Learnings of the Week (betinol)

Learnings of the Week

I really learned a lot from our lesson its all about the history of the computer, its periods,their generations from the first to the present. It Has four basic periods the pre mechanical,mechanical,electromechanical and electronic.

Pre-mechanical Age ( 300B.C.-1450A.D.)
Writing and Alphabets - communication
First human communicated only through speaking and simple drawings known as petroglyths (signs or simple figures carved in rock). Many of these are pictographs – pictures or sketches that visually resemble that which is depicted. First development of signs corresponding to spoken sounds, instead of pictures, to express words. In 3100B.C.the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (southern Irag) devised cuneiform –the first true written language and the first real information system. the cuneiforms evolution is from pictographs were turned on their sides (2800 B.C.) and then developed into actual cuneiform symbols (2500 B.C.) –as clay tablet, the Phoenicians developed syllables and consonants, The Greeks adopted the Phoenicians alphabet and added vowels.: the Romans gave letters the Latin names.

Paper and Pens – input technologies
· Papyrus plant
· Stylus
· Paper from rugs

Books and Libraries –output technologies
Books
Papyrus folded vertically
Scrolls

The First Numbering System
The first numbering systems developed by the Hindus in India.
In the early Egyptian numbering 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 1000 as a louts blossom.

The First Calculators: The Abacus
· One of the very first information processors. Invented in Babylonia, popularized in China.

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."

In 1614
· John Napier introduces logarithms. Logs allow multiplication and division to be reduced to addition and subtraction.

In 1623
· Wilhelm Shickard, a professor at the University of Tubingen, Germany, invents the first mechanical calculator.

In 1625
· Early 1600s, William Oughtred, an English clergyman, invented the slide rule an analog computer.