Web Programming and Development
NJ Linganay
History Of The Web
– Information technology has been around for a long,
long time. Basically as long as people have been
around, information technology has been around
because there were always ways of communicating
through technology available at that point in time.
There are 4 main ages that divide up the history of
information technology. Only the latest age
(electronic) and some of the electromechanical age
really affects us today, but it is important to learn
about how we got to the point we are at with
technology today.
Ages
• Premechanical Age
• Mechanical Age
• Electromechanical Age
• Electronic Age
Premechanical
• The premechanical age is the earliest age of
information technology. It can be defined as the
time between 3000B.C. and 1450A.D. We are
talking about a long time ago. When humans
first started communicating they would try to
use language or simple picture drawings known
as petroglyphs which were usually carved in
rock. Early alphabets were developed such as
the Phoenician alphabet.
Petroglyph
• As alphabets became more popular and more people
were writing information down, pens and paper began
to be developed. It started off as just marks in wet clay,
but later paper was created out of papyrus plant. The
most popular kind of paper made was probably by the
Chinese who made paper from rags.
• Now that people were writing a lot of information
down they needed ways to keep it all in permanent
storage. This is where the first books and libraries are
developed. You’ve probably heard of Egyptian scrolls
which were popular ways of writing down information
to save. Some groups of people were actually binding
paper together into a book-like form.
• Also during this period were the first numbering
systems. Around 100A.D. was when the first 1-9
system was created by people from India.
However, it wasn’t until 875A.D. (775 years later)
that the number 0 was invented. And yes now
that numbers were created, people wanted stuff
to do with them so they created calculators. A
calculator was the very first sign of an
information processor. The popular model of
that time was the abacus.
Mechanical Age
– The mechanical age is when we first start to see
connections between our current technology and its
ancestors. The mechanical age can be defined as the
time between 1450 and 1840. A lot of new
technologies are developed in this era as there is a
large explosion in interest with this area. Technologies
like the slide rule (an analog computer used for
multiplying and dividing) were invented. Blaise Pascal
invented the Pascaline which was a very popular
mechanical computer. Charles Babbage developed
the difference engine which tabulated polynomial
equations using the method of finite differences.
Difference Engine
• There were lots of different machines created
during this era and while we have not yet got
tent to a machine that can do more than one
type of calculation in one, like our modern-day
calculators, we are still learning about how all of
our all-in-one machines started. Also, if you look
at the size of the machines invented in this time
compared to the power behind them it seems
(to us) absolutely ridiculous to understand why
anybody would want to use them, but to the
people living in that time ALL of these inventions
were HUGE.
Electromechanical Age
• Now we are finally getting close to some technologies
that resemble our modern-day technology. The
electromechanical age can be defined as the time
between 1840 and 1940. These are the beginnings of
telecommunication. The telegraph was created in the
early 1800s. Morse code was created by Samuel
Morse in 1835. The telephone (one of the most
popular forms of communication ever) was created by
Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. The first radio
developed by Guglielmo Marconi in 1894. All of these
were extremely crucial emerging technologies that led
to big advances in the information technology field.
Harvard Mark I
• The first large-scale automatic digital computer
in the United States was the Mark 1 created by
Harvard University around 1940. This computer
was 8ft high, 50ft long, 2ft wide, and weighed 5
tons - HUGE. It was programmed using punch
cards. How does your PC match up to this hunk
of metal? It was from huge machines like this
that people began to look at downsizing all the
parts to first make them usable by businesses
and eventually in your own home.
Electronic Age
• The electronic age is what we currently live in. It
can be defined as the time between 1940 and
right now. The ENIAC was the first high-speed,
digital computer capable of being
reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing
problems. This computer was designed to be
used by the U.S. Army for artillery firing tables.
This machine was even bigger than the Mark 1
taking up 680 square feet and weighing 30 tons -
HUGE. It mainly used vacuum tubes to do its
calculations.
Apple 1
• There are 4 main sections of digital computing.
The first was the era of vacuum tubes and punch
cards like the ENIAC and Mark 1. Rotating
magnetic drums were used for internal storage.
The second generation replaced vacuum tubes
with transistors, punch cards were replaced with
magnetic tape, and rotating magnetic drums
were replaced by magnetic cores for internal
storage. Also during this time high-level
programming languages were created such as
FORTRAN and COBOL.
• The third generation replaced transistors with
integrated circuits, magnetic tape was used
throughout all computers, and magnetic core
turned into metal oxide semiconductors. An
actual operating system showed up around this
time along with the advanced programming
language BASIC. The fourth and latest
generation brought in CPUs (central processing
units) which contained memory, logic, and
control circuits all on a single chip. The personal
computer was developed (Apple II). The
graphical user interface (GUI) was developed.
