Timeline: The 1960s
Abstract
What happened in computing in the 1960s, year by year. 127 events from 115 articles. Each line links the article that tells the story and carries the sources; the years are taken from those articles. This is the chronological way into the encyclopedia; the thematic way is [[index|the index]].
← The 1950s · [[index|Thematic index]] · The 1970s →
1960
- ALGOL 60 introduces block structure, recursive procedures, and BNF grammar. → ALGOL: The Language That Taught Programming How to Teach Itself
- An IBM 650 plans a Turkish highway, an early computer in the Middle East. → The Middle East’s Tech Industry: Oil Money, Startups, and the Vision 2030 Bet
- Donald Bitzer’s PLATO teaches its first student on ILLIAC I at Illinois. → Donald Bitzer
- IFIP is established at the first World Computer Congress in Munich. → The Computer Societies Movement
- IFIP is established under UNESCO auspices. → IFIP: Computing Across the Iron Curtain
- PLATO begins at the University of Illinois. → PLATO and the Birth of Online Community
- Reed and Solomon publish the codes later used in CDs, QR codes, and Voyager. → Coding Theory and Error Correction
- Rudolf Kálmán publishes the Kalman filter. → Rudolf Kálmán and the Kalman Filter
- The CER-10, Yugoslavia’s first digital computer, is completed in Belgrade. → Yugoslavia’s Computing Industry: CER, Iskra Delta, and the Computer Broadcast on the Radio
- SADIO is founded in Argentina in March, the first computing society in Latin America. → SADIO: Argentina’s Computing Society
- The first Xerox 914 plain-paper copier ships, leased at $95 a month; Haloid Xerox’s revenue nearly doubles by 1961. → Chester Carlson
- The Information Processing Society of Japan is founded on 22 April. → Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ)
- Edward Fredkin publishes “Trie Memory” in the Communications of the ACM, naming the prefix tree. → Edward Fredkin
1961
- A Ferranti Mercury arrives in Buenos Aires. → Latin America’s Tech Industry: MercadoLibre, Nubank, and the Fintech Continent
- AICA, the Italian computing association, is founded. → AICA: Italy’s Computing Society
- CTSS introduces the computer password. → The History of Passwords and Authentication
- Corbató demonstrates CTSS, the first time-sharing system, at MIT. → Fernando Corbató and Time-Sharing
- Unimate, the first industrial robot, goes to work at General Motors. → Robotics
- Haloid Xerox shareholders rename the company Xerox Corporation, weeks before its New York Stock Exchange listing. → Joseph C. Wilson and Haloid
- Rolf Landauer shows that erasing a bit must dissipate at least kT ln 2 of heat. → Reversible Computing
- The transistorised GIER goes into service at the Danish Geodetic Institute; about fifty are built. → Regnecentralen and GIER: Denmark’s Computer Company
1962
- A. Michael Noll makes the first digital computer art at Bell Labs after a plotter bug draws something interesting. → A. Michael Noll and Ken Knowlton
- Carl Adam Petri’s dissertation introduces Petri nets. → Germany’s Computing Pioneers
- Donald Knuth starts writing The Art of Computer Programming. → Donald Knuth and the Art of Computer Programming
- John Tukey’s “The Future of Data Analysis” calls for a science of data analysis apart from mathematical statistics. → Data Science and the Notebook
- Kenneth Iverson publishes the array notation that becomes APL. → APL: The Language Written in Its Own Alphabet
- Licklider takes over ARPA’s computing office and starts funding interactive computing. → J.C.R. Licklider and the Intergalactic Network
- Morton Heilig patents the Sensorama, a booth with stereo film, wind, smells and a moving seat. → The History of Virtual Reality
- Procter & Gamble’s Car 54 contest asks the public for the shortest tour through 33 cities. → The Traveling Salesman Problem
- Purdue founds the first computer science department in the United States. → The Birth of Computer Science as a Discipline
- Stephanie Shirley founds Freelance Programmers with £6, staffed by women working from home. → Stephanie “Steve” Shirley and Freelance Programmers
- The China Computer Federation is founded. → China Computer Federation (CCF)
- Viktor Glushkov proposes OGAS, a nationwide network for the Soviet planned economy. → OGAS: The Soviet Internet That Never Was
1963
- ASCII encodes the Latin alphabet and nothing else; the rest of the world’s scripts wait for Unicode. → The Globalization of Software: i18n, L10n, and the Hidden Complexity of “Hello, World”
- IBM coins “emulator” to sell the System/360. → Emulation and Retrocomputing
- Ken Knowlton’s BEFLIX, the first programming language for computer animation, runs at Bell Labs. → A. Michael Noll and Ken Knowlton
- Roger Tomlinson’s Canada Geographic Information System invents GIS. → Digital Maps and GIS
- Ivan Sutherland demonstrates Sketchpad on the TX-2 in January. → Ivan Sutherland and Sketchpad: The First Graphical Interface
1964
- A cancelled dinner in New York leaves Zadeh alone for an evening; he works out the idea of membership by degree. → Lotfi Zadeh
- Antonín Svoboda leaves Czechoslovakia for UCLA. → Czechoslovakia’s Computing Industry: Svoboda, SAPO, and the Institute That Lost Its Founder
- Bitzer, Slottow and Willson invent the plasma display panel for PLATO terminals. → Donald Bitzer
- Cray’s CDC 6600 runs three times faster than IBM’s best machine. → Seymour Cray and Supercomputing
- IBM introduces the Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter, the first machine marketed as a word processor. → The History of Word Processing
- Joan Ball runs the first commercially successful computer dating match-ups in London and renames her bureau the St. James Computer Dating Service. → Joan Ball
- Kemeny and Kurtz create BASIC at Dartmouth. → BASIC: The Language That Democratized Programming
- MIT, Bell Labs, and GE begin Multics. → The Multics Story
- Norbert Wiener dies. → Norbert Wiener and Cybernetics
- Olivetti sells its electronics division to General Electric. → Camillo and Adriano Olivetti
- RAND publishes Baran’s eleven-volume On Distributed Communications. → Paul Baran and Packet Switching: The Network That Was Never Built
- SABRE’s nationwide network is complete, the largest commercial real-time data-processing system in the world. → SABRE and Airline Reservation Systems
- The plasma display is invented at Illinois for PLATO. → The History of Displays
- Xerox pays $4 million for a commercial-free UN television series on ABC and keeps it despite a John Birch Society letter campaign. → Joseph C. Wilson and Haloid
- IBM announces the System/360 in April, a $5 billion bet on one architecture. → The IBM Mainframe Era: The Computer That Ran the World
1965
- Ball’s firm becomes Com-Pat, short for computerised compatibility. → Joan Ball
- Cooley and Tukey publish the Fast Fourier Transform. → Cooley, Tukey, and the Fast Fourier Transform
- Edmonds’s matching paper defines the efficient algorithm as polynomial time. → Jack Edmonds and the Good Algorithm
- Feigenbaum and Lederberg begin DENDRAL, the first expert system. → Edward Feigenbaum and the Expert System
- Hartmanis and Stearns publish the paper that names computational complexity. → Hartmanis and Stearns: Measuring the Cost of Computation
- Harvard’s Operation Match makes punch-card dating a national fad. → The History of Online Dating
- I. J. Good writes that the first ultraintelligent machine will be “the last invention that man need ever make.” → The Singularity and Superintelligence
- Kolmogorov defines the information in an object as the length of the shortest program producing it. → Andrey Kolmogorov
- Kolmogorov publishes algorithmic complexity, after Solomonoff (1960–1964) and before Chaitin. → Kolmogorov Complexity
- Lotfi Zadeh publishes “Fuzzy Sets”. → Fuzzy Logic
- Margaret Dayhoff compiles the first atlas of protein sequences. → Bioinformatics and the Human Genome
- Olivetti shows Perotto’s Programma 101, a programmable desktop computer with magnetic-card storage, in New York. → Pier Giorgio Perotto
- Olivetti’s Programma 101 desktop calculator-computer ships. → Camillo and Adriano Olivetti
- Ted Nelson coins “hypertext”. → Ted Nelson and Hypertext: The Dream That Partially Came True
- The Computer Society of India is founded, when the country has fewer than thirty computers. → Computer Society of India (CSI)
- Widlar’s µA709 op-amp ships from Fairchild. → Bob Widlar and Analog Integrated Circuits
- Georg Nees exhibits plotter drawings in Stuttgart in February, the first computer-art show. → Computer Art and Generative Art
- Georg Nees’s plotter drawings go on show in Stuttgart on 5 February, the first exhibition of computer art; Frieder Nake joins him at Galerie Niedlich in November. → Georg Nees and Frieder Nake
- Gordon Moore’s Electronics article states what becomes Moore’s Law. → Gordon Moore and Moore’s Law
1966
- Alan Perlis becomes the first recipient of the Turing Award. → Alan Perlis and the Epigrams on Programming
- Böhm and Jacopini publish the structured-program theorem. → AICA: Italy’s Computing Society
- Gregory Chaitin, nineteen, publishes program-size complexity in the Journal of the ACM, independently of Kolmogorov and Solomonoff. → Gregory Chaitin
- IBM makes John Whitney its first artist in residence; Jack Citron programs his films on the System/360. → John Whitney and Charles Csuri
- Larry Roberts joins ARPA to build the network. → Larry Roberts and ARPANET: The Network Architect
- MIT’s Summer Vision Project expects to solve vision in a summer. → Computer Vision
- Ralph Baer’s memo proposes games on the home TV set. → Ralph Baer and the Magnavox Odyssey
- SRI begins building Shakey, the first mobile robot that reasons about its own actions. → A* and Shakey the Robot
- The ALPAC report cuts machine-translation funding. → Machine Translation
- The Apollo Guidance Computer is the first embedded computer to fly. → The Embedded Systems Story: From ROM Firmware to Safety-Critical Software
- The Australian Computer Society forms from state-level computing bodies. → Australian Computer Society (ACS)
- Weizenbaum publishes ELIZA. → Joseph Weizenbaum and ELIZA
1967
- Bosch’s D-Jetronic makes electronic fuel injection work in production cars. → From Carburetor to Code: The Computer in the Car
- Charles Csuri and James Shaffer make Hummingbird at Ohio State, a ten-minute computer animation of more than 14,000 plotter frames; MoMA buys it in 1968. → John Whitney and Charles Csuri
- Dahl and Nygaard publish Simula 67, the first object-oriented language. → Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard: The Inventors of Object-Oriented Programming
- Gene Amdahl states Amdahl’s Law. → Gene Amdahl and the System/360
- INRIA is founded (as IRIA). → European Computer Science Academia
- Maurice Wilkes receives the second Turing Award. → Maurice Wilkes and EDSAC
- Papert’s Logo and its turtle let children program. → Seymour Papert and the Children’s Machine
- Simula 67 contains classes, inheritance, and virtual procedures. → Simula: The Language That Invented Objects Before Anyone Called Them That
- Telesincro’s Factor-P is the first computer designed and built in Spain. → Spain’s Computing Industry: From the Ajedrecista to the Golden Age of the Spectrum
- The Singapore Computer Society is founded. → Singapore Computer Society (SCS)
- Knowlton and Harmon’s Studies in Perception I runs in The New York Times on 11 October. → A. Michael Noll and Ken Knowlton
1968
- Albert Endres founds the German Chapter of the ACM. → German Chapter of the ACM
- Dijkstra’s “Go To Statement Considered Harmful” appears in CACM. → Edsger Dijkstra and Structured Programming
- Doug McIlroy proposes “software ICs”, reusable components. → Doug McIlroy and Unix Pipes
- Hart, Nilsson, and Raphael publish the A* search algorithm. → A* and Shakey the Robot
- IBM fires Lynn Conway for transitioning. → Lynn Conway and the VLSI Revolution
- ICL is formed as Britain’s national computing champion. → The UK Computing Industry: From Bletchley to DeepMind
- Information International introduces the FR-80 film recorder, drawing on film at 16,384 by 16,384 points. → Triple-I: Information International
- Macsyma begins at MIT’s Project MAC under Engelman, Martin and Moses. → Joel Moses
- Richard Hamming receives the third Turing Award. → Richard Hamming
- Stewart Brand publishes the first Whole Earth Catalog. → Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth
- The BESM-6 enters series production, the peak of Soviet indigenous computing. → Soviet and Russian Computing: Parallel History, Divergent Fate
- The NATO conference in Garmisch names the software crisis and coins “software engineering”. → The Software Crisis: How a 1968 Conference Named Computing’s Permanent Problem
- Vera Molnár gets access to a computer and plotter in Paris and begins executing by machine the rules she had run by hand since 1959. → Vera Molnár
- Engelbart’s “Mother of All Demos” shows the mouse, hypertext, and video conferencing on 9 December. → Douglas Engelbart and the Mother of All Demos
- The Comecon states sign the treaty to build the ES EVM, a clone of the IBM System/360, on 23 December. → Comecon Computing: ES EVM and the Bloc That Copied IBM
1969
- Perceptrons argues neural networks are a dead end. → Marvin Minsky and the MIT AI Lab: The Architect of Artificial Minds
- Fairchild defectors found Advanced Micro Devices. → AMD and the x86 Underdog
- Howard’s note connects types to proofs, the Curry-Howard correspondence. → Type Systems: From Bug Catcher to Theorem Prover
- IBM unbundles software from hardware, creating the independent software industry. → IBM: The Company
- Jon Postel begins editing the RFC series. → Jon Postel: The God of the Internet
- Minsky and Papert’s Perceptrons stalls neural-network research. → Seymour Papert and the Children’s Machine
- Nees defends Generative Computergraphik under Max Bense, the first doctoral thesis on computer art. → Georg Nees and Frieder Nake
- Rene Pardo and Remy Landau write LANPAR, a mainframe spreadsheet with natural order recalculation. → The Spreadsheet Revolution
- Samsung Electronics is established. → Samsung: From Dried Fish to the World’s Memory
- Steve Crocker writes RFC 1. → The Open Standards Process: How the Internet Governs Itself
- Thompson and Ritchie start Unix at Bell Labs. → The Unix Story: The Operating System That Ate the World
- Travers and Milgram report that 64 of 296 mailed folders reached a Boston stockbroker, through 5.2 intermediaries on average. → Network Science and the Small World
- Xerox buys Scientific Data Systems for about $900 million in stock; it closes the computer division in 1975. → Joseph C. Wilson and Haloid
- Apollo 11 lands on 20 July; the guidance software’s priority scheduling survives the 1202 alarms. → Margaret Hamilton and the Apollo Software
- The Gesellschaft für Informatik is founded in Bonn on 16 September. → Gesellschaft für Informatik: Establishing Informatik in Germany
- The first ARPANET message, “LO”, is sent on 29 October. → ARPANET: Building the Network That Became the Internet
- Dana Scott finds a model of the untyped lambda calculus in Oxford in November. → Dana Scott