Substrate timeline
A tour of computing history by Danilo Campos.
Antiquity
Middle Ages
Early Modern
Industrial Age
Transistor Age
3000 BCE
2900 BCE
2800 BCE
2700 BCE
2600 BCE
2500 BCE
2400 BCE
2300 BCE
2200 BCE
2100 BCE
2000 BCE
1900 BCE
1800 BCE
1700 BCE
1600 BCE
1500 BCE
1400 BCE
1300 BCE
1200 BCE
1100 BCE
1000 BCE
900 BCE
800 BCE
700 BCE
600 BCE
500 BCE
400 BCE
300 BCE
200 BCE
100 BCE
1 BCE
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1000
1100
1200
1300
1400
1500
1520
1540
1560
1580
1600
1620
1640
1660
1680
1700
1720
1740
1760
1780
1800
1810
1820
1830
1840
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
1955
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
2010
2015
2020
2025
Pandemic technology micro-boom
Deep learning era
Smartphone cycle
Zero-interest rate age
Cloud computing cycle
Web 2.0 cycle
Apple's golden age
Google's golden age
P2P cycle
Broadband adoption
Golden age of Dialup
Bandwidth revolution
Intel's golden age
Golden age of consumer miniaturization
Transistor invented at Bell Labs
Dec 23, 1947
World Wide Web
1990
Great Financial Crisis
2008
First microprocessor
1971
Initial TCP draft
1974
Ethernet patent filed
1975
Microsoft founded
1975
Apple founded
1977
Sony Walkman
1979
IBM PC
1981
Macintosh
1984
TSMC founded
1987
GameBoy
1989
ARM founded
1990
Linux
1991
NVIDIA founded
1993
Windows 95
1995
Google founded
1998
Facebook, Reddit
2004
AWS
2006
iPhone
2007
Android
2008
Birth of CUDA
2012
Transformer paper
2017
ChatGPT
2022
Claude Code
2025
Cursor
2023
Turing Machine
1936
Enigma broken at Bletchley Park
1940
Von Neumann architecture
1944
The Imitation Game
1949
Touch-tone telephone routing
1963
First integrated circuits
1964
Mother of All Demos
1968
Pocket calculator
1970
Pong
1972
Xerox Alto
1973
Donkey Kong
1981
NeXTSTEP
1989
Apache web server
1995
DOCSIS cable modems
1997
MP3 players
1998
Blackberry 850
1999
Consumer WiFi (iBook)
1999
Napster
1999
Microsoft-DOJ antitrust settlement
2001
Second Life
2003
Halo 2
2004
World of Warcraft
2004
The end of Juicero
2017
TikTok
2017
COVID-19
2020
Zuckerberg abandons the Metaverse
2026