History of Information Technology
Introduction
Information technology has been around for a long, long time. Basically as
long as people have been around, information technology has been around because
there were always ways of communicating through technology available at that
point in time. There are 4 main ages that divide up the history of information
technology. Only the latest age (electronic) and some of the electromechanical
age really affects us today, but it is important to learn about how we got to
the point we are at with technology today.
Ages
Premechanical
The premechanical age is the earliest age of information technology. It can
be defined as the time between 3000B.C. and 1450A.D. We are talking about a
long time ago. When humans first started communicating they would try to use
language or simple picture drawings known as petroglyths which were usually
carved in rock. Early alphabets were developed such as the Phoenician alphabet.
As alphabets became more popluar and more people were writing information down,
pens and paper began to be developed. It started off as just marks in wet clay,
but later paper was created out of papyrus plant. The most popular kind of
paper made was probably by the Chinese who made paper from rags.
Now that people were writing a lot of information down they needed ways to keep
it all in permanent storage. This is where the first books and libraries are
developed. You’ve probably heard of Egyptian scrolls which were popular ways of
writing down information to save. Some groups of people were actually binding
paper together into a book-like form.
Also during this period were the first numbering systems. Around 100A.D. was
when the first 1-9 system was created by people from India. However, it wasn’t
until 875A.D. (775 years later) that the number 0 was invented. And yes now
that numbers were created, people wanted stuff to do with them so they created
calculators. A calculator was the very first sign of an information processor.
The popular model of that time was the abacus.
Mechanical
The mechanical age is when we first start to see connections between our
current technology and its ancestors. The mechanical age can be defined as the
time between 1450 and 1840. A lot of new technologies are developed in this era
as there is a large explosion in interest with this area. Technologies like
the slide rule (an analog computer used for multiplying and dividing) were
invented. Blaise Pascal invented the Pascaline which was a very popular
mechanical computer. Charles Babbage developed the difference engine which
tabulated polynomial equations using the method of finite differences.
Difference Engine
There were lots of different machines created during this era and while we have
not yet gottent to a machine that can do more than one type of calculation in
one, like our modern-day calculators, we are still learning about how all of
our all-in-one machines started. Also, if you look at the size of the machines
invented in this time compared to the power behind them it seems (to us)
absolutely ridiculous to understand why anybody would want to use them, but to
the people living in that time ALL of thse inventions were HUGE.
Electromechanical
Now we are finally getting close to some technologies that resemble our
modern-day technology. The electromechanical age can be defined as the time
between 1840 and 1940. These are the beginnings of telecommunication. The
telegraph was created in the early 1800s. Morse code was created by Samuel
Morse in 1835. The telephone (one of the most popular forms of communication
ever) was created by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. The first radio developed
by Guglielmo Marconi in 1894. All of these were extremely crucial emerging
technologies that led to big advances in the information technology field.
The first large-scale automatic digital computer in the United States
was the
Mark 1 created by Harvard University around 1940. This computer was 8ft
high,
50ft long, 2ft wide, and weighed 5 tons
- HUGE. It was programmed using punch cards. How does your PC match up
to this hunk of metal? It was from huge machines like this that
people began to look at downsizing all the parts to first make
them usable by businesses andeventually in your own home.
Harvard Mark 1
Electronic
The electronic age is wha we currently live in. It can be defined as the
time between 1940 and right now. The ENIAC was the first high-speed,
digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of
computing problems. This computer was designed to be used by the U.S. Army
for artillery firing tables. This machine was even bigger than the Mark 1
taking up 680 square feet and weighing 30 tons - HUGE. It mainly used
vacuum tubes to do its calculations.
There are 4 main sections of digital computing. The first was the era of
vacuum tubes and punch cards like the ENIAC and Mark 1. Rotating magnetic
drums were used for internal storage. The second generation replaced vacuum
tubes with transistors, punch cards were replaced with magnetic tape, and
rotating magnetic drums were replaced by magnetic cores for internal storage.
Also during this time high-level programming languages were created such as
FORTRAN and COBOL. The third generation replaced transistors with integrated
circuits, magnetic tape was used throughout all computers, and magnetic core
turned into metal oxide semiconductors. An actual operating system showed up
around this time along with the advanced programming language BASIC. The fourth
and latest generation brought in CPUs (central processing units) which
contained memory, logic, and control circuits all on a single chip. The
personal comptuer was developed (Apple II). The graphical user interface (GUI)
was developed.
Apple 2 There is a lot more to all of these generations and ages but all you really
need is a rough overview.
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