A History of Information Technology and Systems
A. The Premechanical Age: 3000 B.C. - 1450 A.D.
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Writing and Alphabets--communication.
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First humans communicated only through speaking and picture drawings.
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3000 B.C., the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (what is today southern Iraq) devised
cuniform
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Around 2000 B.C., Phoenicians created symbols
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The Greeks later adopted the Phoenician alphabet and added vowels; the Romans
gave the letters Latin names to create the alphabet we use today.
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Paper and Pens--input technologies.
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Sumerians' input technology was a stylus that could scratch marks in wet
clay.
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About 2600 B.C., the Egyptians write on the papyrus plant
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around 100 A.D., the Chinese made paper from rags, on which modern-day
papermaking is based.
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Books and Libraries: Permanent Storage Devices.
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Religious leaders in Mesopotamia kept the earliest "books"
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The Egyptians kept scrolls
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Around 600 B.C., the Greeks began to fold sheets of papyrus vertically into
leaves and bind them together.
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The First Numbering Systems.
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Egyptian system:
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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.
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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.
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Around 875 A.D., the concept of zero was developed.
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The First Calculators: The Abacus.
One of the very first information processors.
B. The Mechanical Age: 1450 - 1840
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The First Information Explosion.
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Johann Gutenberg (Mainz, Germany)
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Invented the movable metal-type printing process in 1450.
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The development of book indexes and the widespread use of page numbers.
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The first general purpose "computers"
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Actually people who held the job title "computer: one who works with numbers."
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Slide Rules, the Pascaline and Leibniz's Machine.
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Slide Rule.
Early 1600s, William Oughtred, an English clergyman, invented
the slide rule
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Early example of an analog computer.
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The Pascaline. Invented by Blaise Pascal (1623-62).
The Pascaline (front)
(rear view)
Diagram of interior
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One of the first mechanical computing machines, around 1642.
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Leibniz's Machine.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716), German mathematician and
philosopher.
The Reckoner (reconstruction)
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Babbage's Engines
Charles Babbage (1792-1871), eccentric English mathematician
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The Difference Engine.
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Working model created in 1822.
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The "method of differences".
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The Analytical Engine.
Joseph Marie Jacquard's loom.
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Designed during the 1830s
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Parts remarkably similar to modern-day computers.
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The "store"
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The "mill"
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Punch cards.
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Punch card idea picked up by Babbage from Joseph Marie Jacquard's
(1752-1834) loom.
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Introduced in 1801.
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Binary logic
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Fixed program that would operate in real time.
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Augusta Ada Byron (1815-52).
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The first programmer
C. 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.
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The Beginnings of Telecommunication.
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Voltaic Battery.
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Telegraph.
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Morse Code.
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Developed in1835 by Samuel Morse
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Dots and dashes.
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Telephone and Radio.
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Alexander Graham Bell.
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1876
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Followed by the discovery that electrical waves travel through space and
can produce an effect far from the point at which they originated.
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These two events led to the invention of the radio
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Electromechanical Computing
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Herman Hollerith and IBM.
Herman Hollerith (1860-1929) in 1880.
Census Machine.
Early punch cards.
Punch card workers.
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By 1890
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The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).
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Its first logo
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Mark 1.
Paper tape stored data and program instructions.
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Howard Aiken, a Ph.D. student at Harvard University
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Built the Mark I
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Completed January 1942
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8 feet tall, 51 feet long, 2 feet thick, weighed 5 tons, used about 750,000
parts
D. The Electronic Age: 1940 - Present.
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First Tries.
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Early 1940s
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Electronic vacuum tubes.
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Eckert and Mauchly.
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The First High-Speed, General-Purpose Computer Using Vacuum
Tubes:
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)
The ENIAC team (Feb 14, 1946). Left to right: J. Presper Eckert, Jr.; John
Grist Brainerd; Sam Feltman; Herman H. Goldstine; John W. Mauchly; Harold
Pender; Major General G. L. Barnes; Colonel Paul N. Gillon.
Rear view (note vacuum tubes).
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Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)
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1946.
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Used vacuum tubes (not mechanical devices) to do its calculations.
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Hence, first electronic computer.
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Developers John Mauchly, a physicist, and J. Prosper Eckert, an electrical
engineer
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The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania
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Funded by the U.S. Army.
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But it could not store its programs (its set of instructions)
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The First Stored-Program Computer(s)
The Manchester University Mark I (prototype).
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Early 1940s, Mauchly and Eckert began to design the EDVAC - the Electronic
Discreet Variable Computer.
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John von Neumann's influential report in June 1945:
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"The Report on the EDVAC"
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British scientists used this report and outpaced the Americans.
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Max Newman headed up the effort at Manchester University
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Where the Manchester Mark I went into operation in June
1948--becoming the first stored-program computer.
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Maurice Wilkes, a British scientist at Cambridge University, completed the
EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) in 1949--two
years before EDVAC was finished.
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Thus, EDSAC became the first stored-program computer in general use (i.e.,
not a prototype).
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The First General-Purpose Computer for Commercial Use: Universal
Automatic Computer (UNIVAC).
UNIVAC publicity photo.
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Late 1940s, Eckert and Mauchly began the development of a computer called
UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer)
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Remington Rand.
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First UNIVAC delivered to Census Bureau in 1951.
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But, a machine called LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) went into action
a few months before UNIVAC and became the world's first commercial
computer.
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The Four Generations of Digital Computing.
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The First Generation
(1951-1958).
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Vacuum tubes as their main logic elements.
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Punch cards to input and externally store data.
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Rotating magnetic drums for internal storage of data and programs
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Programs written in
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Machine language
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Assembly language
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The Second Generation
(1959-1963).
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Vacuum tubes replaced by transistors as main logic element.
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AT&T's Bell Laboratories, in the 1940s
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Crystalline mineral materials called semiconductors could be used
in the design of a device called a transistor
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Magnetic tape and disks began to replace punched cards as external storage
devices.
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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.
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High-level programming languages
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The Third Generation (1964-1979).
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Individual transistors were replaced by integrated circuits.
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Magnetic tape and disks completely replace punch cards as external
storage devices.
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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.
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Operating systems
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Advanced programming languages like BASIC developed.
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Which is where Bill Gates and Microsoft got their start in 1975.
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The Fourth Generation (1979- Present).
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Large-scale and very large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs and VLSICs)
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Microprocessors that contained memory, logic, and control circuits (an entire
CPU = Central Processing Unit) on a single chip.
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Which allowed for home-use personal computers or PCs, like the Apple
(II and Mac) and IBM PC.
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Apple II released to public in 1977, by Stephen Wozniak and Steven Jobs.
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Initially sold for $1,195 (without a monitor); had 16k RAM.
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First Apple Mac released in 1984.
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IBM PC introduced in 1981.
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Debuts with MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System)
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Fourth generation language software products
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E.g., Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3, dBase, Microsoft Word, and many others.
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Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) for PCs arrive in early 1980s
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MS Windows debuts in 1983, but is quite a clunker.
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Windows wouldn't take off until version 3 was released in 1990
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Apple's GUI (on the first Mac) debuts in 1984.
Bibliography
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Kenneth C. Laudon, Carol Guercio Traver, Jane P. Laudon, Information
Technology and Systems, Cambridge, MA: Course Technology, 1996.
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Stan Augarten, BIT By BIT: An Illustrated History of Computers (New
York: Ticknor & Fields, 1984).
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R. Moreau, The Computer Comes of Age: The People, the Hardware, and the
Software, translated by J. Howlett (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984).
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Telephone History Web Site.
http://www.cybercomm.net/~chuck/phones.html, accessed 1998.
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Microsoft Museum.
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/museum/home.asp, accessed 1998.
Originally developed as a lecture for MAR 203
Concepts in New Media, a course at the University of Arizona, summer 1997, by Jeremy G. Butler. Copyrights of these images are held by their original creators.
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike2.5 License.
Last revised: July 13, 1998