When people hear the word “Information Technology”, the first thing that come to mind are computers and the Internet. It can also bring words like “network”, “Intranet”, “Server”, “Firewall,” “Safety” and more arcane terms such as “Router”, “T-1″, “Ethernet” or the mysterious and exotic-sounding ” VoIP (pronounced “voyp”).

In fact, information technology, all these things and more. It is not new, however. Information technology is as old as the brain itself, when do you think of the brain as an information processor. Unless it be a science, even going back as far as the first attempts to communicate and store information.

And that’s essentially what the Information Technology: is the communication and storage of information, together with the ability to process and use the information stored. In this chapter we will begin with a brief history of IT, what it is today, and the different types of large IT systems is available today.

A Short History of Information Technology

As human societies have increased in size and complexity, so has the need to collect, store and transmit information. It could be argued that the brain are a type of “bio-computer science, represented” the Greek word “Tektra” – from which we get the word “technology” – refers to a really scientific or mechanical knowledge, particularly involves the use of tools . Therefore, we will continue our trip with the man the first attempts to start the processing and transmission of knowledge through mechanical means.

The Neolithic and Bronze Age

We could not have thought of as an “information technology” several thousand years ago, when we as a species have been painting animals on cave walls. But in fact, that is exactly what it was May.

included with a combination of tools, manganese “crayons” and sound that was colored with different pigments, left the early people these pictures on the walls of a cave near Lascaux, France and on the rocks in the Algerian Sahara.

These have as about 18,000 and 8,000 years old and dated. Unfortunately, there is no way to be sure exactly what message was transmitted (a problem of our own descendants 15,000 years from now very well what we may experience left!)

As the pictures depict animals that were killed in the hunt usually been, and given the importance of wild animals to a hunter-gatherer culture, it is possible that such images tried to develop information on such game, or part of a ritual to ensure a successful hunt was a gift.

The invention of writing systems – including icons such as hieroglyphics, alphabetic writing, and “syllables” systems – seems to have taken place almost at the same time as the development of agriculture. Agriculture introduced, as previously unknown terms such as land ownership, expanded trade and the accumulation of wealth, which in turn led to more complex social structures.

As you might expect, this more detailed and efficient record keeping required. Alphabetic writing has a substantial advantage over symbols (hieroglyphs), because a relatively limited number of symbols (letters) over and over in infinite combination can be used to communicate almost everything. (As you will see later, modern IT uses only two of these symbols!)

Conservation and storage of this information certain challenges, information had to label either on stone or clay tablets (which were difficult) or animal skins, wax tablets or papyrus (which are not preserved, however).

The Hellenistic world

The classical Greeks were the first people to attempt the record to find scientific, rational explanations for natural phenomena. Some of the earliest proto-computers were known mechanical devices developed by the Greeks. One of them was a form of the abacus (which also developed and was used in ancient China). The unit will facilitate and simplify mathematical calculations.

Let us very early in the Greco-Roman Abacus

Another early computing machine was the ancient therapeutic, of Greek origin. An antique thera by a Greek sponge divers was over was discovered a century ago, it was only recently that this 2100-year-old unit has been reconstructed and shown that an early form designed the computer to the movements of the sun, moon and five planets Table be known at the time.

Early programmable devices

At the time, the gradual decay and decline of the Roman Empire in 476 CE complete, scientific and technological progress in the Western world was stalled. While much of the scientific knowledge of the Greeks was preserved by Irish monks, and Arab scholars, it was not until the fourteenth century that the principles of the art were rediscovered, and to information. The first was of course all the press.

Although the concept of printing had been developed in China some four hundred years ago, it was Gutenberg’s device in 1447 that revolutionized the communication because it is easier and faster to collect and disseminate information than ever before. The first truly programmable device would not come for 354 years more, however.

The Jacquard loom of 1801 was a product of the industrial revolution. This invention used a series of specially punched paper cards, the functional as templates for the automatic weaving of highly complex patterns. These cards were very important in computing the 1950′s, 60′s and 70′s.

The next development step was Charles Babbage’s “Analytical Machine” – a fully programmable computer that is no longer built. Babbage worked on designs from 1837 until his death in 1871. This steam-powered mechanism would also be used to punch cards, inlaid with a central processing unit (CPU) and a form of memory storage in the form of a system of pegs in rotating drums.

The analytical engine would have been able to have the storage of 1,000 numbers of up to fifty points each, and run six different mathematical operations, including the calculation of square roots. Babbage’s ideas were incorporated into early electronic computing devices developed in the late 1930s and 1940, although not all of them were actually programmed. The first truly programmable computer – able to store information and do not use – in general use until 1950, and yes – made use of punch cards (those born before 1965, remember to play maybe with them).

Of course, most people in the 70′s, 80′s and 90′s simply born for granted that the information and telecommunications technology we have today is, of Fairley recent developments in science, mechanics and electronics. But we know different now, we do not. And therefore can better appreciate what we have available to us now.

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