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Four basic periods
Characterized by a principal technology used to solve the input, processing, output and communication problems of the time:- Premechanical,
- Mechanical,
- Electromechanical, and
- Electronic
A. The Premechanical Age: 3000 B.C. - 1450 A.D.
- Writing and Alphabets--communication.
- First humans communicated only through speaking and picture drawings.
- 3000 B.C., the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (what is today southern Iraq) devised cuniform
- Around 2000 B.C., Phoenicians created symbols
- The Greeks later adopted the Phoenician alphabet and added vowels; the Romans gave the letters Latin names to create the alphabet we use today.
- Paper and Pens--input technologies.
- Sumerians' input technology was a stylus that could scratch marks in wet clay.
- About 2600 B.C., the Egyptians write on the papyrus plant
- around 100 A.D., the Chinese made paper from rags, on which modern-day papermaking is based.
- Books and Libraries: Permanent Storage Devices.
- Religious leaders in Mesopotamia kept the earliest "books"
- The Egyptians kept scrolls
- Around 600 B.C., the Greeks began to fold sheets of papyrus vertically into leaves and bind them together.
- The First Numbering Systems.
- 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.
- 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.
- Around 875 A.D., the concept of zero was developed.
- Egyptian system:
- The First Calculators: The Abacus
One of the very first information processors.B. The Mechanical Age: 1450 - 1840
- The First Information Explosion.
- Johann Gutenberg (Mainz, Germany)
- Invented the movable metal-type printing process in 1450.
- The development of book indexes and the widespread use of page numbers.
- Johann Gutenberg (Mainz, Germany)
- 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. The Pascaline. Invented by Blaise Pascal (1623-62).