Information and Communications Technology (ICT)
ideas, objects, and animals. These gave rise to our modern-day alphabet.
 Refers to the technologies, both hardware and software, that enable
humans to communicate with one another
 It is a common misconception that ICT is Internet or computer alone
 It is basically any form of technology that enables you to communicate
HARDWARE
 In computer technology, the term hardware refers to any electronic or
mechanical equipment used in data processing
 It refers to the physical components that performs the functions of data
preparation, data input, data manipulation, data storage and output of
information
SOFTWARE
 In computer technology, the term software refers to any written
programs or charts that may be used in connection with computer
operations
Evolution of ICT
The beginning of ICT can be traced back when humans started to use
objects to communicate with one another. It is ascertained/discovered that ICT
began along with the rise of humans.
Main Periods in history that divide the era of ICT
 Pre-mechanical
 Mechanical
 Electromechanical
 Electronic
Periods of ICT Development
The Pre-mechanical Period
 Humans started communicating with one another using words and
pictograms carved in rocks.
 Then they started to write symbols as substitutes for pictures to depict
 Time passed and early humans soon realized that stone tablets are too
heavy and bulky (information to be stored was growing and was
becoming enormous, and writing these pieces of information in stone
tablets was impractical).
 When paper was finally produced from the papyrus plant, storing of
information was revolutionized.
 Humans continued to write information that can be organized in some
manner and kept as a permanent record. They eventually compiled these
records written on pieces of paper and bound them together, eventually
giving birth to books.
 As these books grew in number, they needed to be compiled and stored
in areas; hence, libraries were created.
 Libraries were considered to be the first data centers in history.
In the late stages of this period, humans started using the numerical system.
Humans started to invent devices and techniques in counting.
Manual Counting device:
 A simple mechanism powered by hand.
 Devices of this type required some sort of physical effort from the user
when used.
Examples: Abacus, Napier’s Bones, Slide Rule
Abacus
 The first manual data processing device.
 The device has a frame with beads strung on wires or rods.
 The abacus is an instrument used to perform arithmetic calculations by
manipulating the beads.
 The Abacus was developed in China in the 12th century A.D., the abacus
is still used in China, Japan, and Korea.
Reasons for its popularity: Simple, Effective
Napier’s Bones
 John Napier was a Scottish mathematician who became famous for his
invention of logarithms.
 The use of “logs” enabled him to reduce any multiplication problem to a
problem of addition.
 The “bones” are a set of eleven rods with numbers marked on them in
such a way that by simply placing the rods side by side products and
quotients of large numbers can be obtained.
 The sticks were called “bones” because they are made of bone or ivory.
 Napier’s “Bones” represented a significant contribution to the
development of computing devices.
Oughtred’s Slide Rule
 Invented by William Oughtred, an English mathematician during the 17th
century.
 Prior to the invention of the hand-held calculator, the slide rule was a
standard tool for engineers and scientists.
 Operating on the principle that all mathematical computations may be
carried out on sets of sliding scales, the device looks much like a heavily
calibrated ruler with a movable midsection.
 The midsection, called the sliding center scales, is engraved with fine lines
to allow the user to align different logarithmic scales rapidly and
efficiently.
 Multiplication, addition, subtraction, division, squaring, cubing, extracting
roots, and more complicated calculations were computed regularly by
adept users until well into the 1960s.
The Mechanical Period
 The interest in automating and speeding up numerical calculations grew
 The machines driven by mechanical means such as steam and gears
dominated information processing and calculation.
 This period also concentrated primarily on development of machines that
will enhance calculation speed.
Mechanical Counting device:
 Uses a combination of manual procedures and mechanical equipment.
Examples: Pascal’s Calculator (Pascaline), Leibniz’s Calculator
Pascal's Calculator
 In 1645, Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician and experimental physicist
developed a mechanical calculator to speed arithmetic calculations for his
father, a tax official.
 The calculating machine was capable of adding and subtracting numbers
up to eight digits.
 Numbers are dialed in on the metal wheels on the front of the calculator.
 Addition was performed by “stepping” (hand turning) the appropriate
wheels by the amount to be added. Subtraction required turning the
wheels in reverse.
 The solutions appear in the little windows along the top.
Serious drawback:
 It could not be produced by the technology of his time.
 There was no industrial technology in the seventeenth century.
 The device received a patent, but Pascal did not have much success in
manufacturing it.
 Despite the emerging uses for such devices, the need was not critical nor
even really evident for most people in the society.
Leibniz's Calculator
 Invented by Gottfried Leibniz, a 17th century scientist who recognizes the
value of building machines that could do mathematical calculations and
save labor.
 Leibniz was one of the greatest scientific geniuses of his time.
 At age 26, he taught himself mathematics and then proceeded to invent
calculus.
 In 1694, Leibniz completed his calculator.
  It utilizes the same techniques for addition and subtraction as Pascal’s
device but could also perform multiplication and division, as well as
extract square roots.
 The machine was somewhat ahead of its time and society for the most
part was not yet ready for calculating devices designed to save labor.
 The working models constructed in 1694 and 1704 were never duplicated.
Babbage’s Analytical Engine
 Charles Babbage, a 19th century British mathematician, designed the
difference engine machine in 1822.
 Considered the father of the modern computer.
 Although he did not actually build an operational computer himself, his
ideas became the basis for modern computational devices.
 The difference engine was designed to automate a standard procedure
for calculating the roots of polynomial.
 Despite his foresight and his keen ideas, Babbage lacked the
perseverance to complete the project.
 He abandoned the difference engine to work on a more powerful device,
the Analytical Engine, which was similar in concept to 20th century digital
computers.
 This machine, was never realized owing to unavailable resources to fund
the project and the limited technology of the time.
 Although the device did not have a memory, Babbage’s later idea for the
Analytical Engine would have been a true, programmable computer if the
technology of his time had been able to build it.
 Lady Ada Byron, countess of Lovelace (daughter of the poet Lord Byron),
worked with Babbage.
 She wrote a demonstration program for the analytical engine, prompting
many to refer to her as the first programmer.
The Electromechanical Period
The use of electricity for information handling and transfer bloomed. The
need and the urgency to share information with one another in a faster yet
reliable manner over long distances aroused. At this time, computing devices also
started to revolutionize information handling and processing. Machines were
mechanical in nature but were run by electricity.
Electromechanical device is usually powered by an electric motor and uses
switches and relays.
Examples: Telegraph, Telephone, Punched-card data processing equipment,
Household electrical appliances
Telegraph
 Invented in 1837 by William Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone.
 It was the first device to use electricity to transmit information over an
electrical media.
 Samuel Morse, an American inventor who successfully introduce the first
single-circuit telegraph which gave rise to the Morse code in 1844.
 However, humans were not satisfied with simply transmitting symbols or
letters over long distances; they became fascinated with the idea of voice
transmission.
Telephone
 Alexander Graham Bell was granted the patent for the telephone in 1876.
 The telephone converts sounds into electricity and enables the telephone
network to transmit it over copper wires.
Hollerith’s Punched-Card Machine Electric Tabulating Machine
 Herman Hollerith, an American engineer and statistician with the US
Bureau of the census, invented the electric tabulating machine, to help
process the results of the 1890 U.S. census.
 Early United States censuses were tabulated by hand, a process that took
years.
 Using 3 by 5 inch punched cards to record the data, he constructed an
electromagnetic counting machine to sort the data manually and tabulate
the data.
 Unlike Babbage, Hollerith had the advantage of electricity.
  To use the machine, census clerks converted responses on census
questionnaires to holes punched in predetermined locations on paper
cards.
 When pins in the card reader passed through the holes, an electrical
circuit was completed that activated the appropriate mechanical counters.
 The machine was the first commercially successful data processing
machine that could sort 300 cards per minute.
Computer Card Key Punch
 The IBM 010 punch was one of the first devices designed to perforate
cards.
 A hole or the lack of a hole in a card represented information that could
be read by early computers. Modern optical storage devices, such as CD-
ROMs, use microscopic pits instead of punched paper holes to store
information.
The Electronic Period
 Started in the 1940’s and continues to the present.
 The highlight of this period is focused on the advent of solid state devices
or electronic devices
Main events found in the Electronic Period
 The vacuum tubes period, The transistors period, The integrated
circuits period, The computer processors period
Beginning in 1937, Howard Aiken set out to build an automatic calculating
machine that would combine established technology with the punched cards of
Hollerith. The completed device was known as the Mark I digital computer.
The first electronic digital computer to be put into full operation was built
as a secret wartime project between 1939 and 1946 at the University of
Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering. This machine, which used
vacuum tubes, was called the “ENIAC” computer.
Following the war, work began on the “EDVAC”, a computer which
worked on the stored-program concept.
Since the 1940s several generations of computers have continuously
evolved. From first generation up to the present, the trend has been to produce
more powerful, less expensive, smaller, and more reliable computers.
The Vacuum Tube Period
 A model of the Fleming valve illustrates the technology that led to the
development of the vacuum tube, one of the most important early
electronic devices.
 A typical vacuum tube consists of electrodes (metal plates) and wires
in an evacuated glass bulb and is used to regulate electric currents or
electronic signals.
 Before the advent of the transistor, vacuum tubes were used
extensively in the operation of devices such as televisions, radios, and
computers.
Although the vacuum tube was the device that made computers so much
faster and more powerful than any of its early predecessors, it had several faults:
 It was not a long-live component. The average time between tube failures
was 12 hours.
 It required some 3,500 kilowatts of electricity per day to provide the heat
needed to get electrons moving in all of its tubes.
 Vacuum tubes produced a large amount of heat that computers required
air conditioning and special insulation of the tubes to protect the other
machine components.
 The vacuum tube made it necessary to construct enormous and bulky
machines.
MARK I
 In the 1930s American mathematician Howard Aiken developed the Mark
I calculating machine, which was built by IBM.
 The project was completed in 1944 and was known as the MARK I digital
computer.
 This electronic calculating machine used relays and electromagnetic
components to replace mechanical components.
  The official name of MARK I was Automatic Sequence Controlled
Calculator.
 It was approximately 50 ft. long and 8 ft. high, and consisted of some
700,000 moving parts and several hundred miles of wiring.
 MARK I could perform the four basic arithmetic operations and could
locate information stored in tabular form.
 It processed numbers up to 23 digits long, and could multiply three eight-
EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer)
digit numbers in 1 second.
 Aiken also introduced computers to universities by establishing the first
computer science program at Harvard University in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
 Aiken obsessively mistrusted the concept of storing a program within the
computer, insisting that the integrity of the machine could be maintained
only through a strict separation of program instructions from data.
 His computer had to read instructions from punched cards, which could
be stored away from the computer.
 He also urged the National Bureau of Standards not to support the
development of computers, insisting that there would never be a need
for more than five or six of them nationwide.
ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator)
 Was developed during the period 1943 to 1946 under the direction of
Presper Eckert Jr., and John Mauchly.
 The project was funded by the government for a group of young
engineers working at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering of the
University of Pennsylvania to solve ballistic problems.
 Was the first fully electronic digital computer.
 First introduced at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946, it remained in
service until 1955.
The Transistor Period
 ENIAC contained 18,000 vacuum tubes and required manual rewiring to
be programmed.
 It could perform 300 multiplications per second.
 In February of 1946, the ENIAC took only 2 hours to solve a nuclear
physics problem that would previously have required 100 years of
calculation by a physicist.
 ENIAC’s speed of calculation was a thousand times faster than the best
mechanical calculators.
 In 1947, the ENIAC was moved to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, a
government research center, where it continued to be used until October
1955.
 In 1959 it was placed in the Smithsonian Institute.
 John Von Neumann, a Hungarian-born mathematician proposed a
modified version of the ENIAC in 1946.
 Employs binary arithmetic rather than decimal arithmetic. The MARK I
and the ENIAC both used decimal arithmetic in all their calculations. Von
Neumann showed that binary arithmetic would make for much simpler
computer circuitry.
 Would have stored-program capability.
 Proposed wiring a permanent set of instructions within the computer and
placing these operations under a central control.
 Further proposed that the instruction codes governing the operations be
stored in the same way that the data were stored as binary numbers.
 The EDVAC would have no need for special instruction wiring. Instead, it
would process instructions by the same mechanism and as quickly as it
processed data.
 The EDVAC was not the first stored-program machine to go into operation.
 The honor went to an English-made computer, the EDSAC (Electronic
Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), in 1949 at Cambridge University.
 Its designer had attended a course of lectures on automatic computers at
the Moore School, then returned to England to build a machine that had
a more accurate memory, with smaller capacity, than the EDVAC.
 The transistor was invented in 1947.
 It is an electronic device with properties and functions similar to vacuum
tubes, except that electrons move through solid materials instead of
through a vacuum.
 The transistor is the foundation of every electronic device today.
  Computers become much smaller in size, faster, more reliable, and much
greater in processing capacity.
 The new transistor technology made the previous generation obsolete.

UNIVAC Computer (Universal Automatic Computer)

 The first commercially available electronic computer, UNIVAC I, was made

by the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1951.
 UNIVAC was the first computer capable of handling both numeric and
textual information, and was used by the United States Census Bureau.

The Integrated Circuits (IC) Period

 Invented by an American electrical engineer named Jack Kilby in 1958.

 It is a device that is composed of a group of transistors and circuit
elements compressed in a single package.
 The IC revolutionized the use of computers and electronic devices
because circuits are integrated in a chip, limiting the distance between
components, resulting in a faster operating speed.
 A number of smaller devices intended for information processing and
communication were developed.

The Computer Processors Period

 The advent and development of Integrated Circuits ushered in the period

of powerful processors.
 ICs are used in processing devices, and processors are constructed in IC
forms.
 Personal computers then used these processors to deliver user
applications.
 Computers are evolving from basic textual interfaces to graphical user
interface (GUI).
 The fast-paced development and innovation in personal computing paved
the way for the birth of different user applications that introduced ease
and comfort for users.