Computers have come a long way since the very first models. The earliest computers were the size of entire buildings. Innovations have continued to make computers faster and smaller. Below is a timeline that shows the rich history of the computer and the innovations around it.
| June 16, 1911 | IBM was founded as the Computing Tabulating Recording Company, changing their name to International Business Machines in 1924. |
| 1938 | Konrad Zuse invented the first first binary and freely programmable computer called the Z1 computer. |
| 1942 | John Atanasoff and Cliffor Berry invented the ABC Computer. |
| 1944 | Howard Aiken and Grace Hopper invented the Harvard Mark 1 computer. |
| 1945 | The world’s first universal algorithmic programming language named Plankalkül is designed by Konrad Zuse between 1943-1945. |
| June 30, 1945 | The Von Neumann architecture (or Von Neumann model) is published. |
| 1946 | John Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly invented the ENIAC 1 computer. |
| October 1946 | Konrad Zuse started the first computer startup company Ingenieurbüro Hopferau. |
| 1975 | MITS releases the Altair 8800 invented by Ed Roberts. He coins the term “Personal Computer”. |
| April 4, 1975 | Bill Gates and Paul Allen start Microsoft. |
| April 1, 1976 | Apple was started by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. |
| July 1, 1976 | Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I and released it along with Steve Jobs. |
| December 2, 1982 | Adobe was started by Warnock and Charles Geschke. |
| January 24, 1984 | Apple releases the Macintosh computer. |
| March 7, 1984 | RIM was started by Lindsay Burger. |
| August 24, 1995 | The Windows 95 operating system is released. |
| May 15, 1997 | HTC was started by Cher Wang, HT Cho, and Peter Chou. |
| September 4, 1998 | Sergey Brin and Larry Page start Google. |
| June 30, 1998 | The Windows 98 operating system is released. |
| March 31, 2000 | The Windows 2000 operating system is released. |
| December 31, 2000 | The Windows Millennium operating system is released. |
| March 24, 2001 | The Mac OS X v10.0 operating system called Cheetah is released. |
| September 25, 2001 | The Mac OS X v10.1 operating system called Puma is released. |
| October 23, 2001 | Apple releases the iPod. |
| December 31, 2001 | The Windows XP operating system is released. |
| August 24, 2002 | The Mac OS X v10.2 operating system called Jaguar is released. |
| October 24, 2003 | The Mac OS X v10.3 operating system called Panther is released. |
| April 29, 2005 | The Mac OS X v10.4 operating system called Tiger is released. |
| June 29, 2007 | Apple releases the iPhone. |
| October 26, 2007 | The Mac OS X v10.5 operating system called Leopard is released. |
| November 29, 2007 | The Windows Vista operating system is released. |
| August 28, 2009 | The Mac OS X v10.6 operating system called Snow Leopard is released. |
| October 22, 2009 | The Windows 7 operating system is released. |
| April 3, 2010 | Apple releases the iPad. |
| July 20, 2011 | The Mac OS X v10.7 operating system called Lion is released. |
| October 14, 2011 | Apple releases the iPhone 4s . |
| 2012 | LTE mobile broadband networks become widely available. |