The Information Age

What is the Information Age?
People, Information & Societies that chronicle
the birth and growth of electronic information --
from ancient times to Samuel Morse's invention
of the telegraph in the 1830s, through the
development of the telephone, radio, television,
and computer.
http://www.tcf.ua.edu/AZ/ITHistoryOutline.htm

Four Periods of The Information Age
 Pre-Mechanical - 3000 B.C.-1450 A.D.
 Mechanical - 1450-1840
 Electro-Mechanical - 1840-1940
 Electronic/Information -1940-Present

The Pre-Mechanical Age
 Writing and Alphabets:
 Cuneiform, Symbols
 Paper and Pen:
 Papermaking
 Books and Libraries:
 Religious Scrolls, Binding
 Numbering Systems:
 Numbers 1-9, Zero
 The First Calculators
 The Abacus
3000 B.C.-1450 A.D.

The Mechanical Age
 Movable Type Printing
 General Purpose Computers (people who used numbers)
 Slide Rule
 Analog Computer
 Key Punch Computer
 Binary Logic
 Real Time Operated Computers
1450-1840

The Electro-Mechanical Age
 Telecommunications
 Voltaic Battery
 Telegraph
 Morse Code
 Telephones and Radios
 Computing
 Census Machine
 Mark 1
 Paper Stored
 Programming
1840-1940
Picture of a 1986 Telephone
from Vendsyssel Historiske Museum in Hjørring, Denmark
© 2004 by Tomasz Sienicki

Information Age
 Electronic Vacuum Tubes
 Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
 Manchester Mark 1
 First Computer for Commercial Use
1840-Present

Computer Generations
 First Generation (1951-1958)
 Main Logic Elements
 Externally Stored Information
 Machine and Assembly
Language
 Compilers
 Second Generation (1959-
1963)
 Transistors
 Semi-Conductors
 High-Level Programming
 Fortran/Cobol
 Third Generation (1964-
1978)
 Integrated Circuits
 Magnetic Tape and Disk
 Operating Systems
 BASIC
 Fourth Generation (1979-)
 Large Scale Circuits
 Central Processing Units
 Apple II/Apple Mac
 IBM/MS-DOS/GUI
 MS Windows

Pioneers in Information Technology
 John Mauchly
 J. Prosper Eckert
 John Von Neumann
 Blaise Pascal
 William Oughtred
 Gottfried von Leibniz
 Charles Babbage
 Augusta Ada Byron
 Alexander Graham Bell
 Herman Hollerith
 Howard Aiken
 Max Newman
 Maurice Wilkes
 Steven Wozniak
 Steven Jobs
 Bill Gates