The first pocket calculator came onto the market in 1971 (the Bowmar 901B), more commonly known as The Bowmar Brain. It cost a massive $240, but within a decade the prices of similar pocket calculators had fallen to a mere $10. During this time the technology involved progressed enormously: Scientific calculators started to emerge with more and more functions. Programmable pocket calculators came on to the market, capable of storing programmes and instructions. As the years went by, calculators had more and more features and were capable of a great deal.
The Ethernet was a step forward from the Arpanet. It was developed in the early 1970s as a method of transferring data over Local Area Networks (LANs). Its emergence is usually attributed to Robert Metcalfe, who wrote a paper with his assistant David Boggs entitled ‘Ethernet: Distributed Packet-Switching for Local Computer Networks'.
The next advancement was the creation of the internet. A major step forward in 1986 was the NSFNet (National Science Foundation Network), created as the backbone of a university network. Even in the 1990s, people had to sign an agreement with them in order to access large parts of the public internet.
Tim Berners-Lee (whose parents were both mathematicians on the Manchester Mark 1 project) is the man responsible for the creation of the World Wide Web (WWW). He saw the potential of hypertext coupled with the internet and in August 1991 he created the first ever website, which has been archived
here. From this point onwards, the internet and WWW took on a life of their own. Their own huge advancements made progressions in hardware all the more important. It has indeed made the world a smaller, yet more advanced place.
Conclusion
What is to be learned from all this? Well, take a minute to think about the enormity of what it took for you to be sat at your computer reading this right now… Just think what the world could have been like without it. It makes you realise what amazing discoveries we have yet to look forward to.
