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THE PRE MECHANICAL AGE
THE MECHANICAL AGE
THE ELECTROMECHANICAL AGE
THE ELECTRONIC AGE
The pre-mechanical age is the age in which there were no kinds of computer systems. This was a very long time ago, estimated to be around 3000BC. This date is very much an estimate as it is difficult to gather evidence about what systems were in use so long ago - it could have been nearer to 500BC.
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 were developed in this era due to an explosion of interest in computation and information.
The electromechanical period ushered in a new age in communications and information. This period started around 1840-1940. In this period, the use of electricity for information handling and transfer bloomed. The need and the urgency to share information with one another in a faster yet reliable manner over long distances aroused.
The electronic age is also known as the information age or the digital age. It began around the 1970s and continued till the present day. This is a period of transition from traditional industry to an economy based on information computerization.
3000 B.C -1400 A.D
Writing and Alphabets
The first humans communicated only through speaking and picture drawings.
The Sumerians in Mesopotamia (what is today southern Iraq) devised a writing system. The system, called "cunieform" used signs corresponding to spoken sounds, instead of pictures, to express words.
The Phoenicians around 2000 B.C. further simplified writing by creating symbols that expressed single syllables and consonants (the first true alphabet).
For the Sumerians, input technology consisted of a penlike device called a stylus that could scratch marks in wet clay.
About 2600 B.C., the Egyptians discovered that they could write on the papyrus plant, using hollow reeds or rushes to hold the first "ink" - pulverized carbon or ash mixed with lamp oil and gelatin from boiled donkey skin. Other societies wrote on bark, leaves, or leather. The Chinese developed techniques for making paper from rags, on which modern-day papermaking is based, around 100 A.D.
Religious leaders in Mesopotamia kept the earliest "books"" a collection of rectangular clay tablets, inscribed with cuneiform and packaged in labeled containers — in their personal "libraries." The Egyptians kept scrolls - sheets of papyrus wrapped around a shaft of wood.
Around 600 B.C., the Greeks began to fold sheets of papyrus vertically into leaves and bind them together. The dictionary and encyclopedia made their appearance about the same time. The Greeks are also credited with developing the first truly public libraries around 500 B.C.
The Egyptians struggled with a system that depicted 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.
200 A.D. by Hindus in India who created a nine-digit numbering system. Around 875 A.D., the concept of zero was developed. It was through the Arab traders that today's numbering system — 9 digits plus a 0 — made its way to Europe sometime in the 12th century.
The existence of a counting tool called the abacus, one of the very first information processors, permitted people to "store" numbers temporarily and to perform calculations using beads strung on wires. It continued to be an important tool throughout the Middle Ages.
The First Information Explosion
Johann Gutenberg (Mainz, Germany) invented the movable metal-type printing press in 1450. The development of book indexes and the widespread use of page numbers. and the first book to ever be printed was a Latin language Bible, printed in Mainz, Germany.
The First General Purpose "Computers
In 1617, he employ an ancient numerical scheme as the Arabian lattice, lays out a special version of the multiplication tables on a set of four-sided wooded rods, allowing users to multiply and divide numbers and perform square roots and cube roots.
Wilhelm Shickard (1623)
Wilhelm Shickard, a professor at the University of Tubingen, Germany, invents the first mechanical calculator. It can work with six digits and carries digits across columns. It works, but never makes it beyond the prototype stage.
William Oughtred (1625)
Early 1600s, William Oughtred, an English clergyman, invented the slide rule. It is an early example of an analog computer.
Gottfried Von Leibniz (1671
Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716), German mathematician and philosopher invented a machine called the stepped reckoner that could multiply 5 digit and 12 digit numbers yielding up to 16 digit number.
Joseph Marie Jacquard (1801)
Joseph Marie Jacquard invented the automatic loom during the 1830s. The "store", the "mill" and the punch cards are the parts that are remarkably similar to "modern-day" computers. It introduced binary logic and a fixed program that would operate in real time.
Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar (1820)
Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar developed the Arithmometer and became the first mass-produced calculator n France. This device performed the same type of computations as Leibniz’s Stepped Reckoner, but was more reliable. These pinwheel-type mechanical adding machines were fixtures in banks accounting offices and stores.
Charles Babbage (1821)
In 1832, Babbage also invented the “analytical engine”. This engine was a mechanical adding machine that took information from punched cards to solve and print complex mathematical operations. Babage’s difference engine and the analytical engine are regarded as the first “thinking machines”.
The first program was written by Ada Augusta Lovelace (1815-1852) or Lady Byron. She is credited as being the first computer programmer. The programming language Ada is named in her honor.
Electromechanical Age
1840 - 1940
The Beginning of Telecommunications
Voltaic Battery
Alessandro Volta invented the voltaic pile which is considered to be the first source of stored electricity in the 8th Century. The battery made by Volta is credited as the first electrochemical cell. It consists of two electrodes: one made of zinc, the other of copper. The electrolyte is sulfuric acid or a brine mixture of salt and water.
Morse Code
The term Morse Code refers to either of two systems for representing letters of the alphabet, numerals, and punctuation marks by an arrangement of dots, dashes, and spaces. The codes are transmitted as electrical pulses of varied lengths or analogous mechanical or visual signals, such as flashing lights.
Alexander Graham Bell (1879) is often credited with being the inventor of the telephone since he was awarded the first successful patent. However, there were many other inventors such as Elisha Gray and Antonio Meucci who also developed a talking telegraph. First Bell Telephone, June 1875.
Marconi, Guglielmo (1894) Italian physicist who developed radio. By 1897, he was able to demonstrate radio telegraphy over a distance of 19km (12mi). In 1899, he established radio communication between France and England. By 1901, radio transmissions were being received across the Atlantic Ocean.
A 19th-century British mathematician who invented Boolean algebra, the mathematical system that underlies logic in computers
Pehr and Advard Scheutz(1853) complete their tabulating Machine, capable of processing fifteen-digit numbers, printing out results and rounding off to eight digits.
Dorr Felt (1885)
The Comptometer was the first commercially successful key-driven mechanical calculator, patented in the United States by Dorr Felt in 1887. ... Although the comptometer was primarily an adding machine, it could also do subtractions, multiplication and division.
A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. ... Many early digital computers used punched cards as the primary medium for input of both computer programs and data.
The tabulating machine was an electromechanical machine designed to assist in summarizing information stored on punched cards. Invented by Herman Hollerith, the machine was developed to help process data for the 1890 U.S. Census.
Lee De Forest(1906) invented the audion, a vacuum tube device that could take a weak electrical signal and amplify it into a larger one. The audion helped AT&T set up coast-to-coast phone service, and it was also used in everything from radios to televisions to the first computers.
First programmable computer
Konrad Zuse (1941) - built the first programmable computer called Z3.
The Z1 originally created by Germany's Konrad Zuse in his parents living room in 1936 to 1938 is considered to be the first electrical binary programmable computer.
Howard Aiken (1942) - developed Mark I the first stored program computer
Invented by Howard Aiken in 1943 The first electro-mechanical computer Harvard Mark 1
Atanasoft-Berry Computer
It was the first electronic digital computing device. Invented by Professor John Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry at Iowa State University between 1939 - 1942. On October 19, 1973, US Federal Judge Earl R. Larson signed his decision that the ENIAC patent by Eckert and Mauchly was invalid and named Atanasoff the inventor of the electronic digital computer.
The First personal computer
In 1975 Ed Roberts coined the term personal computer when he introduced the Altair 8800. Although the first personal computer is considered to be the Kenback-1, which was first introduced for $750 in 1971. The computer relied on a series of switches for inputting data and output data by turning on and off a series of lights.
The first workstation
Although never sold the first workstation is considered to be the Xerox Alto, introduced in 1974. The computer was revolutionary for its time and included a fully functional computer, display, and mouse. The computer operated like many computers today utilizing windows, menus and icons as an interface to its operating system.