Section 01 - What

What is meant by IT?

Definitions about the Information Technology are born through various institutes and persons. There are some of them, which were accepted by most of the communities. However, let’s get into a definition related to business field

“The term information technology or IT to refer to an entire industry. In actuality, information technology is the use of computers and software to manage information. In some companies, this is referred to as Management Information Services (or MIS) or simply as Information Services (or IS). The information technology department of a large company would be responsible for storing information, protecting information, processing the information, transmitting the information as necessary, and later retrieving information as necessary”

The History of Information Technology

            No, as you thought this section is not discussing about the history of “The Computer”. But it will discuss about the combined history with computer and Information / communication Technology.

The history of Information Technology can be separated into 4 periods for the ease of study. Those are

Characterized by a principal technology used to solve the input, processing, output and communication problems of the time:

1. Premechanical,
2. Mechanical,
3. Electromechanical, and
4. Electronic

Let’s peep deeper into these periods

Please Note – To ensure the quality of the information provide by this report, Author is producing the following history part by referring several information sources. See Bibliography

 

Premechanical, (3000 B.C. - 1450 A.D)

1. Writing and Alphabets--communication.

·         First humans communicated only through speaking and picture drawings.

·         3000 B.C., the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (what is today southern Iraq) devised Cuneiform [1]

·         Around 2000 B.C., Phoenicians created symbols

• The Greeks later adopted the Phoenician alphabet and added vowels; the Romans gave the letters Latin names to create the alphabet we use today.

2. Paper and Pens--input technologies.

• Sumerians' input technology was a stylus that could scratch marks in wet clay.
• About 2600 B.C., the Egyptians write on the papyrus plant
• Around 100 A.D., the Chinese made paper from rags, on which modern-day papermaking is based.

3. Books and Libraries: Permanent Storage Devices.

• Religious leaders in Mesopotamia kept the earliest "books"
• The Egyptians kept scrolls
• Around 600 B.C., the Greeks began to fold sheets of papyrus vertically into leaves and bind them together.

4. The First Numbering Systems.

• Egyptian system: The numbers 1-9 as vertical lines, the number 10 as a U or circle, the number 100 as a coiled rope, and the number 1,000 as a lotus blossom.
• The first numbering systems similar to those in use today were invented between 100 and 200 A.D. by Hindus in India who created a nine-digit numbering system.
• Around 875 A.D., the concept of zero was developed.

5. The First Calculators: The Abacus

Abacus is the 1st calculator of the world. But we know we still use it for education purposes. If you’re still unclear about what is abacus, a picture will clarify that.

 

 

The Mechanical Age: 1450 - 1840

1. The First Information Explosion.

·         Johann Gutenberg (Mainz, Germany)

·         Invented the movable metal-type printing process in 1450.

·         The development of book indexes and the widespread use of page numbers.

2. The first general purpose "computers"

·         Actually people who held the job title "computer: one who works with numbers."

3. Slide Rules, the Pascaline and Leibniz's Machine.

·         Slide Rule.

Early 1600s, William Oughtred, an English clergyman, invented the slide rule which is an early example of an analog computer.

·         The Pascaline. Invented by Blaise Pascal (1623-62).

4.      Babbage's Engines
Charles Babbage (1792-1871), eccentric English mathematician 

·         The Difference Engine

§  Working model created in 1822.

§  The "method of differences".

·         The Analytical Engine.

Designed during the 1830s and its’ parts remarkably similar to modern-day computers.

• The "store"
• The "mill"
• Punch cards.

Punch card idea picked up by Babbage from Joseph Marie Jacquard's (1752-1834) loom.

• Introduced in 1801.
• Binary logic
• Fixed program that would operate in real time.

Moreover, when we talk about the history of Information Technology, we never can forget Augusta Ada Byron (1815-52). A person who is honored as world’s first programmer.

The Electromechanical Age: 1840 - 1940.

The discovery of ways to harness electricity was the key advance made during this period. Knowledge and information could now be converted into electrical impulses.

1.      The Beginnings of Telecommunication.

·         Voltaic Battery. - Late 18th century.

·         Telegraph. - Early 1800s.

·         Morse Code. - Developed in1835 by Samuel Morse

·         Telephone and Radio. - Alexander Graham Bell.  1876

·         Followed by the discovery that electrical waves travel through space and can produce an effect far from the point at which they originated.

·         These two events led to the invention of the radio

2.      Electromechanical Computing

·         Herman Hollerith (1860-1929) in 1880.

Mr. Herman Hellorith is honored as the founder of mechanical tabulator based on punched cards. It rapidly tabulates statistics from millions of pieces of data.

·         The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)

The 1st Logo of IBM

In IBM, Howard Aiken, a Ph.D. Student at Harvard University Built the Mark I Completed January 1942 8 feet tall, 51 feet long, 2 feet thick, weighed 5 tons, used about 750,000 parts

The Electronic Age: 1940 - Present

The discovery of ways to harness electricity was the key advance made during this period. Knowledge and information could now be converted into electrical impulses.

1.      Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)

·         Found in 1946.

·         Used vacuum tubes (not mechanical devices) to do its calculations. Hence, first electronic computer.

·         Developers are John Mauchly, a physicist, and J. Prosper Eckert, an electrical engineer in the he Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania

·         Funded by the U.S. Army.

·         But it could not store its programs (its set of instructions)

2.      The First Stored-Program Computer(s)

·         Early 1940s, Mauchly and Eckert began to design the EDVAC - the Electronic Discreet Variable Computer.

·         John von Neumann's influential report in June 1945:"The Report on the EDVAC"

·         British scientists used this report and outpaced the Americans.

·         Max Newman headed up the effort at Manchester University

·         Where the Manchester Mark I went into operation in June 1948--becoming the first stored-program computer.

·         Maurice Wilkes, a British scientist at Cambridge University, completed the EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) in 1949--two years before EDVAC was finished.

·         Thus, EDSAC became the first stored-program computer in general use (i.e., not a prototype).

3.      The Four Generations of Digital Computing.

·         The First Generation (1951-1958).

§  Vacuum tubes as their main logic elements.

§  Punch cards to input and externally store data.

§  Rotating magnetic drums for internal storage of data and programs

·         The Second Generation (1959-1963).

§  Vacuum tubes replaced by transistors as main logic element.

§  Magnetic tape and disks began to replace punched cards as external storage devices.

§  Magnetic cores (very small donut-shaped magnets that could be polarized in one of two directions to represent data) strung on wire within the computer became the primary internal storage technology.

·         The Third Generation (1964-1979)

§  Individual transistors were replaced by integrated circuits.

§  Magnetic tape and disks completely replace punch cards as external storage devices.

§  Magnetic core internal memories began to give way to a new form, metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) memory, which, like integrated circuits, used silicon-backed chips.

§  When we consider about Operating systems advanced programming languages like BASIC developed in this era. And Bill Gates and Microsoft got their start in 1975.

·         The Fourth Generation (1979- Present).

§  Large-scale and very large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs and VLSICs)

§  Microprocessors that contained memory, logic, and control circuits (an entire CPU = Central Processing Unit) on a single chip. This allowed for home-use personal computers or PCs, like the Apple (II and Mac) and IBM PC.

§  First Apple Mac released in 1984.

§  IBM PC introduced in 1981.

§  Debuts with MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System)

§  Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) for PCs arrive in early 1980s

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[1] Cuneiform script is one of the earliest known forms of written expression – from Wikipedia