Computer Timeline

The idea of any time line is to present developments in a particular field as a continuum, a cascade of inevitability leading up to the present. A closer look at our highlights from computer history will show this long and winding road to have been traveled in fits and starts. What if Pascal hadn't gotten religion and retreated from science? Or if Babbage had completed his Analytical Engine? Or if Konrad Zuse had been able to get all the spare parts he needed? We'll never know whether the flow of computer developments would have been greatly accelerated. The course of computer history does, after all, seem inevitable.