History of Information and Technology Systems

“ Those who do not Learn from history are destined to repeat it”

George Santayana

Learning Objectives

When you have finished discussing this lesson, you will be able to:

1. Understand how computer technology has evolved.

2. Identify key people in the development of computers.

3. Explain the main differences among the generations of computers.

4. Discuss trends in the development of computers.

Four basic periodsCharacterized by a principal technology

used to solve the input, processing, output and communication problems of the time: Premechanical Mechanical ElectromechanicalElectronic

The Premechanical Age: (3000 B.C. - 1450 A.D.)

Simple mechanism powered by hand due to the absence of electricity and adequate industrial technology.

1. Writing and Alphabets--communication.a. First humans communicated only through speaking and simple drawings known as petroglyths (signs or simple figures carved in rock).

Many of these are pictographs – pictures or sketches that visually resemble that which is depicted.

E.g., cave painting from Lascaux, France, c. 15,000-

10,000 BC

prehistoric petroglythic imagery from Western U.S.

E.g., cave painting from Lascaux, France, c. 15,000-10,000 BC

E.g., prehistoric petroglythic imagery from Western U.S.:

Geometric signs (dots, squares, etc.) with no apparent depicted object = ideographs (symbols to represent ideas or concepts.)

b. First development of signs corresponding to spoken sounds, instead of pictures, to express words. Starting in 3100 B.C., the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (southern Iraq) devised cuneiform -- the first true written language and the first real information system.

Pronounced "coo-nay-eh-form"

Cuneiform's evolution:Early pictographic tablet (3100 B.C.), (2500 -2800 B.C) , (2100 B.C.)

Early pictographic tablet (3100 B.C.).

Pictographs for star (which also meant heaven or god), head, and water (on the left) were turned on their side (in the middle), and eventually became cuneiform symbols (on right).

Pictographs were turned on their sides (2800 B.C.) and then developed into actual cuneiform symbols (2500 B.C.) -- as this clay tablet illustrates.

A cuneiform table (c. 2100 B.C.) listing expenditures of grain and animals.

c. Around 2000 B.C., Phoenicians created symbols that expressed single syllables and consonants (the first true alphabet).

d. 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. a. Sumerians' input technology was a stylus

that could scratch marks in wet clay.

b. About 2600 B.C., the Egyptians wrote on the papyrus plant

c. Around 100 A.D., the Chinese made paper from rags, on which modern-day papermaking is based,

3. Books and Libraries--output technologies (permanent storage devices).

a. Religious leaders in Mesopotamia kept the earliest "books"

b. The Egyptians kept scrolls.

c. Around 600 B.C., the Greeks began to fold sheets of papyrus vertically into leaves and bind them together.

4. The First Numbering Systems. a. 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.

b. 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.

c. Around 875 A.D., the concept of zero was developed.

5. The First Calculators: The Abacus.

AbacusThe first manual data device developed in China in the 12th century A.D..

The device has a frame with beads strung on wires and arithmetic calculations are performed by manipulating the beads

The Mechanical Age: 1450 - 1840

During this centuries, Europeans created several calculating machines that made use of existing technology, specifically clockwork gears and levers.

1. The First Information Explosion. Johann Gutenberg (Mainz, Germany; c. 1387-1468)

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

4. Babbage’s Engine

Slide Rule

Early 1600s, William Oughtred, an English clergyman, invented the slide rule

Early example of an analog computer.

The Pascaline (front)

rear view

Diagram of interior

PASCALINE

Invented by Blaise Pascal (1623-62), a French mathematician

One of the first mechanical computing machines, around 1642.

capable of adding and subtracting numbers containing

up to eight digits operated by dialing series of wheels approximately the size of a cigar box hand-cranked mechanical gear systemPerformed computation by counting integers

Blaise Pascal (1623-62)

Leibniz's Machine. Invented by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716),

German mathematician and philosopher. Capable of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division

and extract square roots.

Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716),

4. Babbage Engine

Invented by Charles Babbage (1792-1871), eccentric English mathematician. Considered the father of computer because his invention became the basis for modern computational devices. The Difference Engine (1822)

Designed to standard procedure for calculating the roots of polynomials. The Analytical Engine

Designed to use two types of cards – operation card and variable cards.

Joseph Marie Jacquard's loomDesigned during the 1830s

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.

Augusta Ada Byron (1815-52).She wrote a demonstration program for the Analytic Engine, prompting many to refer her as the first programmer.

Charles Babbage (1792-1871)

The Difference Engine.

Working model created in 1822.

The "method of differences".

The Analytical Engine. The machine was

designed to use a form of punched card similar to Jacquard's punched cards for data input.

This device would have been a full-fledged modern computer with a recognizable IPOS cycle (input, processing, output, and storage).

the technology during this time could not produce the parts required to complete the analytical engine.

Joseph Marie Jacquard's loom.

Augusta Ada Byron

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.a. Voltaic Battery.

Late 18th century. b. Telegraph.

Early 1800s. c. Morse Code.

Developed in1835 by Samuel Morse Dots and dashes.

d. Telephone and Radio. e. Followed by the discovery that electrical waves

travel through space and can produce an effect far from the point at which they originated.

f. These two events led to the invention of the radio Guglielmo Marconi 1894

2. Electromechanical Computing a. Herman Hollerith and IBM. - Herman Hollerith (1860-1929) in

1880

- Census Machine

- Early punch cards

- Punch card workers

By 1890

The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).

Its first logo

b. Mark 1

Alexander Graham Bell. 1876

Dr. Herman Hollerith

He founded the Tabulating Machine Company in 1896

Tabulating Machine Company merged with two other companies to form the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company

Census Machine

Early punch cards

1924, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company became International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).

marketing expert named Thomas Watson Sr (Business partner of Hollerith

Mark 1

Paper tape stored data and program instructions.

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

•slow, taking 3 to 5 seconds to perform a single multiplication operation

The Electronic Age: 1940 - Present

The first electronic computers were complex machines that required large investments to build and use. The computer industry might never have developed without government support and funding

1. First Tries. - Early 1940s - Electronic vacuum tubes.

2. Dr. John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert a. The First High-Speed, General-Purpose Computer Using Vacuum Tubes: Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)

b. 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.

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

c. The First General-Purpose Computer for Commercial Use: Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC).

Late 1940s, Eckert and Mauchly began the development of a computer called UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) Remington Rand. First UNIVAC delivered to Census Bureau in 1951.

a machine called LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) went into action a few months before UNIVAC and became the world's first commercial computer.

3. The Four Generations of Digital Computing.

a. 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

Programs written in Machine language Assembly language

Requires a compiler.

b. The Second Generation (1959-1963). - Vacuum tubes replaced by transistors as main logic

element. AT&T's Bell Laboratories, in the 1940s Crystalline mineral materials called semiconductors could

be used in the design of a device called a transistor

- 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.

High-level programming languages E.g., FORTRAN and COBOL

c. The Third Generation (1964-1979).

1. Individual transistors were replaced by integrated circuits.

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

3. 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.

- Operating systems - Advanced programming languages like BASIC developed.

Which is where Bill Gates and Microsoft got their start in 1975.

d. The Fourth Generation (1979- Present).

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

2. Microprocessors that contained memory, logic, and control circuits (an entire CPU = Central Processing Unit) on a single chip.

Which allowed for home-use personal computers or PCs, like the Apple (II and Mac) and IBM PC.

Apple II released to public in 1977, by Stephen Wozniak and Steven Jobs.

First Apple Mac released in 1984. IBM PC introduced in 1981.

Debuts with MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System)

Fourth generation language software products E.g., Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3, dBase, Microsoft Word,

and many others. Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) for PCs arrive in

early 1980s MS Windows debuts in 1983, but is quite a clunker.

Vacuum tubes could multiply two ten-digit numbers forty times per second.

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.

Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) 1946.

• Used vacuum tubes (not mechanical devices) to do its calculations.

• first electronic computer.

• Developers John Mauchly, a physicist, and J. Prosper Eckert, an electrical engineer

• • But it could not store its

programs (its set of instructions)

ENIAC used 18,000 vacuum tubes, and it is said that the lights would dim in Philadelphia whenever ENIAC was turned on. ENIAC was 10 feet high, 10 feet wide, and 100 feet long.

The Manchester University Mark I (prototype) 

First Stored-Program Computer(s)

The First General-Purpose Computer for Commercial Use: Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC).

                

This UNIVAC I was a commercial version of the ENIAC.

UNIVAC publicity photo                        

Magnetic drums provided secondary storage for first-generation computers.

The transistor was invented by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley of Bell Telephone Laboratories

Magnetic core memory reduces calculation times

Integrated circuits are shown here with first-generation vacuum tubes and second-generation transistors.

The two Steves--Steve Jobs (in the white sweater and red shirt) and Steve Wozniak--are holding the Apple I board.

 

Apple II released to public in 1977, by Stephen Wozniak and Steven Jobs.

Initially sold for $1,195 (without a monitor); had 16k RAM.

The IBM PC

Apple's GUI (on the first Mac) debuts in 1984,

MS Windows debuts in 1983, but is quite a clunker.

Windows wouldn't take off until version 3 was released in 1990

                                                                                              

Four Stages, or Generations, of Computer Development

Generation

Years Circuitry Characterized By

First  1951 - 1959 

Vacuum tubes 

Magnetic drum and magnetic tape; difficult to program; used machine language and assembly language 

Second 

1959 - 1963 

Transistors 

Magnetic cores and magnetic disk; used high-level languages and were easier to program 

Third  1963 - 1975 

Integrated circuit 

Minicomputer accessible by multiple users from remote terminals  

Fourth  1975 -

present 

VLSI and microprocessor chip 

Personal computer and user-friendly microprocessor programs; very high-level language; chip object-oriented programming (OOP)