The term information technology is used to refer to an entire industry. At the present, information technology is the use of computers and software to manage data. It mainly refers to the computers and the electronic means used to get, process, communicate and keep information. However, the term is not new and has not always referred to issues concerned with computing alone. Information technology has been in existence for a very long time. We can consider information technology to be as old as the human brain. The most appropriate definition of information technology is the communication and storage of information including the processing and using of the stored information. People have always managed to communicate through the technology that has been in existence at a given time in history.
The history of information technology began way before the invention of the digital computers. The history of information technology can be divided into four main ages. The first was the pre-mechanical age which covers the period before 145 AD when people used to communicate through the use of language and simple drawings called the petroglyths which could be curved in rock. The pre-mechanical age was followed by the mechanical age covering the period between 1450 AD and around 1840 AD. During this period, a lot more technologies were developed like the mechanical calculators and the slide rule. The period was the link between the ancient period and the modern technological developments. The third age was the electromechanical age which lasted from about 1840 to 1940 and saw the first developments in the telecommunication industry. These include the telegraph, the telephone and the radio which led to tremendous advancements in the field of information technology. The last age is the electronic age covering the time from 1940 to the present and has been marked by the extensive use of computing machines.
Ages in the development of information technology
The Premechanical age
The first digital calculator to be used by man was probably the technique to count using the fingers. The abstract notion of utilizing stones and sticks to represent amounts marked the beginning of arithmetic and the number system as we know it today. The stones could be used to add or subtract very fast and they were later strung as beads on sticks to form the abacus. In this simple machine, each wire with the beads is used to represent a positional number and can be used to add or subtract numbers. Multiplication could be achieved through repeated addition.
The first form of communication was only through speaking and picture drawings. The first form of writing called the cuneiform was developed by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia at around 3000 BC. They used to write on stone tablets using a stylus that could scratch the marks that could be preserved after the clay is dried. Later, other materials for writing like the skin parchments and papyrus reeds were introduced. The early writings were mainly books containing religious instruction. Another form of writing developed in Egypt known as hereographic which was mainly done on scrolls. As the alphabets became more popular, there was need to develop pens and paper due to the increased need for writing. The Chinese invented the first paper which was made from rags at around 100 AD and formed the basis of the modern paper making technology. By 2000 BC, the Phoenician had developed symbols which became the very first alphabets. The Phoenician symbols were later adopted by the Greeks who also introduced the vowels. The Romans gave the Greek alphabet the Latin names which are in use today. The first numbering systems were developed in Egypt and India. The Egyptian system comprised vertical lines to represent the numbers 1 to 9 while ten was a U or a circle, one hundred as a coiled rope and one thousand as a lotus blossom. The modern numbering system was created by Indians who invented the nine-digit system. The most profound invention during the premechanical period was the first calculator called the Abacus which was the first information processor.
Mechanical age
This period was marked by the first information explosion after the invention of the movable metal-type printing process by Johann Gutenberg of Germany. This led to the development of the book indexes and the increased use of page numbers. The very first example of the analog computer was the slide rule invented by William Oughtred, an English clergyman during the early period of the 17th century. The slide rule used logarithms to simplify multiplication and division. The numbers on the slide rule are represented on a movable scale and do not stand for discrete values. Multiplication and addition is done through addition and subtraction of distances on the scale. The Pascaline was invented by Blaise Pascal while Charles Babbage developed the difference machine. The pascaline was a very popular mechanical computer while the difference machine could tabulate polynomial equations by applying the method of finite differences.
Babbage also developed the Analytical engine which was the first general purpose programmable computer. The analytical machine would have been capable of executing any arithmetic operation and could be programmed using punched cards. His work was never completed since there was no urgent need for such a machine at the time. The design was rather too complicated for the heavily mechanical that the inventor had envisioned. He was basically ahead of his time since the design was later used to develop the modern computer. The other important invention in this period was the Leibnizs machine developed by Wilhelm Von Leibniz, a German mathematician and philosopher. There was also the Jacquard loom made by Joseph Marie Jacquards which had parts similar to the modern computer including the store, the mill and the punch cards. Although most of the machines developed during this period may not look effective today, they were huge inventions of the time.
Electromechanical age
During this period, the discovery of electricity was the main invention as information could now be converted into electrical signals. The period saw the beginning of the telecommunication with the development of the telegraph at the start of the 19th century. In 1837, Samuel Morse developed the electromagnetic telegraph using his previous edition of the Morse code. The first message was transmitted through an experimental line from Washington to Baltimore in 1854. By 1866, the first telegraph line, the Atlantic cable, had been developed to link the United States and Europe. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone which was then combined with electric telegraphy and the two inventions operated together for many years. In 1894, Guglielmo Marconi invented the radio based on the idea that electric waves can travel through space and produce an effect at a different point. The inventions that occurred during the electromechanical period led to considerable advancements in the information technology industry.
The period saw the beginning of electromechanical computing after the development of the census machine by Herman Hollerith at the International Business Machines (IBM) Company. The data was kept on punched cards which were then processed by collating, sorting and adding the data. The group also developed the Hollerith code used for encoding alphanumeric data as punched holes in a card. A team of led by Howard Aiken at Harvard developed the electromagnetic Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC or Mark 1), which was based on the idea of the earlier Analytic machine made by Babbage. It was made from switches, electromechnical relays, moving shafts and clutches. It comprised more than 750,000 parts and close to 500 miles of wire and measuring about 50 ft in length, 8 ft in height and weighing about five tons. It was made to meet the heavy computational needs of the Second World War and could work at hundred times the speed of the human brain. It was the first large scale automatic and truly programmable digital machine. It was programmed using punch cards and formed the basis of future attempts to reduce the size of the computing machines.
Electronic age
Since the 1940s, the information technology industry has seen tremendous advancements especially with developments in digital computing. The first invention in this age was the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) developed in 1946 by a team at the University of Pennsylvania led by Pres Eckert and John Mauchy. The ENIAC used vacuum tubes as opposed to the relays (mechanical devices) used in the Mark 1. It was six times heavier than the Mark 1 but could work 1000 times faster than the former (100,000 times faster than the human brain). Its main setback was that it consumed a lot of electricity and could not store its programs. After this, researchers began to work on developing stored program computers. In the 1940s, scientist at the Manchester University began to develop the Electronic Discreet variable Computer (EDVAC) and by 1948, they had developed the Manchester Mark 1 which was the first stored-program computer as a prototype. In 1949, Maurice Wilkies at the Cambridge University developed the Electronic Delay Storage Calculator (EDSAC) which became the first usable stored program computer. At the beginning of the 1950s, another computer called the Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC) was developed for commercial use. These marked the beginning of the four generations of Digital Computing.
Computer generations
The first generation (1951 to 1958)
The first generation computers used vacuum tubes as the only logic element and punch cards were used to enter data and for external storage of data. They also had rotating magnetic drums that helped to store data and programs internally. The magnetic drums led to faster accessibility to stored information than the punched cards. The programs were written in Machine language and Assembly language thus required a compiler to translate. This was the lowest programming language the computers could understand in order to perform operations hence they could only solve a single problem at a time. The punched cards and paper tape were used to enter data while the output was produced as printed copies. The first generation computers were very huge occupying entire rooms. They were too expensive to work with and consumed a lot of electricity thus generating a lot of heat. Examples of first generation computers include the UNIVAC and ENIAC.
Mass production of computers began when the IBM started to produce the 650 magnetic drum calculators. The Semi-Automatic ground Environment (SAGE) was used to connect hundreds of radar stations and marked the beginning of expansive computer communications links. The period between 1945 and 1960 was marked by increased computation even though computers were generally inaccessible to many people.
The second Generation (1959 to 1963)
The computer in this period had the vacuum tubes replaced by transistors as the logic elements. The transistors were made from crystalline stone materials known as semiconductors which were superior to the vacuum tubes and helped to make the machines smaller, faster, less expensive, and more reliable. In the external storage of information, the punched cards were replaced by magnetic tapes and diskettes. The internal storage was now composed of magnetic cores which could be polarized in any one of the directions to store data. The period also experienced the development of High-Level programming languages like FORTRAN and COBOL which allowed the programs to be written in words.
The third Generation (1964 to 1979)
In this period, the individual transistors were replaced with integrated circuits and the punch cards were completely phased out in favor of the magnetic tapes and disks as external storage media. The information is stored as magnetic pulses in tracks around metal cylinders and the readwrite heads recorded or recovered the data. The internal storage system began to utilize metal oxide semiconductors (MOS) instead of the magnetic Cores. The integrated circuits and the MOS used silicon-backed chips. The transistors helped to increase the speed and efficiency of the machines. The development of operating systems and superior programming languages like BASIC was underway. The third generation computers saw the introduction of keyboards and monitors to enhance user interaction with the operating system. This helped the computers to run several applications at the same time as the central program supervised the memory.
The Fourth Generation, (1979 to the present).
In this era, there has been development of large-scale Circuits (LSIs) and very large scale integrated circuits (VLSIs). The other notable development has been the introduction of microprocessors that contain memory, logic and control circuits (all form the Central Processing Unit CPU) on a single chip. As compared to the first generation technology where the machines could fill entire rooms, the microprocessors could just fit on the palm of the hand. The silicon chips could comprise all the components of the computer including the CPU, memory and the output and input control channels. The development reduced the size of the computer hardware considerably. This led to the development of the personal computers or PCs that could be used in homes. The Apple II personal computer was released in 1977 while the Apple Mac was developed in 1984. The IBM personal computer was released in 1981 and at the same time, the Microsoft Operating System was debuting in the market. The software product in the Forth Generation period has been unprecedented which include Microsoft, Lotus, UNIX and many others. From the 1980s, the graphic user interface (GUI), the mouse and other hand held devices were introduced and have been changing over the years. The small computers were made more powerful and they could be linked through a network to facilitate communication leading to the development of the internet.
The internet age
In the recent past, more and more people have become accustomed to spending more time on the internet. The internet has come to have a very powerful impact on the way people live and generate and use the information available on the internet. It has managed to revolutionalize the computer and global communication like nothing before. The internet is a result of a long history of inventions which began with the development of the telegraph though the introduction of the general purpose programmable computers. The invention of the telegraph, the radio and the computer laid the foundation for the eventual integration of the different technologies. It has become a worldwide broadcasting tool, a means to release information and a channel for collaboration and relations among people with disregard of the geographical gaps.
The first computer communication network was the ARPANET founded in 1969 which became the first countrywide computer link and later developed to become the internet. The Department of Defense aimed to develop a way through which computers could communicate in order to enhance security. The internet developed due to the visionary imagination of some experts who appreciated the possible value in using computers to share information on inventions and advancements in scientific and military spheres. The idea was proposed by J.C.K Licklider who talked about a global network of computers and moved to the Defense Advanced Research Projects (DAPRA) to initiate the project. Researchers at MIT had developed the theory of data communication especially packet switching from the early 1960s. By 1965, they had managed to put the theory in practice after using packets to initiate computer communication using telephone lines. By 1969, the internet which was then called ARPANET was used to connect four computers at different campuses in the southwest part of the United States. The first host-to-host message was transmitted over the ARPANET from UCLA to Stanford research institute on October 29, 1969 but the crushed before the process was completed. In 1970, the ARPANET covered the USA after the installation of a node at Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) Corporation. The organization had won the contract to build the Interface Massage Processor (IMO) which was to be the basis of the program to link the computers. The devices were to be installed on each host and be part of the network between the computers by utilizing the packet-switching technology. In 1973, the first international connections were established to Britain and the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) was developed to provide network transportation and forwarding. The TCP was later divided into TCP and IP where the IP dealt with addresses and forwarding of specific packets while TCP controlled the flow and recovery of lost packets.
During the early years, the internet was only used by experts, engineers, scientists and library official and whoever used it had to learn the complex system. The first public demonstration of the ARPANET occurred in 1972 at the International Computer Communication Conference (ICCC). In the same year, the electronic mail was introduced which was began as a way of creating easy communication among the ARPANET developers. The initial ARPANET later developed into the internet with the basic idea that would be independent networks of random designs. They began with the packet switching network and later incorporated packet satellite links, land-based radio networks and many other networks. The underlying technological idea is the open architecture networking where the selection of given network is not determined by the architecture but should be chosen by the provider and designed to work in conjunction with others via a metal-level internetworking architecture. In this case, the networks would connect at the circuit level and was called the Internet Control Protocol (NCP). This was later replaced by the Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol because it lacked the ability to address networks.
During the 1980s, more networks were formed especially in the educational and commercial sector and wanted to utilize the technology developed by ARPA. The Computer Science Network (CSnet) was created by the Computer Science educational and commercial groups. The other was BITNET (Because Its Network), which was by all the other groups in the educational sector and was instrumental in the development and establishment of the World Wide Web in 1989. The different networks signed agreements that allowed them to build links among them. The World Wide Web was designed to help in the location of files and other documents on the internet. The system assigns a similar sequence of addresses and hypertext links to all the data. The Hypertext is the arrangement of the information parts into links that users can make. The WWW documents and files were first availed on the internet as from 1991. In the last two decades, the internet has been transformed tremendously as its use has become widespread and accessible to many people.
The computer was developed out of the need to solve computational problems which began with the development of simple mechanical devices like the Pascaline and the Analytical machine. After the invention of electricity, the mechanical devices were modified after further invention leading to the introduction of electromechanical devices. From the mid 20th century, major developments that were carried out made the computer faster, cheaper, smaller, more reliable and very efficient. The most profound development has been the breakthrough in enabling computers in regions of the world to communicate at an instant. This has revolutionalized the information technology sector as people in different parts of the world are able to access enormous amounts of information in the comfort of their homes. The management of information has become very effective as the computers are able to handle large amounts of information with a lot of ease. The future of information technology is poised for greater things as more research and innovation continues to take place.
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