1952

• Nixdorf Computer founded
• Turing's chess-playing program
• US government sues IBM for monopolizing punched-card machine industry
• US National Science Foundation establishes Office of Scientific Information (OSI)
• Institute of Scientific Information established by Soviet Academy of Sciences
• Sony produces first transistor radios
• Univac projects the winner of the presidential election on CBS
• Zenith proposes pay-TV system using punched cards
• John Diebold's Automation, the advent of the automatic factory
• MIT Symposium on Machine Techniques for Information Selection

    1953

• IBM 701 is first IBM electronic digital computer
• National Cash Register enters computer market through purchase of Computer Research Corporation

    1954

• FORTRAN created by John Backus
• IBM markets 650 computer, using drum storage
• UNIVAC I becomes commercially available
• USSR launches Sputnik
• Eastman Kodak announces Minicard System
• Commodore founded
• first demonstration of computer-based searching of bibliographic file on regular basis

    1955

• Remington-Rand & Sperry Gyroscope merge as Sperry-Rand
• Kubie & Sheldon found Computer Usage Corporation (CUC)
• William Shockley founds Shockley Semiconductor

    1956

• first transatlantic telephone cable
• first hard disk drive at IBM
• launch of Australian National Bibliographic Centre
• IBM settles punch card dispute through DOJ consent decree
• Australia's SILLIAC and UTECOM computers go live
• term 'artificial intelligence' devised
• Burroughs Adding Machine Company enters computer market through purchase of Electrodata
• Rank-Xerox established

    1957

• Control Data Corporation (CDC) formed
• Digital Equipment (DEC) formed
• Fairchild Semiconductor formed by Kleiner, Noyce, Moore, Blank, Grinich, Hoerni, Last and Roberts
• Soviet Union's Sputnik sends signals from space
• first Japanese car sold in US
• FORTRAN becomes first high-level computer language
• UNIVAC II marketed
• Chomsky's Syntactic Structures
• Datamation launched
• RAND establishes SDC

    1958

• US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) founded
• US National Federation of Science Abstracting & Indexing Services founded
• first chess game between computer and human
• Minsky founds AI Lab at MIT
• IBM's Robert Bemer introduces backslash character
• UNIMATE is first industrial robot
• laser invented at Bell Labs
• AMP adopts IBM 650
• AT&T markets first modems
• BA publishes first computerized subject index
• International Computers & Tabulators Ltd (ICT) formed in UK through merger of Powas-Samas and BTM

    1959

• Olivetti buys Underwood
• first packaged program sold by Computer Science Corporation
• Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) founded
• National Semiconductor formed
• Applied Data Research (ADR) founded
• DEC develops first minicomputer, PDP 1

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