Four Basic Period of Computer History

Pre-mechanical Age Mechanical Age Electromechanical Age Electronic Age

Pre-Mechanical Age (3000B.C. - 1450 A.D.)

Writing and Alphabets Petroglyths (signs or simple figures carved in rock)

Petroglyths

Cave painting from Lascaux, France (15,000-10,000 B.C.)

Ideographs (symbols to represent ideas and concept)

Mayan Ideograph

Cuneiform – the first true written language and the first real information system. (coo-nay-eh-form) Star – heaven or God

Cuneiform

At around 2000 BC the Phoenicians created symbols that expressed single syllables and consonants (the first true alphabet) Greek adopted the Phoenician alphabet and added vowels Romans gave the letters Latin name to create the alphabet we use today.

Papers and pens Sumerians – stylus and wet clay Egyptians – papyrus plants (2600 BC) Chinese – made paper from rags (100 AD)

Stylus and wet clay Papyrus Plant

Chinese

Books and Libraries (permanent storage device) Mesopotamia – religious leaders kept the earliest book Egyptians – kept scrolls Greeks – (600 BC) fold sheets of Papyrus vertically into leaves and bind them together.

First Numbering System Egyptian – Vertical lines (|)for numbers 1 – 9 - U or O – 10 - coiled rope – 100 - lotus blossom for 1000 Hindus – (100 – 200 AD) 9 digit numbering 875 AD the concept of zero was developed.

The First Calculator Abacus – was man’s first recorded adding machine. Invented in Babylonia and popularized in China.

Mechanical Age (1450 – 1840)

First Information Explosion Johann Guttenberg – Movable metal-type printing process in 1450.

The first general purpose computers John Napier – (1614) a Baron of Merchiston, Scotland invented LOGS (Logarithm). LOGS – allows multiplication and division to be reduce in addition and subtraction. 1614 – Arabian Lattice – lays out a special version of the multiplication tables on a set of four-sided wooden rods.(multiply, divide large numbers and find square and cube root)

John Napier Napier’s Bone

Wilhelm Shickard – 1623 - (Professor at University of Tubingen, Germany) – invented the first mechanical calculator that can work with six digits and can carries digits across columns.

William Oughtred – (1575 – 1660) invented the slide rule.

Blaise Pascal (1642) – invented the Pascaline Blaise Pascal (1642) – invented the Pascaline. (made of clock gears and levers) that could solve mathematical problems like addition and subtraction.

Gottfried Leibniz – (1617) invented Stepped Reckoner that could multiply 5 digit and 12 digit numbers yielding up to 16 digit numbers. Stepped Reckoner

Joseph-Marie Jacquard (1801) developed the automatic loom (weaving loom) that was controlled by punched cards.

Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar -1820 – developed Arithmometer (the first mass produced calculator)

- Father of modern computer. Charles Babbage – invented the difference engine (1821) and analytical engine (1832). - Father of modern computer. Difference Engine Analytical Engine

Lady Ada Augusta Lovelace Byron – 1842 – the first computer programmer.

Electromechanical Age (18-40 1940)

The Beginning of Telecommunications Voltaic Battery – first electric battery known as voltaic pile - invented by Alessandro Volta

Telegraph Samuel F.B. Morse – conceived of his version of an Electromagnetic Telegraph (1832)

Morse Code

Telephone and Radio Alexander Graham Bell – 1879 - developed the first working telephone.

Guglielmo Marconi – 1894 – (RADIO) discovered that electrical waves travel through space and can produce and effect far from the point at which it originated.

George Boole – 1852 – developed the binary algebra known as Boolean Algebra

Electromechanical Computing Pehr and Edward Scheutz – 1853 - completed a Tabulating Machine, capable of processing fifteen digit numbers, printing out result and rounding off to eight digits.

Dorr Felt – 1885 – devises the comptometer, a key driven adding and subtracting calculator. Comptograph containing a built in printer Comptometer Comptograph

Herman Hollerith – father of information processing Herman Hollerith – father of information processing. Punched Card – provided computer programmers with a new way to put information into their machines. He founded the Tabulating Machine Company , later became the Computer Tabulating Recording Company and International Business Machines Corporation (IBM)

Tabulating Machine Herman Hollerith

Otto Shweiger – 1893 – invented the first efficient four function calculator called Millionaire.

Lee de Forest – 1906 – developed vacuum tubes This is important for it provided electrically controlled switch.

Electronic Age (1941 – present) Konrad Zuse – 1941 – built the first programmable computer called Z3.

Howard Aiken – 1942 – developed Mark I the first stored program computer.

John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry – 1942 – completed the first all electronic computer called ABC or Atanasoff-Berry Computer John Atanasoff Clifford Berry