Quantum Computing

History

39 events from 1900 to 2024, then the Now page from 2025 on. Each one gets a line first and the rest under it.

19001910192019301940195019601970198019902000201020201900 — Planck's lumps of light1905 — Einstein says light is particles1913 — Bohr's atom has rungs1924 — Matter is a wave too1925 — Heisenberg's matrix mechanics1926 — Schrödinger's wave equation1927 — The Solvay fight1935 — Einstein's 'spooky' objection1936 — Turing describes a universal computer1947 — The transistor1948 — Shannon names the bit1964 — Bell's test1973 — Computing without throwing anything away1980 — Benioff's quantum Turing machine1981 — Feynman: build one1982 — You cannot copy a qubit1984 — Quantum keys1985 — Deutsch's universal quantum computer1993 — Teleportation1994 — Shor's algorithm1995 — Errors can be fixed after all1996 — Grover's search1997 — The threshold theorem1998 — Two qubits in a test tube1999 — A qubit made of wire2000 — DiVincenzo's checklist2001 — 15 = 3 × 52007 — The transmon2011 — First quantum computer sold2012 — Nobel for handling single particles2016 — A quantum computer on the web2019 — Google's Sycamore2020 — Jiuzhang, with light2021 — IBM Eagle: 127 qubits2022 — Nobel for Bell tests2023 — Bigger gets better, a little2023 — 48 logical qubits from atoms2024 — Logical qubits that beat their parts2024 — Google Willow: under the line2025-01-20 — Alice & Bob2025-02-11 — QuEra Computing2025-02-19 — Microsoft2025-02-26 — PsiQuantum2025-03-03 — University of Science and Technology of China2025-03-11 — NIST2025-03-12 — D-Wave2025-03-21 — Henry Legg (St Andrews) and others2025-03-26 — Quantinuum, JPMorganChase, Argonne, Oak Ridge, UT Austin2025-05-21 — Google Quantum AI (Craig Gidney)2025-06-09 — IonQ2025-06-10 — IBM2025-06-12 — University of Oxford2025-06-19 — Microsoft2025-07-17 — Atom Computing and Microsoft2025-09-04 — Quantinuum (Honeywell)2025-09-10 — PsiQuantum2025-09-17 — Harvard, MIT and QuEra2025-09-24 — Caltech2025-09-25 — Alice & Bob2025-10-07 — Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences2025-10-21 — IonQ (Oxford Ionics team)2025-10-22 — Google Quantum AI2025-11-05 — Quantinuum2025-11-06 — DARPA2025-11-12 — IBM2025-11-12 — Harvard, MIT and QuEra2026-01-07 — D-Wave2026-01-26 — IonQ2026-01-27 — University of Chicago, Stanford, MIT, Innsbruck, Delft2026-02 — Iceberg Quantum2026-02-17 — Infleqtion2026-03-04 — Pasqal2026-03-10 — DARPA2026-03-24 — Google Quantum AI2026-03-27 — Xanadu2026-04-14 — Pasqal2026-05-13 — University of Science and Technology of China2026-05-21 — Flatiron Institute and Boston University2026-06-02 — Microsoft2026-06-04 — Quantinuum2026-06-23 — US Department of Energy2026-06-24 — Henry Legg, University of St Andrews2026-07-20 — Google Quantum AI2026-07-31 — IonQ2026-09-17 — US Department of Energy
the physicsordinary computingthe ideasbuildingcorrectingnow

The small blue dots at the right are the 46 developments since 2025, from the Now page.

the shape of it

Physics first, then ideas, then machines, then corrections

Thirty years of physics before anyone thought of a computer; fifteen years of ideas before anyone built two qubits; twenty-five years of building before an error-corrected qubit got better as it grew.

2025 onward: the Now page →

Qubits, counted

1101001,00010,0001995200020052010201520202025NIST ion trap: 1 qubits, 1995NIST ion trap 1NMR, chloroform: 2 qubits, 1998NMR, chloroform 2NEC charge qubit: 1 qubits, 1999NEC charge qubit 1NMR, IBM Almaden: 7 qubits, 2001NMR, IBM Almaden 7D-Wave Orion: 16 qubits, 2007D-Wave Orion 16D-Wave One: 128 qubits, 2011D-Wave One 128IBM Quantum Experience: 5 qubits, 2016IBM Quantum Experience 5Sycamore: 53 qubits, 2019Sycamore 53Eagle: 127 qubits, 2021Eagle 127IBM Osprey: 433 qubits, 2022IBM Osprey 433IBM Condor: 1,121 qubits, 2023IBM Condor 1,121Willow: 105 qubits, 2024Willow 105Quantinuum Helios: 98 qubits, 2025Quantinuum Helios 98Caltech tweezer array: 6,100 qubits, 2025Caltech tweezer array 6,100physical qubits on one machine, as announced — a count, not a score

Every point is a count a maker announced, from the events above and the Machines page. The line rises by a factor of a thousand in twenty-five years. Nothing on this chart says how good the qubits were, which is the number that matters; see what it is not.