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. (coonay-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 metaltype 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)
Napier’s Bone
John Napier
• 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.
(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)
• 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.
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)
Herman Hollerith
Tabulating Machine
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