Information is an ordered sequence of symbols, and Technology is systems or methods of organization, so Information Technology is systems or methods of organization of ordered sequences of symbols.

The first information technologies I am aware of date from around 35,000 B, with the first records of technology used for counting numbers, from Wikipedia:

It is speculated that the first known use of numbers dates back to around 35,000 BC. Bones and other artifacts have been discovered with marks cut into them which many consider to be tally marks. The uses of these tally marks may have been for counting elapsed time, such as numbers of days, or keeping records of quantities, such as of animals.

The first known system with place-value was the Mesopotamian base 60 system (ca. 3400 BC) and the earliest known base 10 system dates to 3100 BC in Egypt.[2]

Evolving beyong the tally stick and the simple counting of numbers, it seems the technology that lead to the Mesopotamians developing a base 60 counting system (counting in groups of 60... we use base 10 for the metric system) was a hand abacus, based on five repetitions of a base 12 counting system... like this.

Looking at the flat of your outstretched hand, use your thumb as a counting device and count your four other fingertips, and then the four middle joints of your four fingers, and then the four lower joints of your four fingers, you have counted a set of 12 - mark that set with one of the fingers on your other hand.

So, survival depended on tallying information and recording and storing that with technologies - a hard device cutting notches in a less hard device, that would endure and could be read and interpreted by the information creator and others. By around 4,000 BC, early information systems based on notches for counting numbers evolved into higher level information languages, leading to what is known as "Recorded History" - human history that has been written down or recorded by the use of language, starting in the 4th millennium BC, with the invention of writing... with the information programming language Cuneiform.

Leibniz once said "It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour of calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used."[12]

When I founded the Information, Technology and Infrastructure Management Exchange (InT+IME), in the early 1990s, each of the areas of expertise I brought together into general systems focus had existed 1,000s of years... InT+IME = Information + Technology + Infrastructure + Management + Economics.

People have collected and managed information for all recorded time... that being recorded time - information of common interest revolved around food and weather - growing seasons and predicting climate and economic yields of various environments and control factors - measuing distances and values - recording events and transactions - turning mud and sticks into tablets and pens and so permanent measurement devices and premanent records - turning stone walls into signs and communications.

In developing and formalizing the confidential InT+IME benchmarking consortium - a member collaboration of the greatest companies in the world that are greatest with information technology (IT) - my role has been to develop and implement benchmarking and measurement systems to insure common understanding of what is world-class with IT, and facilite the learning, collaboration and management systems to optimize global control of integrated InT+IME systems and outcomes, to insure member organizations are world-class with IT for their stakeholders, forever.

That is not so complex, if you respect the legacy of InT+IME over time... over 1,000s of years worth of time... as our current state of Information + Technology + Infrastructure + Management + Economics is the result of evolution rather than disruption, and the standards of service are well defined and time-honored, no matter how transformational the impacts of IT disruptions to the human experience may be... like how disruptive making the first telephone call must have been, for those not familiar with science.

From a centralized global general systems perspective, all those years of change in these interrelated fields of understanding and accomplishment are marked by innovations in standards within an evolving continuum of human interaction with information.  In fac

While the field of Information Technology is relatively new, When starting a new enterprise, and to the legacy of InT+IME over history and present state within fields of commerce and human activity are all factors in organizational planning and execution, and failure to perform well at any layer of the stack may lead to complete failure.

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:

  1. Premechanical,
  2. Mechanical,
  3. Electromechanical, and
  4. Electronic

A. The Premechanical Age: 3000 B.C. - 1450 A.D.

1. Writing and Alphabets--communication.
   1. First humans communicated only through speaking and picture drawings.
   2. 3000 B.C., the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (what is today southern Iraq) devised cuniform
   3. Around 2000 B.C., Phoenicians created symbols
   4. The Greeks later adopted the Phoenician alphabet and added vowels; the Romans gave the letters Latin names to create the alphabet we use today.
2. Paper and Pens--input technologies.
   1. Sumerians' input technology was a stylus that could scratch marks in wet clay.
   2. About 2600 B.C., the Egyptians write on the papyrus plant
   3. around 100 A.D., the Chinese made paper from rags, on which modern-day papermaking is based.
3. Books and Libraries: Permanent Storage Devices.
   1. Religious leaders in Mesopotamia kept the earliest "books"
   2. The Egyptians kept scrolls
   3. Around 600 B.C., the Greeks began to fold sheets of papyrus vertically into leaves and bind them together.
4. The First Numbering Systems.
   1. 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.
   2. 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.
   3. Around 875 A.D., the concept of zero was developed.
5. The First Calculators: The Abacus.
   
   One of the very first information processors.

B. The Mechanical Age: 1450 - 1840

1. The First Information Explosion.
   1. Johann Gutenberg (Mainz, Germany)
      • Invented the movable metal-type printing process in 1450.
   2. The development of book indexes and the widespread use of page numbers.
2. The first general purpose "computers"
   • Actually people who held the job title "computer: one who works with numbers."
3. 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).
     
     The Pascaline (front)
     
     (rear view)
     
     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)
     
4. 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.

1. The Beginnings of Telecommunication.
   
   1. Voltaic Battery.
      • Late 18th century.
   2. Telegraph.
      • Early 1800s.
   3. Morse Code.
      • Developed in1835 by Samuel Morse
      • Dots and dashes.
   4. Telephone and Radio.
      • 
        Alexander Graham Bell.
      • 1876
   5. Followed by the discovery that electrical waves travel through space and can produce an effect far from the point at which they originated.
   6. These two events led to the invention of the radio
      • Guglielmo Marconi
      • 1894
2. Electromechanical Computing
   1. 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
          
   2. 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.

1. First Tries.
   • Early 1940s
   • Electronic vacuum tubes.
2. Eckert and Mauchly.
   1. 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)
   2. 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).
   3. 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.
3. The Four Generations of Digital Computing.
   1. The First Generation (1951-1958).
      1. Vacuum tubes as their main logic elements.
      2. Punch cards to input and externally store data.
      3. Rotating magnetic drums for internal storage of data and programs
         • Programs written in
           • Machine language
           • Assembly language
             • Requires a compiler.
   2. The Second Generation (1959-1963).
      1. 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
      2. Magnetic tape and disks began to replace punched cards as external storage devices.
      3. 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
   3. The Third Generation (1964-1979).
      
      
      1. Individual transistors were replaced by integrated circuits.
      2. Magnetic tape and disks completely replace punch cards as external storage devices.
      3. 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.
   4. The Fourth Generation (1979- Present).
      1. Large-scale and very large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs and VLSICs)
      2. 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

1. Kenneth C. Laudon, Carol Guercio Traver, Jane P. Laudon, Information Technology and Systems, Cambridge, MA: Course Technology, 1996.
2. Stan Augarten, BIT By BIT: An Illustrated History of Computers (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1984).
3. R. Moreau, The Computer Comes of Age: The People, the Hardware, and the Software, translated by J. Howlett (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984).
4. Telephone History Web Site. http://www.cybercomm.net/~chuck/phones.html, accessed 1998.
5. Microsoft Museum. http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/museum/home.asp, accessed 1998.

Originally developed as a lecture for MAR 203 Concepts in New Media, a course at the University of Arizona, summer 1997, by Jeremy G. Butler. Copyrights of these images are held by their original creators.

Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike2.5 License.

Last revised: July 13, 1998