Watch how the Enigma machine encrypts messages and learn about its critical design flaw

Using settings selected from a series of rotors and a plugboard that let operators swap letters with any of their choosing, the machine lit up the output letter for each letter typed. While this system could generate messages requiring any of 150 quintillion potential keys, the machine's reflector never encrypted a letter as itself, providing an entry point for exploiting the system.

The first commercially successful calculating machine—the arithmometer—was patented in 1820 but not mass-produced for over three decades, likely because its inventor was focused on his insurance business.

Sequoyah single-handedly invented a writing system for the Cherokee language

Without formal education, Cherokee citizen Sequoyah spent more than a decade in the early 1800s developing an 86-character syllabary—a writing system in which each symbol represents a spoken syllable—for the Cherokee language. Within a few years, most Cherokees could read and write it.

The Model K—named for its construction on a kitchen table—was the first electromechanical digital binary adder, which used an electric circuit to provide the sum of a pair of zeroes and ones in binary.

How Scrabble got its name

Alfred Butts, a newly unemployed architect during the Great Depression, created Scrabble. But the game was named by James Brunot, who used the word to describe the most common action its players take part in: digging frantically.

Improve your typing speed by retyping classic literature

Why practice with nonsense letters and syllables when you can retype full books you always wanted to read, from Jane Austen and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to George Orwell and W.E.B. duBois. And it's free.

The Bauhaus designer who predicted the future of graphic design

László Moholy-Nagy believed that technology would eventually turn typesetting into a process that allowed fonts to be easily modified rather than manually constructed. This history from the American Institute of Graphic Arts digs into how Moholy-Nagy arrived at those prescient theories.

Among the smallest mass-produced mechanical calculators in history, the Curta was designed by Austrian engineer Curt Herzstark while imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.

Explore an online gallery highlighting the importance of graphical user interfaces

Before the Macintosh, computers were primarily used in offices and required users to type complex commands to perform tasks. Apple followed the device with the LaserWriter printer, bringing graphic production to at-home artists and designers.

Unsatisfied with the designs provided by an Apple engineer, Steve Jobs designed the original Mac calculator in about 10 minutes.

FLOW-MATIC was the first programming language resembling the English language

As part of the team working on UNIVAC—the first commercially produced electronic digital computer in the US—Grace Hopper helped develop the system that enabled nonprogrammers and businesspeople without a strong mathematics background to use the machine effectively, thereby enhancing the computer's commercial viability.

An 1844 chess match via telegraph anticipated the board game's online popularity.

Elk Cloner, the first computer virus to spread in public, was written as a practical joke by Richard Skrenta, a Pittsburgh high school student.

The Antikythera mechanism: The oldest-known analog computer

A device now considered the world's oldest computer was pulled from a shipwreck more than 120 years ago. Known as the "Antikythera Mechanism," it is now believed to have allowed precise tracking of astronomical positions, and its sophistication overturned understanding of Ancient Greek capabilities.

Cyrus McCormick invented the mechanical reaper—and a territory-based sales force

In the 1830s, farmers were skeptical of new technology, so McCormick demonstrated the machine—described as a cross between a plow, a chariot, and a flying object—to prospective buyers. Long before modern sales norms existed, he divided the market into territories operated by agents who provided service on the machines, financing to expand the customer base, and product iteration based on feedback from regional agents.

The first compiler to facilitate communication with computers was developed by Grace Hopper

The A-0 program linker automatically translated mathematical symbols into machine-readable binary code. Although it took two years for computer executives to get on board with the idea, the technology was foundational to future programming languages that allowed computers to understand commands written in word-based languages.

A timeline of computer history

The earliest computers bear little resemblance to the computing devices that most people rely on today. This timeline graphic from the Computer History Museum tracks their evolution, from the early days of bulky mainframes that only experts generally used through to the personal computing revolution and on to the modern mobile era. Readers will learn important context ahead of the next major computing platform shift.

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

Before their historic flight, the Wright brothers ran a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, where they built the world's first successful powered aircraft.

The history and operation of SIGABA, the US counterpart of the Nazi Enigma machine

Developed by the US Army and US Navy, over 10,000 of these machines were deployed by the end of World War II to encrypt messages for the armed forces using three series of rotors. The device would continue to be used until the 1950s, while personal computers were shown to possess enough computing power to crack it by 2021.

Clue, the murder-mystery board game, was designed during World War II air raids.

The Macintosh popularized GUI and mouse navigation for personal computing

A graphical user interface that utilized windows, icons, and pull-down menus, rather than text-based commands, contributed to the device's success after its January 1984 launch. Its original sound system—capable of playing four voices—was developed after non-technical staff suggested the machine should play music.

Designed in 1937 by Harvard graduate student Howard H. Aiken, the 'Harvard Calculator' was used by the US Navy to solve advanced physics problems.

Samuel O’Reilly patented the tattoo gun in 1891

Before the tattoo gun's invention, recipients sweated while artists slowly tapped or sliced designs into their flesh. The tattoo gun changed the field, helping artists ink clients’ skin at incredible speeds. Inventor Samuel O’Reilly applied the basic idea of an electric pen invented by Thomas Edison to his tattoo gun.

In 1822, French scholar Jean-François Champollion deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs using the Rosetta Stone.

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.

Ray Bradbury wrote 'Fahrenheit 451,' his landmark dystopian novel, on a rented typewriter in the basement of a UCLA library.

Henry Ford pioneered the first moving assembly line, building on earlier iterations of the manufacturing method

Although cars existed before the Model T, manufacturing them required a group of highly specialized mechanics. The Model T was so affordable in large part because of the moving assembly line, which cut down the total manufacturing time of the car and replaced specialized workers with general laborers who performed repetitive tasks.

The printing press spread novels widely

Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1440 changed how writing was reproduced. It allowed multiple manuscripts to be copied via movable type rather than by hand, making more literature more widely available. Over time, that change caused literacy rates to rise, creating a market for even more literature.

Watch someone drive a Model T Ford, which feels like driving 'a tractor with the soul of a sewing machine'—and learn how to operate one.

As technology evolved, so did Wall Street

Before the telephone was invented in the mid 1800s, people had to trade stocks in person. But once office telephones and computers became commonplace, banks and other financial institutions didn't necessarily need to have their headquarters near exchanges like Wall Street's New York Stock Exchange.