jan 1, 100 BC - Orrery - Mechanical device that computes planets' orbits.
Description:
Since antiquity, many special-purpose computing devices have been invented. For example this orrery displayed the positions of the planets in the Solar System. The first known device of this kind dated from about 2100 years ago. People at that time generally believed that the sun and other planets all revolved around the Earth, making the positions very complicated to work out, so the mechanism was much harder to design and build than it would be today.
Added to timeline:
History of Computers
Date:
