eventually made to work in practice. In 1821 Michael Faraday invented the **[electromotor](electromotor.md)**. Georg Ohm and especially [James Maxwell](maxwell.md) would subsequently push the knowledge of electricity even further.
In 1822 [Charles Babbage](charles_babbage.md), a great English mathematician, completed the first version of a manually powered **[digital](digital.md) mechanical computer** called the Difference engine to help with the computation of [polynomial](polynomial.md) [derivatives](derivative.md) to create mathematical tables used e.g. in navigation. It was met with success and further development was funded by the government, however difficulties of the construction never led to finishing the whole project. In 1837 Babbage designed a new machine, this time a **[Turing complete](turing_complete.md) general purpose computer**, i.e. allowing for programming with branches and loops, a true marvel of technology. It also ended up not being built completely, but it showed a lot about what computers would be, e.g. it had an [assembly](assembly.md) programming language, memory etc. For this computer [Ada Lovelace](ada_lovelace.md) would famously write the Bernoulli number algorithm.
In 1822 [Charles Babbage](charles_babbage.md), a great English mathematician, completed the first version of a manually powered **[digital](digital.md) mechanical computer** called the Difference Engine to help with the computation of [polynomial](polynomial.md) [derivatives](derivative.md) to create mathematical tables used e.g. in navigation. It was met with success and further development was funded by the government, however difficulties of the construction led to never finishing the whole project. In 1837 Babbage designed a new machine, this time a **[Turing complete](turing_complete.md) general purpose computer**, i.e. allowing for programming with branches and loops, a true marvel of technology. It also ended up not being built completely, but it showed a lot about what computers would be, e.g. it had an [assembly](assembly.md)-like programming language, memory etc. For this computer [Ada Lovelace](ada_lovelace.md) would famously write the Bernoulli number algorithm.
1895 can roughly be seen as the year of **invention of radio**, specifically wireless [telegraph](telegraph.md), by Italian engineer and inventor Guglielmo Marconi. He built on top of work of others such as [Hertz](hertz.md) and [Tesla](tesla.md) and created a device with which he was able to wirelessly ring a bell at a distance over 2 km.
On December 17 1903 the Wright brothers famously performed the **first controlled flight of a motor airplane** which they built, in North Carolina. In repeated attempts they flew as far as 61 meters over just a few seconds.
Around 1915 [Albert Einstein](einstein.md), a German physicist, completed his **[General Theory of Relativity](relativity.md)**, a groundbreaking physics theory that describes the fundamental nature of space and time and gives so far the best description of the Universe since [Newton](newton.md). This would shake the world of science as well as popular culture and would enable advanced technology including nuclear energy, space satellites, high speed computers and many others.
Int 1907 Lee De Forest invented a practically usable **[vacuum tube](vacuum_tube.md)**, an extremely important part usable in electric devices for example as an amplifier or a switch -- this would enable construction of radios, telephones and later even primitive computers. The invention would lead to the [electronic](electronics.md) revolution.
In 1924 about 50% of US households own a car.
October 22 1925 has seen the invention of **[transistor](transistor.md)** by Julius Lilienfeld (Austria-Hungary), a component that would replace vacuum tubes thanks to its better properties, and which would become probably the most essential part of computers. At the time the invention didn't see much attention, it would only become relevant decades later.
In 1931 [Kurt Gödel](kurt_godel.md), a genius mathematician and logician from Austria-Hunagry (nowadays Czech Republic), published revolutionary papers with his [incompleteness theorems](incompleteness.md) which proved that, simply put, mathematics has fundamental limits and "can't prove everything". This led to [Alan Turing](turing.md)'s publications in 1936 that nowadays stand as the **foundations of [computer science](compsci.md)** -- he introduced a theoretical computer called the **[Turing machine](turing_machine.md)** and with it he proved that computers, no matter how powerful, will never be able to "compute everything". Turing also predicted the importance of computers in the future and has created several [algorithms](algorithm.md) for future computers (such as a [chess](chess.md) playing program).
In 1938 [Konrad Zuse](konrad_zuse.md), a German engineer, constructed **[Z1](z1.md), the first working electric mechanical [digital](digital.md) partially programmable computer** in his parents' house. It weighted about a ton and wasn't very reliable, but brought huge innovation nevertheless. It was programmed with punched film tapes, however programming was limited, it was NOT [Turing complete](turing_complete.md) and there were only 8 instructions. Z1 ran on a frequency of 1 to 4 Hz and most operations took several clock cycles. It had a 16 word memory and worked with [floating point](float.md) numbers. The original computer was destroyed during the war but it was rebuilt and nowadays can be seen in a Berlin museum.
In 1945 the construction of **the first electronic digital fully programmable computer** was completed at University of Pennsylvania as the US Army project. It was named **[ENIAC](eniac.md)** (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). It used 18000 vacuum tubes and 15000 relays, weighted 27 tons and ran on the frequency of 5 KHz. [Punch cards](punch_card.md) were used to program the computer in its machine language; it was [Turing complete](turing_complete.md), i.e. allowed using branches and loops. ENIAC worked with signed ten digit decimal numbers.
On July 20 1969 **first men landed on the Moon** (Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin) during the USA Apollo 11 mission. This tremendous achievement is very much attributed to the cold war in which USA and Soviet Union raced in space exploration. The landing was achieved with the help of a relatively simple on-board computer: Apollo Guidance Computer clocked at 2 MHz, had 4 KiB of [RAM](ram.md) and about 70 KB [ROM](rom.md). The assembly source code of its software is nowadays available online.
Shortly after, on 29 October 1969, another historical event would happen that could be seen as the start of perhaps the greatest technological revolution yet, the **start of the [Internet](internet.md)**. The first letter, "L", was sent over a long distance via **[ARPANET](arpanet.md)**, a new experimental computer [packet switching](packet_switching.md) network without a central node developed by US defense department (they intended to send "LOGIN" but the system crashed). The network would start to grow and gain new nodes, at first mostly universities. The network would become the Internet.
@ -46,8 +57,8 @@ At the beginning of 1991 [Tim Berners-Lee](berners_lee.md) created the **[World
On 25 August 1991 **[Linus Torvalds](linus_torvalds.md) announced [Linux](linux.md)**, his project for a completely free as in freedom Unix-like [operating system](os.md). Linux would become part of [GNU](gnu.md) and later one of the biggest and most successful software projects in history. It would end up powering Internet servers and supercomputers as well as desktop computers of a great number of users. Linux proved that free software works and surpasses proprietary systems.
After this very recent history follows, it's hard to judge which recent events will be of historical significance much later. 1990s have seen a huge growth of computer power, video [games](game.md) such as [Doom](doom.md) led to development of [GPU](gpu.md)s and high quality computer graphics along with a wide adoption of computers by common people, which in turn helped the further growth of Internet. During the 90s we've also seen the rise of the [open source movement](open_source.md). Shortly after 2000 [Lawrence Lessig](lessig.md) founded [Creative Commons](creative_commons.md), an organization that came hand in hand with the [free culture](free_culture.md) movement inspired by the [free software movement](free_software.md). Cell phones became a commonly owned item and after about 2005 so called "[smart](smart.md) phones" and other "smart" devices replaced them as a universal communication device capable of connecting to the Internet. Before 2020 we've seen a huge advancement in [neural network](neural_network.md) [Artificial Intelligence](ai.md) which will likely be the topic of the future. [Quantum computers](quantum.md) are being highly researched with already existing primitive prototypes; this will also likely be very important in the following years. Besides AI there has appeared a great interest and development of [virtual reality](vr.md), [drones](drone.md), electromobiles, robotic Mars exploration and others. However the society and technology has generally seen a decadence after 2010, [capitalism](capitalism.md) has pushed technology to become hostile and highly [abusive to users](capitalist_software.md), extreme [bloat](bloat.md) of technology causes highly inefficient, extremely expensive and unreliable technology. In addition society is dealing with a lot of serious issues such as the [global warming](global_warming.md) and many people are foreseeing a [collapse of society](collapse.md).
After this very recent history follows, it's hard to judge which recent events will be of historical significance much later. 1990s have seen a huge growth of computer power, video [games](game.md) such as [Doom](doom.md) led to development of [GPU](gpu.md)s and high quality computer graphics along with a wide adoption of computers by common people, which in turn helped the further growth of Internet. During the 90s we've also seen the rise of the [open source movement](open_source.md). Shortly after 2000 [Lawrence Lessig](lessig.md) founded [Creative Commons](creative_commons.md), an organization that came hand in hand with the [free culture](free_culture.md) movement inspired by the [free software movement](free_software.md). At this point over 50% of US households had a computer. Cell phones became a commonly owned item and after about 2005 so called "[smart](smart.md) phones" and other "smart" devices replaced them as a universal communication device capable of connecting to the Internet. Before 2020 we've seen a huge advancement in [neural network](neural_network.md) [Artificial Intelligence](ai.md) which will likely be the topic of the future. [Quantum computers](quantum.md) are being highly researched with already existing primitive prototypes; this will also likely be very important in the following years. Besides AI there has appeared a great interest and development of [virtual reality](vr.md), [drones](drone.md), electromobiles, robotic Mars exploration and others. However the society and technology has generally seen a decadence after 2010, [capitalism](capitalism.md) has pushed technology to become hostile and highly [abusive to users](capitalist_software.md), extreme [bloat](bloat.md) of technology causes highly inefficient, extremely expensive and unreliable technology. In addition society is dealing with a lot of serious issues such as the [global warming](global_warming.md) and many people are foreseeing a [collapse of society](collapse.md).
## Recent History
TODO
TODO: more detailed history since the start of Unix time