History of Information Technology and System

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

a. Pre mechanical,

b. Mechanical,

c. Electromechanical, and

d. Electronic

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.

Voltaic BatteryTelegraph

Telephone and Radio

The first electric battery, known as the Voltaire pile was invented in 8th century by Alessandro Volta.

Voltaic files consisted of a stack of alternating discs of zinc and copper or silver separated by felt soaked in brine. They provided, for the first time, a simple source of stored electrical energy that didn’t rely on mechanical means.

Samuel F.J. Morse conceived of his version of an electromagnetic telegraph in 1832 and constructed an experiment version in 1815.

He did not construct a truly practical system until 1844, when he built a line from Baltimore to Washington.

• Alexander Graham Bell. • 1876 • Developed the first working

telephone and transmitted his now famous quotation “Watson, come here, I want you.”

• His telephone was introduced on a large scale at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1877.

• Followed by the discovery that electrical waves travel through space and can produce an effect far from the point at which they originated by Guglielmo Marconi in 1894

• These two events led to the invention of the radio

• 1852-George Boole develops binary algebra. This became known as Boolean algebra andbecame important in the 20th century when binary computers were developed.

Tabulating Machine

Comptometer

Comptograph

Punched cards

Pehr and Advard Scheutz complete their tabulating Machine, capable of processing fifteen-digit numbers, printing out results and rounding off to eight digits.

Dorr Felt devises the Comptometer, a key driven adding and subtracting calculator.

Felt’s Comptograph, containing built-in printer, is introduced

Herman Hollerith was the first person to successfully use punched cards in 1890.

Punched Card was adapted for use in early computers and provided computer programmers with a new way to put information into their machine.

Until only two decades ago, the punched card was the most popular method for entering data into computers.

•By the 19th century, the number of people in the United States was so large, it took seven years to count them all.

•Seeking to shorten that time, the Census Bureau held a contest to find the fastest adding machine.

•Hollerith won the contest with his punched card device and his invention helped to complete the 1890 census in just two and one-half years.

Hollerith was the father of information processing and found the Tabulating machine Company which later became the Computer Tabulating Recording Company.

Hollerith company went to become the International Business Machines Corporation known today as IBM.

The Millionaire, the first efficeint four-function calculator invented by Otto shweiger, a Swiss Engineer.

•With the groundwork laid by people such as Pascal, Babbage and Hollerith, innovators began working toward modern computers.

•It was during the early 2oth century computers changed from mechanical calculation machines to electronic computers.

Vacuum tube was developed by Lee De Forest which provide electricity controlled switch, a necessity for digital electronic computers.

• Vacuum tubes look similar to light bulbs.

• It were the first major electrical part of a computer, replacing manual switches.

• After the introduction of the vacuum tube, there were no longer problems with mechanical gears, pulleys or levers.

• It marked the end of mechanical computing and the beginnings of electronics in computer.

The Electronic Age:

1941-Present

•In 1941, Konrad Zuse built the first programmable computer called Z3. A computer is “programmable” because it is capable of following instructions.

• Z3 is designed to solve engineering equations rather than basic arithmetic problems.

•Z3 was the first fully functional, program controlled (freely programmable) computer of the world. The Z3 was presented on May 12, 1941 to an audience of scientists in Berlin. The demonstration was a success.

1942• Howard Aiken a PhD student of Harvard University

built the Mark I “ The First Stored Program Computer”

• 8 feet tall, 51 feet long, 2 feet thick, weight 5 tons, used about 750, 000 parts, 500 miles of wires, 3-5 seconds per calculation.

•In 1942, John Atanasoff and Clifford berry completed the first all-electronic computer the ABC (Atanasoff-Berry computer).

•ABC was the first computer to use electricity in the form of vacuum tubes to make electric computation possible.

•ABC was used for solving complex system of equations.

John Atanasoff Clifford berry

Thank You For Listening!