In 1936 – University of Washington education professor August Dvorak received a patent for his new more efficient keyboard layout. While widely recognised as superior to the QWERTY layout, the Dvorak keyboard is not widely used.
In 1939 – The first appropriation was made to begin construction of the Harvard Mark I. When completed in 1944 the Mark I became the first successful fully automatic computing machine.
In 1941 – German engineer Konrad Zuse unveiled the Z3, the first program-controlled electromechanical digital computer. It succeeded the Z1 which was the first binary digital computer.