This is a brief history of memory management.
First memory(1) device invented by Joseph-Marie Jaquard, in the form of perforated cards for a programmable loom.
Charles Babbage designs his Analytical Engine, a steam-powered, general-purpose, mechanical computer with brass gears as internal memory and punched cards for input. The design is never constructed.
Herman Hollerith applies for a patent for his punched-card machines.
Konrad Zuse constructs an electromechanical computer in Germany.
Colossus, a vacuum-tube device for breaking codes at Bletchley Park in Britain, becomes the first all-electronic calculating device. It uses paper tape for input with optical readers.
Magnetic drums are introduced.
EDSAC started up at Cambridge University in Britain. This is the first Von Neumann or "stored-program" machine, where the instructions are stored in the same type of memory as data.
First tests of magnetic disks.
RCA Bizmac produced with iron-core memory and a magnetic drum.
The first magnetic tape drive produced.
IBM 650 produced, the first mass-produced drum-memory machine.
First Fortran compiler delivered, with static allocation only.
Disk memory produced, for the IBM305 RAMAC.
Heap allocation, garbage collection and Lisp invented by John McCarthy.
Algol, the first block-structured language, appears, providing stack allocation.
Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) available, the first system with paging.
Atlas available, the first computer with virtual memory(1).
Maurice Wilkes and Gordon Scarott propose the use of cache memory.
Simula becomes the first object-oriented language.
Intel announce a 1 kilobit RAM chip.
Intel produce the 1103, the first generally available DRAM.
Prolog invented by Alain Colmerauer.
IBM produce the 8-inch floppy disk.
Intel produce the 1701 erasable ROM.
Intel 4004 produced, the first commercially available microprocessor.
C designed by Dennis Ritchie.
5.25-inch floppy disks appear.
Intel produce the 8080 microprocessor, which can access 64 kB of memory.
Tri-color marking invented by E. W. Dijkstra and others, the first incremental garbage collection algorithm.
First digital video disks from Sony and Philips.
Winchester hard drive produced by Alan Shugart, the first large storage device for PCs.
IBM decides that no PC user will ever need more that 640 kB of memory.
Generational garbage collection developed by Lieberman and Hewitt.
Generational garbage collection used for Smalltalk by Dave Ungar.
Scheme standardized; first garbage-collected language with an international standard.
Java announced by a team of Sun engineers led by James Gosling.
New COBOL standard includes garbage collection.