Information technology : explanation and history.

Information technology : explanation and history are the topic that I would like to tell all about it. It has purposed to give information about Information Technology ( IT ) and other relevant information about it.. Information technology (IT), as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), is "the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware." IT deals with the use of electronic computers and computer software to convert, store, protect, process, transmit, and securely retrieve information. Today, the term information technology has ballooned to encompass many aspects of computing and technology, and the term has become very recognizable. The information technology umbrella can be quite large, covering many fields. IT professionals perform a variety of duties that range from installing applications to designing complex computer networks and information databases. A few of the duties that IT professionals perform may include data management, networking, engineering computer hardware, database and software design, as well as the management and administration of entire systems.
When computer and communications technologies are combined, the result is information technology, or "infotech". Information Technology (IT) is a general term that describes any technology that helps to produce, manipulate, store, communicate, and/or disseminate information. Presumably, when speaking of Information Technology (IT) as a whole, it is noted that the use of computers and information are associated. The term Information Technology (IT) was coined by Jim Domsic of Michigan in November 1981.Domsic created the term to modernize the outdated phrase "data processing". Domsic at the time worked as a computer manager for an automotive related industry.

A History of Information Technology and Systems.
There are four period of history of Information Technology and Systems. The 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.

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."
3. Slide Rules, the Pascaline and Leibniz's Machine.
   • Slide Rule.
     

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.

1. The Beginnings of Telecommunication.

1. Voltaic Battery.
   • Late 18th century.
2. Telegraph.
   • Early 1800s.
3. Morse Code.
   • Developed in1835 by Samuel Morse
   • Dots and dashes.
4. Telephone and Radio.
5. Followed by the discovery that electrical waves travel through space and can produce an effect far from the point at which they originated.
6. These two events led to the invention of the radio
   • Guglielmo Marconi
   • 1894

2. Electromechanical Computing
Herman Hollerith and IBM.
Herman Hollerith (1860-1929) in 1880. and IBM By 1890 The International Business
Machines Corporation (IBM).

D. The Electronic Age: 1940 - Present.

1. First Tries.
   • Early 1940s
   • Electronic vacuum tubes.
2. Eckert and Mauchly.
   1. The First High-Speed, General-Purpose Computer Using Vacuum Tubes:
      Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)
      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.
        • Hence, first electronic computer.
      • Developers John Mauchly, a physicist, and J. Prosper Eckert, an electrical engineer
        • The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania
      • Funded by the U.S. Army.
      • But it could not store its programs (its set of instructions)
        

2. 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.
    • Thus, EDSAC became the first stored-program computer in general use (i.e., not a prototype).

3.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.
• But, a machine called LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) went into action a few months before UNIVAC and became the world's first commercial computer.

The Four Generations of Digital Computing.

The First Generation (1951-1958)

1. Vacuum tubes as their main logic elements.
2. Punch cards to input and externally store data.
3. Rotating magnetic drums for internal storage of data and programs
   • Programs written in
     • Machine language
     • Assembly language
       • Requires a compiler
     • The Second Generation (1959-1963).
       • 1. 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
         2. Magnetic tape and disks began to replace punched cards as external storage devices.
         3. 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

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.

The Fourth Generation (1979- Present).

1. 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.
          • Initially sold for $1,195 (without a monitor); had 16k RAM.
        • 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.
            • Windows wouldn't take off until version 3 was released in 1990
          • 
            Apple's GUI (on the first Mac) debuts in 1984.

Source : www.tcf.ua.edu
Wikipedia