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History of Quantum Computers

Initially the famous physicist Robert Feynman breached the subject of using quantum effects for computation in 1982, though his primary interest was in using the effects of one quantum effect to simulate another.  Three years later in 1985 David Deutsch of the University of Oxford published a paper detailing the workings of a universal quantum computer, detailing the functionality of the theoretical process, but not creating a great deal of interest.

In 1994 Peter Shor from AT&T's Bell Laboratories created an algorithm for efficient factorization.  Being an extremely sought after application that could only be performed by quantum computers, it led to a great deal of interest and inquiries into the actual feasibility of creating such a system.

Since then, though the technological advances have been impressive, it is still nowhere near forming an actual functional quantum computer.  It seems that the events that actually occur are so delicate that it is extremely difficult to protect the system from it’s very environment.