Wolfram Computation Meets Knowledge

The Mathematica Story: A Scrapbook

Three Decades of Contributions to Invention, Discovery and Education

Prehistory: before the dawn of Mathematica...(show)

1975–1979: Science before Mathematica…
1976–1979: Stephen Wolfram becomes one of the world’s most prolific users of computer algebra
1979–1980: “I need to build my own system”
December 1980: The ancestor of Mathematica takes shape…
1980: Glimmerings of a pre-Mathematica
SMP: 1980: The SMP language begins to emerge…
December 1983: An ad agency tries to promote SMP…
1981–1985: Stephen Wolfram begins to explore the computational universe—without Mathematica
Symbolics, graphics, numerics, programming…
1984: Predicting the potential for computers in science and mathematics…

Creating the first Mathematica… | 1986–1988

Sept. 1986: The first days of Mathematica design…
Nov. 1986: The Mathematica language begins to take shape…
1986: First code…
June 1987: Mathematica test programs begin to look very familiar…
August 1987: The Mathematica Book begins to take shape
August 1987: The naming of Mathematica was a difficult matter…
The Spikey is born!
1987: The Mathematica front end begins to take shape…
Nov. 1987: A demanding alpha tester sends in the first external bug report
Nov. 1987: Steve Jobs signs on to bundle Mathematica with every NeXT computer…
April 1988: The story is getting out: Stephen Wolfram is building a product…

Mathematica 1.0 is launched! | June 23, 1988

The product is built…
Mathematica 1.0 starts up on a Macintosh…
The Mathematica Book is finished
A mysterious invitation goes out…
Mathematica gets ready to show what it can do…
June 23, 1988: The grand announcement is made…
The Mathematica story is told in a press release…
The media weigh in…

The first years of Mathematica... | 1988–1989

The first Mathematica users register…
IBM speaks out about Mathematica…
December 1988: Early list of articles about Mathematica
April 1989: A Mathematica on every NeXT computer…
The first complete calculus course based on Mathematica is launched…
Apple + Albert promote Mathematica…
Wolfram Research was still a small company…
The 1989 Mathematica brochure…
There were a lot of kinds of computers then…
Everyone’s curious about Mathematica…
Mathematica 1.2 arrives…
Mathematica begins to grow…
Wolfram Research is growing…
Sept. 1989: The first Mathematica print advertisement…

Mathematica begins to spread... | 1990

The distribution of Mathematica users in 1990…
Jan. 1990: The first Mathematica Conference…
Theo Gray creates the first executable electronic book…
The Mathematica Journal is launched…
Wolfram Research grows…
Wolframites at work at the new company headquarters…
The first home of Wolfram Research Europe…
The parade of Mathematica books begins to grow…
Mathematica for Students is launched…
Symbolic programming comes to the API:
The transition to Version 2 begins…
With a 6-foot-long poster, Mathematica shows why the Riemann hypothesis is hard…

Mathematica 2.0 arrives... | 1991

1991: Stephen Wolfram speaks on Mathematica 2.0 and the new paradigm of technical computing
Nearly 1,000 people converge for the second Mathematica Conference…
The Mathematica 2 book arrives, just shy of 1,000 pages…
Mathematica 2 rolls off the production line…
Stephen Wolfram travels the world spreading the word about Mathematica 2
Mathematica goes multilingual…
1991: Mathematica 2.0 meets Leonardo da Vinci…
1991: Before the web… there was MathSource…
1991: Mathematica goes Japanese…
1991: Mathematica’s influence in research begins to grow…
Mathematica users explain how they got started with Mathematica…
Mathematica for Students is cool!
The Mathematica Journal celebrates polyhedra

The buildup to Mathematica 3.0: the notebook goes symbolic | 1993–1996

1993: Still a small company…
The “M Language” that almost was… in 1993…
1994: How much math can one pack into one poster?
October 7, 1994: Wolfram Research goes on the web
1995: The first International Mathematica Symposium
Five years of Mathematica in education (and research)…
October 7, 1996: The wrap party for Mathematica 3.0
October 1996: After five years of intense R&D, Mathematica 3.0 arrives…
The Mathematica Book gets a lot thicker for 3.0…
1996: Programmable mathematical typesetting arrives in Mathematica 3.0…
1996: Symbolic palettes arrive in Mathematica 3.0…
1996: Mathematica documentation goes online as executable notebooks…

Rounding out the first decade of Mathematica... | 1996–1999

1996: The Integrator goes online…
1996–7: Mathematica 3.0 on tour…
1997: Highlighting achievements by users of Mathematica…
1997: The first Mathematica in space…
Mathematica begins to show up in the most unexpected places…
Add-ons to Mathematica multiply…
1997: Mathematica defines the state of the art for mathematical computation…
1998: Calculus meets its match?
The blossoming of Mathematica application packages
1998: Mathematica is 10!
1998: Painting the town Mathematica to celebrate a decade of Mathematica
Mathematica has a lot of mathematical functions in it…
Premier Service begins, with some distinguished customers…
1998: A new kind of art made possible by Mathematica
The first 10 years of The Mathematica Journal…
1998: Mathematica 4 arrives…

More products, more projects; Mathematica blasts into the 21st century... | 1996–1999

Mathematica makes its mark in many fields…
2001: The first webMathematica is launched…
Hundreds of thousands of Mathematica-oriented webpages…
May 14, 2002: Stephen Wolfram publishes his magnum opus
2001: The Wolfram Education Group launches…
2003: The core team at Wolfram company headquarters gathers for the 15th anniversary…
2002: Mathematica goes parallel…
2001: Built with Mathematica: an embedded Mathematica product…
2003: Mathematica 5 ("The Advanced Algorithms Release") arrives…
Stephen Wolfram’s Mathematica Book grows and grows…
2003: Mathematica 5 breaks the speed barrier…

The buildup to Mathematica 6.0... | 2003–2007

2003: The fastest numerics in the world…
2003: Did we actually run this ad?
Mathematica lends its abilities to NUMB3RS for 10 million viewers every Friday night…
Mathematica’s symbolic document prowess turns into a product…
2004: The Wolfram Functions Site goes online
2004: The MathematicaMark benchmark suite debuts…
Fine art with Mathematica
2005: The biggest books on Mathematica ever (so far)…
2006: The teapot test for Mathematica 6 graphics in development…
September 2005: Mathematica + NKS = music!
2005: Going 64-bit with Mathematica 5.2
2005: Mathematica is the first major app running on Intel Macs
Authoring 50,000+ new examples for Mathematica 6.0…
1988–2007: How things have changed…
2006: Doing the Spikey…
Visualizing the dramatic growth in Mathematica built-in functions…
2006: A Demonstration in 10 minutes…

Mathematica 6.0: Mathematica is reinvented | 2007

An important year for Mathematica begins…
May 1, 2007: Mathematica 6.0 is released…
If it’s not downloaded, it comes in a beautiful box…
Thanks, everyone, for Mathematica 6!
The final build: Wolfram Release Engineering signs off on Mathematica 6.0.0…
The big bugs are squashed…
Computational aesthetics takes off in Mathematica 6.0…
Launching Manipulate—and dynamic interactivity—in Mathematica 6.0…
2007: The best-connected software ever
2007: Mathematica automates networks…
2007: Mathematica 6.0 goes device-happy…
2007: The new Documentation Center arrives…
2007: The Wolfram Computable Data Initiative is launched…

New ideas, innovations & surprises continue | 2007–2009

2007: The Wolfram Demonstrations Project launches
Not a new company building…
2008: Breaking the Bernoulli number record…
2008: Mathematica Player debuts…
The Wolfram Blog launches…
November 18, 2008: Mathematica 7.0 is released…
2009: 5,000 Demonstrations and counting…
May 15, 2009: Wolfram|Alpha is officially launched…

Mathematica's reach continues to accelerate | 2010–2013

November 15, 2010: Mathematica 8.0 is released.
2010: Mathematica 8 pioneers free-form linguistic input
2010: Mathematica 8 combines computation with Wolfram|Alpha knowledge
May 7, 2011: Our Mathematica hints and tips Twitter feed is launched
2011: Computable Documents debut
September 26, 2011:  Wolfram hosts its first Mathematica Virtual Conference
2011: Wolfram Innovator Awards—recognizing innovations with Wolfram technologies
May 15, 2012: Wolfram Finance Platform is launched…
May 23, 2012: Wolfram announces SystemModeler… Launching a new era of integrated design optimization…
November 28, 2012: Mathematica 9 is released
2012: The new Wolfram Predictive Interface dramatically improves navigation and discovery of Mathematica’s functionality
2012: Mathematica 9 introduces social network analysis…
December 2012: Mathematica helps shape MoMath’s identity
June 23, 2013: 25 years of Mathematica!
July 23, 2013: Wolfram launches Wolfram Community…
November 21, 2013: The Wolfram Language and Mathematica on Raspberry Pi

Making the world as computable as possible | 2014–present

March 2014: Introducing the Wolfram Language…
June 23, 2014: The Wolfram Cloud is live!
July 9, 2014: Launching Mathematica 10—with 700+ New Functions and a Crazy Amount of R&D
September 15, 2014: Launching Mathematica Online!
2015: The Wolfram Data Drop is live!
March 2015: Wolfram Demonstrations Project: 10,000 Apps Strong
November 9, 2015: Happy 10,000-day birthday, Mathematica!
August 8, 2016: Just released! Mathematica 11
September 19, 2016: Wolfram Enterprise Private Cloud
May 17, 2017: Run your code from anywhere with WolframScript
July 25, 2017: Announcing SystemModeler 5
October 4, 2017: Notebooks in Your Pocket—Wolfram Player for iOS Is Now Shipping
June 23, 2018: Mathematica turns 30!
April 15, 2019: Mathematica 12 Released
December 13, 2021: Mathematica 13 released