Quantum History Part 3: The First Qubits and Lab Machines (1995 to 2017)
From paper to apparatus
After Shor and Grover, the question changed from can it work in theory to can anyone build one. The answer began to arrive in labs in the second half of the 1990s. The machines were tiny, but each one proved a piece of the puzzle. It helps to remember that the first transistor was also a fragile curiosity.
1995: the first quantum logic gate
According to the Wikipedia timeline, Christopher Monroe and David Wineland at NIST realized the first quantum logic gate, a controlled-NOT, with trapped ions in 1995. This is the ancestor of today's trapped ion machines, the same family of hardware Quantinuum builds. A controlled-NOT is the basic two-qubit operation that creates entanglement, so showing it worked meant the key building block of quantum circuits existed in the real world.
1998: quantum computers in a test tube
An unexpected route used nuclear magnetic resonance, the same physics as an MRI scanner. In 1998 a two qubit NMR quantum computer solved Deutsch's problem, reported by Jonathan Jones and Michele Mosca at Oxford and shortly after by Isaac Chuang at IBM's Almaden lab. A 3 qubit NMR machine and a run of Grover's algorithm on NMR followed. These molecules in liquid were not scalable, and later analysis raised questions about how quantum they really were, but they gave the community its first hands-on experience of running quantum programs.
1999: a circuit as a qubit
In 1999 Yasunobu Nakamura and Jaw-Shen Tsai showed that a superconducting circuit can serve as a qubit. This mattered enormously. Circuits can be printed using chip techniques, so in principle they can be manufactured in numbers. The whole superconducting qubit industry, including Google and IBM's machines, grew from this kind of result.
2001: factoring 15
The Wikipedia timeline lists 2001 as the year Shor's algorithm was executed, factoring the number 15; the experiment is credited to an IBM and Stanford team using NMR (Vandersypen, Chuang and colleagues, published in Nature). It sounds tiny, because it is. But it was a real demonstration that the algorithm worked on hardware. It also shows why headline numbers should always be read in context: factoring 15 is something a child can do, and the point was the method, not the answer.
The textbook and the checklist
In 2000 Michael Nielsen and Isaac Chuang published the textbook that trained a generation of researchers. In 1996 David DiVincenzo had laid out his well known criteria, a checklist of what a physical quantum computer needs: well defined qubits, a way to start them, long coherence, a universal set of gates and a way to read results. (The timeline page I read dates the criteria to 1996.) Every hardware company still measures itself against some version of this list.
Many bets, no winner yet
The 2000s and 2010s were an era of competing designs. Ions, superconducting loops, photons, neutral atoms and spins in silicon all advanced. Some researchers expected one technology to win quickly. Instead the field learned that different designs have different strengths, a theme you can explore in Types of Quantum Computers. In 2011 an Innsbruck trapped ion team reported repeated rounds of quantum error correction (published in Science), and in 2018 John Preskill introduced the NISQ idea described in the next chapter.
Why patience paid off
- Each hardware family found a real strength: ions for clean gates, superconducting circuits for speed and manufacturing, photons for networking, atoms for large arrays.
- Engineering skills compounded. Better lasers, fridges, control electronics and materials all had to improve. See How Are Quantum Computers Cooled for one example.
- Money and talent arrived. Big companies and governments started labs, which led to the faster pace of the 2010s.
Where the story goes next
The next chapter is the age of noisy machines and the first big claims of beating supercomputers: NISQ and the supremacy claims. For the basics of a qubit, read What Is a Qubit? Superposition and Measurement Explained.
Sources and further reading
- Wikipedia: Timeline of quantum computing and communication
- Wikipedia: Quantum computing (history section)
Reported as of 2026-10-09. Company claims are the companies' own unless a source says otherwise. Educational content only, not financial advice. The QNT memecoin is independent of Quantinuum Ltd and every other company, lab or government.
Frequently asked questions
When was the first qubit built?
There is no single date. Trapped ion gates were reported at NIST in 1995, NMR machines ran algorithms in 1998, and a superconducting circuit was shown to work as a qubit in 1999.
Did a quantum computer really factor 15 in 2001?
The timeline reports that Shor's algorithm was executed on hardware that year to factor 15. It was a proof of method, not a threat to encryption.
Why did it take so long to build working qubits?
Qubits are fragile and need extreme isolation and control. Progress needed better lasers, cryogenics, fabrication and electronics, all improving together.
Keep reading
- Quantum History Part 4: NISQ and the Supremacy Claims (2018 to 2022)
Preskill names the noisy era, Google claims a milestone in 2019, IBM pushes back, USTC joins in, and the qubit counts climb. - Types of Quantum Computers: Superconducting, Ion, Photonic and More
A guide to the main ways quantum computers are built, with the strengths and trade-offs of each approach. - Trapped Ion Quantum Computers Explained
How do trapped ion quantum computers work? Learn how charged atoms become qubits, why they are accurate, why they are slow, and how they might scale. - Superconducting Qubits Explained in Depth
How do superconducting qubits work? A clear look at circuits, microwave control, strengths, weaknesses and open questions in widely used quantum hardware.
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