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1950s

1950

• Alan Turing, in his paper Computer Machinery and Intelligence proposes what becomes known as the Turing Test: "A machine may be deemed intelligent when it can pass for a human being in a blind test."

1951

• The first computer company is formed: Remington Rand combined with the inventors of ENIAC to bring out the UNIVAC.
• The first commercially produced computer introduced, the Ferranti Mark I.
• The first real-time computer, the Whirlwind, built for the US air-defence system.

1952

• The EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Computer) completed at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA, by von Neumann and others.

1953

• IBM's first computer is launched.
• Magnetic core memory developed.

1954

• FORTRAN, the first high-level computer language devised, by IBM.

1957

• Robert Noyce and seven others quit Shockley Semiconductor and found Fairchild Semiconductor.

1959

• Within months of each other, Jack Kilby (at Texas Instruments) and Bob Noyce (at Fairchild Semiconductor) invent the integrated circuit chip.
• Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy set up the Artifical Intelligence Lab at MIT.

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Phil Gyford