Milestones Overview
List of IEEE Milestones documents the nearly 300 IEEE Milestones that have been dedicated around the world. IEEE Milestones Dedicated Within the San Francisco Bay Area Council (SFBAC Milestones).
IEEE Region 6 Milestones
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 1886 | Electric Lighting of the Kingdom of Hawaii 1886-1888 Iolani Palace in Honolulu, Hawaii |
| 1893 | Mill Creek No. 1 Hydroelectric Plant, 1893 The first commercial 3-phase, type “TY” AC generator |
| 1941 | Opana Radar Site, 1941 Original Opana Radar Station whose radar tracked Japanese planes which attacked Pearl Harbor |
| 1951 | Experimental Breeder Reactor I, 1951 4 light bulbs powered with the first electricity generated by the fission of uranium nuclei |
| 1956 | Ampex Videotape Recorder, 1956 Ampex 1956 VRX-1000 Videotape Recorder |
| 1956 | RAMAC, 1956 The IBM 350 RAMAC, the first magnetic disk storage device |
| 1956 | Birthplace of Silicon Valley, 1956 Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory office building |
| 1959 | Semiconductor Planar Process and Integrated Circuit, 1959 Fairchild's 1960 flip-flop, the first commercial planar process IC |
| 1960 | First Working Laser, 1960 The first successful working laser |
| 1962 | Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, 1962 Aerial view of the two-mile long SLAC accelerator |
| 1964 | TPC-1 Transpacific Cable System, 1964 Map showing the TPC-1 system |
| 1965 | Moore's Law, 1965 Gordon E. Moore |
| 1966 | DIALOG Online Search System, 1966 DIALOG's data center with its architect Roger Summit (1984) |
| 1968 | Public Demonstration of Online Systems and Personal Computing, 1968 Split screen showing Doug Engelbart during the Demo |
| 1969 | Inception of the ARPANET, 1969 The initial ARPANET as planned for 1969, whose first two operational nodes were at UCLA and Menlo Park’s SRI |
| 1969 | Birthplace of the Internet, 1969 Room 3420 at UCLA’s Boelter Hall, the source of the first ARPANET message |
| 1969 | SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis), 1969-1970 Early example of SPICE graphical user interface (GUI) |
| 1969 | Apollo 11 Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment (LURE), 1969 Moon-based retro-reflector array to reflect laser beam back to Earth |
| 1970 | University of Hawaii's 2.2-meter (88-inch) Mauna Kea Telescope, 1970 UH88 2.2-meter (88-inch) telescope building |
| 1971 | Development of the Commercial Laser Printer, 1971-1977 Xerox 9700 laser-based Electronic Printing System, introduced in 1977 |
| 1971 | Demonstration of the ALOHA Packet Radio Data Network, 1971 ALOHAnet satellite dish with Univ. of Hawaii College of Engineering team |
| 1972 | Development of the HP-35, the First Handheld Scientific Calculator, 1972 The HP-35 handheld calculator |
| 1972 | SHAKEY: The World’s First Mobile Intelligent Robot, 1972 SHAKEY’s primary components labeled, including an antenna radio link |
| 1972 | Polymer Self-Regulating Heat-Tracing Cable, 1972 Cross section of self-regulating heat tracing cable |
| 1972 | The Xerox Alto Establishes Personal Networked Computing, 1972-1983 Smalltalk development environment on an Alto screen with multiple overlapping windows |
| 1972 | Gravitational-Wave Antenna, 1972-1989 Richland Gravitational-Wave Antenna, one of three in the world recognized by this Milestone |
| 1973 | Ethernet Local Area Network (LAN), 1973-1985 Bob Metcalfe's sketch of the Ethernet concept (1976) |
| 1974 | The CP/M Microcomputer Operating System, 1974 Digital Research staff outside company headquarters |
| 1974 | Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Enables the Internet, 1974 The 4 layers of TCP/IP |
| 1976 | The Floating Gate EEPROM, 1976-1978 Computer system with EEPROM/Flash emulating disk drive data storage (patent figure) |
| 1979 | SPECIAL CITATION PLAQUE Computer History Museum Computer History Museum building |
| 1980 | First RISC (Reduced Instruction-Set Computing) Microprocessor 1980-1982 RISC I die plot |
| 1980 | Origin of the IEEE 802 Family of Networking Standards, 1980-1999 IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee (LMSC) logo |
| 1981 | 16-bit Monolithic DAC, 1981 Dedicated: December 6, 2010 Tucson, AZ (Region 6: Tucson Section) Dallas, TX (Region 5: Dallas Section) In early 1982, Burr-Brown Research Corporation, later part of Texas Instruments, Inc., demonstrated a 16-bit monolithic digital-to-analog converter. Coupled with earlier compact disc development by Philips and Sony, it enabled affordable high-quality compact disc players, helped transform music distribution and playback from analog phonograph records to digital compact discs, and ushered in digital media playback. |
| 1981 | The Development of RenderMan® for Photorealistic Graphics, 1981-1988 RenderMan® Milestone Dedication Event promotional image |
| 1987 | SPARC RISC Architecture, 1987 Sun-4/260 SPARC Workstation |
| 1989 | Development of CDMA for Cellular Communications, 1989 Software-controlled handoff between cell towers (patent figure) |
| 1895 | Folsom Powerhouse, 1895 Turbine used to spin generator shaft with American River water |
| 1965 | Development of Computer Graphics and Visualization Techniques, 1965-1978 Rendered image of the iconic Newell Teapot, originated by Martin Newell |
| 1985 | IEEE Standard 754 for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic, 1985 Portion of IEEE 754 Standard specification cover sheet |
| 1996 | PageRank and the Birth of Google, 1996-1998 PageRank citation algorithm logo |
| 1996 | Universal Serial Bus (USB), 1996 USB “trident” logo representing support of multiple device types, and on a single port |
| Updated: 02 April 2026 |
