FREE COMPUTING INDUSTRY HISTORY

History of Computing Companies

Trace the laboratories, hardware firms, software companies, standards bodies, and open ecosystems that made computing real.

• 1890: Tabulating the state: The Census, punched cards, and the first data-processing business
• 1925: Build a research engine: Bell Labs, regulated monopoly, and patient invention
• 1946: A prototype is not a company: EMCC, Ferranti, LEO, UNIVAC, and the missing middle
• 1957: Lower the unit of access: DEC, Fairchild, spinouts, and markets incumbents could not see
• 1964: Compatibility becomes capital: IBM System/360 and the platform wager
• 1968: Sell coordination, not a product: TCS, Infosys, and the global delivery model
• 1969: Fund a network nobody can own: ARPA, SRI, universities, and Xerox PARC
• 1969: Software separates from the machine: IBM unbundling, Unix licensing, and an independent market
• 1972: Encode the enterprise: SAP, Oracle, and standard business software
• 1975: From kit to platform: MITS, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, and Compaq
• 1976: No nation builds a chip alone: Japan, TSMC, ASML, Arm, and recursive specialization
• 1983: Make code a commons: GNU, Linux, Debian, licensing, and open-source firms
• 1989: Keep the Web one Web: CERN, W3C, Netscape, Microsoft, and the browser boundary
• 1995: Turn participation into a market: Amazon, eBay, Google, Alibaba, and Internet feedback loops
• 1999: The mobile Internet before the iPhone: NTT DoCoMo, Nokia, Symbian, and BlackBerry
• 2006: Rent the machine by the request: AWS and infrastructure as a metered API
• 2007: Put a market inside the phone: Apple, Android, HTC, Samsung, and the app economy
• 2007: Build for the infrastructure people have: M-PESA, WeChat, UPI, and three paths to digital rails
• 2012: AI reindustrializes software: CUDA, NVIDIA, DeepMind, hyperscalers, and frontier laboratories
• 2020: When a platform becomes infrastructure: Concentration, interoperability, governance, and institutional design