In 1951, Eckert and Mauchly designed UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) for commercial use.  It was the first computer to have a compiler and to use a programming language.  Both data and programs were stored in the computer's memory.  The UNIVAC was the first computer manufactured and sold in quantity.

During the 1950s, Captain Grace Hopper of the U.S. Navy was credited with the application of the binary number system in the computer.  She developed the first compiler able to translate programming language into binary numbers.  She also assisted in the development of COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language).  She received the 1969 Data Processing Management Association's "Man of the Year'' award for her various accomplishments.

In 1950, EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer), which was the first stored program computer to use binary arithmetic, was built by three men - von Neumann, Goldstine, and Burks at the University of Pennsylvania.

The 1960s brought the invention of the integrated circuit (IC), which combined many tiny transistors, resistors, and capacitors into one small plastic case.  These third generation circuits were smaller, faster, and had increased storage capacity.  They made possible the popularity of hand-held calculators.

Third generation computers, led by the IBM 360, built in 1964, were capable of performing an addition in a billionth of a second, or a nanosecond!

Time-sharing, different people in different places using different input/output devices on the same computer, was introduced in the 1960s.  In 1964, John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz, of Dartmouth College, developed the BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose -Symbolic Instruction Code) programming language.  They felt that "an understanding of computers is as necessary to life as being able to read and write."  BASIC was designed to be easy enough for anyone to learn.

In May of 1968, Stanford Research Institute's Douglas Engelbart presents a computer system with a point-and-click interface and a mouse at the Joint Computer Conference. The first computer with a mouse will not be introduced to the market for another thirteen years.

The Internet began as a Cold War project to create a communications network that was immune to a nuclear attack. The first node on ARPANET at University California Los Angeles (UCLA) on the 2nd of September 1969.

In the 1969, the U.S. government created ARPANET, connecting four western universities and allowing researchers to use the mainframes of any of the networked institutions. These were University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), University of Utah and the Stanford Research Institute (SRI).