Computers are now so essential a part of the workings of the world that it’s difficult to imagine a time when they weren’t literally everywhere. But how did these devices, in their almost unimaginable array of shapes and sizes, make their way into the very fabric of our daily lives? Herein, a far-from-exhaustive, rigorously semi-scientific survey of the pivotal technological and cultural moments, the visionaries, and (of course) the machines themselves that transformed computers from novelties into now-ubiquitous necessities. Above: A woman works at an IBM computer in 1955.
