A History of Information Technology and Systems

 A History of Information Technology and Systems

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.
The First Calculators: The Abacus

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.
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.
Slide Rule 

.
Early 1600s, William Oughtred, an English clergyman, invented the slide rule
Early example of an analog computer.
The Pascaline. Invented by Blaise Pascal (1623-62).
 

Diagram of interior

 One of the first mechanical computing machines, around 1642.
Leibniz's Machine.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716), German mathematician and philosopher

 
.

The Reckoner (reconstruction)

 

Babbage's Engines
Charles Babbage (1792-1871), eccentric English mathematician

The Difference Engine

.Working model created in 1822.
The "method of differences".
The Analytical Engine

Joseph Marie Jacquard's loom.

.

Designed during the 1830s
Parts remarkably similar to modern-day computers.
The "store"
The "mill"
Punch cards.
Punch card idea picked up by Babbage from Joseph Marie Jacquard's (1752-1834) loom.
Introduced in 1801.
Binary logic
Fixed program that would operate in real time.
Augusta Ada Byron (1815-52

The first programmer
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.
The Beginnings of Telecommunication.
Voltaic Battery.
Late 18th century.
Telegraph.
Early 1800s.
Morse Code.
Developed in1835 by Samuel Morse
Dots and dashes.
Telephone and Radio.

Alexander Graham Bell.
1876
Followed by the discovery that electrical waves travel through space and can produce an effect far from the point at which they originated.
These two events led to the invention of the radio
Guglielmo Marconi
1894
Electromechanical Computing
Herman Hollerith and IBM.
Herman Hollerith (1860-1929) in 1880

Census Machine.

Early punch cards.

Punch card workers.

By 1890
The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM).
Its first logo

 

Mark 1.

.
Paper tape stored data and program instructions.

Howard Aiken, a Ph.D. student at Harvard University
Built the Mark I
Completed January 1942
8 feet tall, 51 feet long, 2 feet thick, weighed 5 tons, used about 750,000 parts
D. The Electronic Age: 1940 - Present.
First Tries.
Early 1940s
Electronic vacuum tubes.
Eckert and Mauchly.
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.
 

 Rear view (note vacuum tubes).

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)
The First Stored-Program Computer(s)

 The Manchester University Mark I (prototype).

 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).
The First General-Purpose Computer for Commercial Use: Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC).

 UNIVAC publicity photo.

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).
Vacuum tubes as their main logic elements.
Punch cards to input and externally store data.
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).
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
Magnetic tape and disks began to replace punched cards as external storage devices.
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).

Individual transistors were replaced by integrated circuits.
Magnetic tape and disks completely replace punch cards as external storage devices.
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).
Large-scale and very large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs and VLSICs)
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.
Bibliography
Kenneth C. Laudon, Carol Guercio Traver, Jane P. Laudon, Information Technology and Systems, Cambridge, MA: Course Technology, 1996.
Stan Augarten, BIT By BIT: An Illustrated History of Computers (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1984).
R. Moreau, The Computer Comes of Age: The People, the Hardware, and the Software, translated by J. Howlett (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984).
Telephone History Web Site. http://www.cybercomm.net/~chuck/phones.html, accessed 1998.
Microsoft Museum. http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/museum/home.asp, accessed 1998.

 

Seize the Day, Tomorrow is not Yours

Upon hearing about the death of a fellow Muslim, it suddenly struck me how
very fleeting life is, and that I was only a twinkling of an eye away from
where he is now.

Death is the reality from which none of us can escape. It draws nearer every
day, every hour, every minute. So I had to ask myself, if I were to die
today, would I have done all that I could to ensure Allah's Favor, and to
evade His Wrath? Unfortunately for me, the answer was a resounding NOOO.

At the end of the day, I ask myself, what good have I sent ahead for the
benefit of my soul? And again, the answers usually, very little. Time, it
seems, is moving by so quickly. It seems just like yesterday that we started
the "New Year," yet we're already almost a third of the way through it. A
month seems like a week, a week seems like an hour and an hour feels like
just minutes. This is why I've resolved to try my utmost, with the aid of
Allah to take advantage of every opportunity to do good deeds, and not to put
off until later, what I can do now. Death is coming, are you ready?

Allah says, "Every soul shall have a taste of death, and only on the Day of
Judgement shall you be paid your full recompense. Only those who are saved
far from the Fire, and admitted to the Garden will have succeeded. For the
life of this world is but goods and chattels of deception." [3:185]

It is so easy for us to get caught up in the comings and goings of our
everyday lives, that we tend to forget that we don't have forever in this
worldly life, and get distracted away from our true aim and purpose. We tend
to forget that we are here to worship Allah and to avail ourselves of the
various opportunities He gives us to store up for ourselves treasures in
Heaven. For He, subhanahu wa taala, also says,

"O you who believe! Revere Allah, and let every person look to what he has
sent forth for the morrow; and revere Allah. Allah is well Aware of what you
do. And be not like those who forgot (disobeyed) Allah, and He caused them to
forget themselves. Those are the disobedient. Not equal are the dwellers of
the Fire and the dwellers of Jannah. It is the dwellers of Jannah who will be
successful." [59:18-20]

He also tells us that we do not know the hour of our own deaths, or in what
land we will die. But He through His unending Mercy toward us, has given us
ways to prepare for the inevitable now, because once we've passed from this
life to the next, there is no coming back to do the things we should have
done. For Allah says,

"Until death comes to one of them, he says, 'My Lord, send me back. Perhaps I
may do good in that which I have left behind.' No, it is but a word that he
speaks, and behind them is a barzakh until the day when they are raised up."
[23:99-100]

Allah has given us ways to protect ourselves from the punishment of the
grave. One of these ways is by fighting in the Cause of Allah. It is reported
that a man asked the Prophet, sallallahu alayhe wa sallam, "O Messenger of
Allah, why are all the believers tested in the graves except a martyr?" He,
sallallahu alayhe wa sallam, said, "The flashing of swords over his head was
a sufficient test for him." (An-Nasai)

This may be difficult for most of us to do in this day and age, but Allah has
provided us with many other ways to earn ease in the next life. These include
reciting Surat ul-Mulk, because the Prophet, sallallahu alayhe wa sallam,
said, "Surat Tabarak is the protector from the torment of the grave."
(Al-Hakim) He, sallallahu alayhe wa sallam, also said, "When a human being
dies, all of his deeds are terminated except for three types: an ongoing
sadaqh, a knowledge of Islam from which others benefit, and a righteous child
who makes du'a for him." (Muslim)

Another way to earn a continuing reward is by reviving a lost Sunnah of the
Prophet, sallallahu alayhe wa sallam. He, sallallahu alayhe wa sallam, said,
"He who initiates in Islam a good way gets his reward for it, as well as
rewards similar to those who follow him into it, without reducing any of
their rewards." (Muslim) For those of us who know of fellow Muslims who have
already begun their journey, or who are about to enter, into the next life,
there are things we can do to make the transition easier, insha'Allah. These
include performing the Janazah prayer for the deceased, fulfilling the
deceased's vows, payment of the deceased's debts and the supplications of the
Muslims.

This life is fleeting. Death is coming. Let us get ready

Life After Death

The question whether there is a life after death does not fall under the jurisdiction of science, as science is concerned only with classification and analysis of data. Moreover, man has been busy with scientific inquiries and research, in the modern sense of the term, only for the last few centuries, while he has been familiar with the concept of life after death since times immemorial. All the prophets of God called their people to worship God and to believe in life after death. They laid so much emphasis on the belief in life after death that even a slight doubt in it meant denying God and made all other beliefs meaningless. The very fact that all the prophets of God have dealt with this metaphysical question of life after death so confidently and so uniformly - the gap between their ages being thousands of years - goes to prove that the source of their knowledge of life after death as proclaimed by them all, was the same, i.e., Divine revelation.

We also know that these prophets of God were greatly opposed by their people, mainly on the issue of life after death, as their people thought it impossible. But in spite of opposition, the prophets won many sincere followers. The question arises: what made those followers forsake the established beliefs, traditions and customs of their forefathers, notwithstanding the risk of being totally alienated from their own community? The simple answer is: they made use of their faculties of mind and heart and realized the truth. Did they realize the truth through perceptual consciousness? Not so, as perceptual experience of life after death is impossible. Actually, God has given man, besides perceptual consciousness, rational, aesthetic and moral consciousness too. It is this consciousness that guides man regarding realities that cannot be verified through sensory data. That is why all the prophets of God while calling people to believe in God and life after death, appeal to the aesthetic, moral and rational consciousness of man. For example, when the idolaters of Makkah denied even the possibility of life after death, the Quran exposed the weakness of their stand by advancing very logical and rational arguments in support of it:


"And he has coined for us a similitude, and has forgotten the fact of his creation, saying: who will revive these bones when they have rotted away? Say: He will revive them Who produced them at first, for He is the Knower of every creation, Who has appointed for you fire from the green tree, and behold! you kindle from it. Is not He Who created the heavens and the earth, able to create the like of them? Yes, and He is indeed the Supreme Creator, the All-Knowing." (36:78-81)



At another occasion, the Quran very clearly says that the disbelievers have no sound basis for their denial of life after death. It is based on pure conjecture:

"They say, 'There is nothing but our present life; we die, and we live, and nothing but Time destroys us.' Of that they have no knowledge; they merely conjecture. And when our revelations are recited to them, their only argument is that they say, 'Bring us our fathers, if you speak truly.' (45:24-25)


Surely God will raise all the dead. But God has His own plan of things. A day will come when the whole universe will be destroyed and then again the dead will be resurrected to stand before God. That day will be the beginning of the life that will never end, and that Day every person will be rewarded by God according to his or her good or evil deed. The explanation that the Quran gives about the necessity of life after death is what the moral consciousness of man demands. Actually, if there is no life after death, the very belief in God becomes irrelevant, or even if one believes in God, that would be an unjust and indifferent God: having once created man and not concerned with his fate. Surely, God is just. He will punish the tyrants whose crimes are beyond count: having killed hundreds of innocent persons, created great corruptions in the society, enslaved numerous persons to serve their whims, etc. Man's having a very short span of life in this world, and this physical world's too being not eternal, punishments or rewards equal to the evil or noble deeds of persons are not possible here.

The Quran very emphatically states that the Day of Judgment must come and God will decide about the fate of each soul according to his or her record of deeds:

"Those who disbelieve say: The Hour will never come unto us. Say: Nay, by my Lord, but it is coming unto you surely. (He is) the Knower of the Unseen. Not an atom's weight, or less than that or greater, escapes Him in the heavens or in the earth, but it is in a clear Record. That He may reward those who believe and do good words. For them is pardon and a rich provision. But those who strive against our revelations, challenging (Us), theirs will be a painful doom of wrath." (34:3-5)



The Day of Resurrection will be the Day when God's attributes of Justice and Mercy will be in full manifestation. God will shower His Mercy on those who suffered for His sake in the worldly life, believing that an eternal bliss was awaiting them. But those who abused the bounties of God, caring nothing for the life to come, will be in the most miserable state. Drawing a comparison between them, the Quran says:

"Is he, then, to whom We have promised a goodly promise the fulfillment of which he will meet, like the one whom We have provided with the good things of this life, and then on the Day of Resurrection he will be of those who will be brought arraigned before God?" (28:61)


The Quran also states that this worldly life is a preparation for the eternal life after death. But those who deny it become slaves of their passions and desires, make fun of virtuous and God-conscious persons. Such persons realize their folly only at the time of their death and wish to be given a further chance in the world but in vain. Their miserable state at the time of death, and the horror of the Day of Judgment, and the eternal bliss guaranteed to the sincere believers are very beautifully mentioned in the following verses of the Holy Quran:

"Until, when death comes unto one of them, he says, 'My Lord send me back, that I may do right in that which I have left behind! But nay! It is but a word that he speaks; and behind them is a barrier until the day when they are raised. And when the Trumpet is blown there will be no kinship among them that day, nor will they ask of one another. Then those whose scales are heavy, they are successful. And those whose scales are light are those who lose their souls, in hell abiding, the fire burns their faces and they are glum therein." (23:99-104)



The belief in life after death not only guarantees success in the Hereafter but also makes this world full of peace and happiness by making individuals most responsible and dutiful in their activities. Think of the people of Arabia. Gambling, wine, tribal feuds, plundering and murdering were their main traits when they had no belief in life after death. But as soon as they accepted the belief in One God and life after death they became the most disciplined nation of the world. They gave up their vices, helped each other in hours of need, and settled all their disputes on the basis of justice and equality. Similarly the denial of life after death has its consequences not only in the Hereafter but also in this world. When a nation as a whole denies it, all kinds of evils and corruptions become rampant in that society and ultimately it is destroyed. The Quran mentions the terrible end of 'Aad, Thamud and the Pharaoh in some detail:


"(The tribes of) Thamud and 'Aad disbelieved in the judgment to come. As for Thamud, they were destroyed by the lightning, and as for 'Aad, they were destroyed by a fierce roaring wind, which He imposed on them for seven long nights and eight long days so that you might see the people laid prostrate in it as if they were the stumps of fallen down palm trees. "Now do you see remnant of them? Pharaoh likewise and those before him and the subverted cities. They committed errors and those before him, and they rebelled against the Messenger of their Lord, and He seized them with a surpassing grip. Lo, when the waters rose, We bore you in the running ship that We might make it a reminder for you and for heeding ears to hold. So when the Trumpet is blown with a single blast and the earth and the mountains are lifted up and crushed with a single blow, then on that day, the Terror shall come to pass, and the heaven shall be split for upon that day it will be very frail. Then as for him who is given his book in his right hand, he shall say, 'Here take and read my book! Certainly I thought I should encounter my reckoning.' So he shall be in a pleasing life in a lofty garden, its clusters nigh to gather. "'Eat and drink with wholesome appetite for that you did long ago, in the days gone by.'

"But as for him who is given his book in his left hand, he shall say: 'Would that I had not been given my book and not known my reckoning! Would that it had been the end! My wealth has not availed me, my authority is gone from me.'" (69:4-29)



Thus, there are very convincing reasons to believe in life after death. First, all the prophets of God have called their people to believe in it. Secondly, whenever a human society is built on the basis of this belief, it has been the most ideal and peaceful society, free of social and moral evils. Thirdly, history bears witness that whenever this belief is rejected collectively by a group of people in spite of the repeated warning of the Prophet, the group as a whole has been punished by God even in this world. Fourthly, moral, aesthetic and rational faculties of man endorse the possibility of life after death. Fifthly, God's attributes of Justice and Mercy have no meaning if there is no life after death.