History of Information Technology and System

• Four basic periods
Characterized by a principal technology used to solve the input, processing, output and communication problems of the time:
1. Premechanical,
2. Mechanical,
3. Electromechanical, and
4. Electronic


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

1. Writing and Alphabets--communication.
1. First humans communicated only through speaking and picture drawings.
2. 3000 B.C., the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (what is today southern Iraq) devised cuniform
3. Around 2000 B.C., Phoenicians created symbols
4. 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.
1. Sumerians' input technology was a stylus that could scratch marks in wet clay.
2. About 2600 B.C., the Egyptians write on the papyrus plant
3. around 100 A.D., the Chinese made paper from rags, on which modern-day papermaking is
based.
3. Books and Libraries: Permanent Storage Devices.
1. Religious leaders in Mesopotamia kept the earliest "books"
2. The Egyptians kept scrolls
3. Around 600 B.C., the Greeks began to fold sheets of papyrus vertically into leaves and bind
them together.
4. The First Numbering Systems.
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Around 875 A.D., the concept of zero was developed.
5. The First Calculators: The Abacus.

One of the very first information processors.

B. The Mechanical Age: 1450 - 1840
1. The First Information Explosion.
1. Johann Gutenberg (Mainz, Germany)
- Invented the movable metal-type printing process in 1450.
2. 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."
Slide Rules, the Pascaline and Leibniz's Machine.
- Slide Rule.

Early 1600s, William Oughtred, an English clergyman, invented the slide rule
- Early example of an analog computer.