Lesson 03: Four Basic Computer Periods: Gee-Lie (Chapter 1)

Lesson 03: Four Basic Computer Periods
GEE-LIE (CHAPTER 1)
Peter Jun T. Maspara, BS Math
Cebu Technological University - Main Campus

M. J. Cuenco Ave, Cebu City, 6000 Cebu, Philippines
Peter Jun T. Maspara, BS Math Lesson 03: Four Basic Computer Periods
Four Basic Computer Periods
Information technology has been around for a 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.
PRE-MECHANICAL AGE (3000 B.C. 1450 A.D.)
Is the age in which there were no kinds of computer systems.
The most important technological advances were:

Control of fire 500 000 B.C.
Domestication of animals 12 000 B.C.
Domestication of plants 8 000 B.C
Ceramic 7 000 B.C.
Copper 4 000 B.C.
First, humans communicated only through

speaking and picture drawings:
The pre-mechanical age is the earliest
age of information technology.
In 3000 B.C., the Sumerians in
Mesopotamia devised a writing
system.
Cuneiform used signs corresponding
to spoken sounds, instead of pictures,
to express words.
When humans first started
communicating, they would try to
use language or simple pictures or
drawings known as petroglyphs, Figure:
which were usually carved in the Cuneiform and
rock. Petroglyphs
Early alphabets were developed such as the Phoenician alphabet.

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, the paper was created out of a
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. Religious leaders in
Mesopotamia kept the earliest ”books” a collection of rectangular clay
tablets, inscribed with cuneiform and packaged in labeled containers
in their personal ”libraries.” The Egyptians kept scrolls - sheets of
papyrus wrapped around a shaft of wood. Around 600 B.C., the
Greeks began to fold sheets of papyrus vertically into leaves and bind
them together. The dictionary and encyclopedia made their
appearance about the same time. The Greeks are also credited with
developing the first truly public libraries around 500 B.C.
Also during this period were the first numbering systems. Around
100 A.D. was when the first 1-9 system was created by people from
India. However, it wasnt until 875 A.D. (775 years later) that the
number zero (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.
Abacus is a tool that consisted originally

of strings and pebbles, although those used
today in the teaching of basic mathemat-
ics are made from wooden formations. The
tool is believed to have originated from
China, where the very first mathemati-
cians of time began their work. Figure: Abacus
Figure: First Book
Figure: First Personal Library & First Public Library
MECHANICAL AGE (1450 1840)
Figure:
The mechanical age is when we first start to see connections between

our current technology and its ancestors.
A lot of new technologies are developed in this era as there is a large

explosion in interest in this area.
Johann Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany, in-

vented the movable metal-type printing
process in 1450 and sped up the process
of composing pages from weeks to a few
minutes. The printing press made written
information much more accessible to the
general public by reducing the time and
cost that it took to reproduce the written Figure:
material.
Johann Gutenberg
In the early 1600s, William Oughtred, an

English clergyman, invented the slide rule,
a device that allowed the user to multiply
and divide by sliding two pieces of precisely
machines and scribed wood against each
other. The slide rule is an early example
of an analog computer an instrument that
measures instead of counts.
Figure:
William Oughtred
Figure:
Movable metal-type printing process in 1450
Figure:
Slide Rule
An eccentric English mathematician

frustrated by mistakes, set his mind to
create a machine that could both
calculate numbers and print the results.
In the 1820s, he produce a working
model called the Difference Engine,
the name was based on a method of
solving mathematical equations called
the ”method of differences”.
In 1830s, the Analytical Engine had
parts remarkably similar to modern-day
computers. For instance, the Analytical
Engine was to have a part called the Figure:
”store”, which would hold the numbers
that had been inputted and the Charles Babbage
quantities that resulted after they had
been manipulated.
Figure:
Analytical Engine
Figure:
Difference Engine
Lady Augusta Ada Byron helped

Babbage design the instructions that
would be given to the machine on punch
cards and to describe, analyze, and
publicize his ideas. She has been called
the ”first programmer”.
Babbage eventually was forced to
abandon his hopes of building the Figure:
Analytical Engine, once again because of
Lady Augusta Ada
a failure to find funding.
Byron
Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician,

invented the Pascaline around 1642
which was a very popular mechanical
computer; it used a series of wheels and
cogs to add and subtract numbers.
Figure:
Blaise Pascal
Figure:
Pascaline
There were lots of different machines created during this era and
while we have not yet gotten 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 (1840 1940)
Figure:
Now we are finally getting close to some technologies that

resemble our modern-day technology. 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. These are the beginnings of telecommunication.
The discovery of a reliable method of cre-

ating and storing electricity, with a Voltaic
Battery, at the end of the 18th century made
possible a whole new method of communicat-
ing information.
Figure:
Voltaic Battery
The Telegraph was created in the early

1800s. It is the first major invention to use
electricity for communication purposes and
made it possible to transmit information over
great distances with great speed.
Figure: Telegraph
Morse code was created by Samuel

Morse in 1835. Morse devised a system
that broke down information (in this case,
the alphabet) into bits (dots and dashes)
that could then be transformed into elec-
trical impulses and transmitted over a wire
(just as today’s digital technologies break
down information into zeros and ones). Figure:
Morse code
The Telephone (one of the most pop-

ular forms of communication ever) was cre-
ated by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876.
This was followed by the discovery that
electrical waves travel through space and
can produce an effect far from the point at
which they originated. These two events
led to the invention of the radio by Mar-
coni in 1894.
Figure:
Telephone
By 1890, Herman Hollerith, a young

man with a degree in mining engineer-
ing who worked in the Census Office in
Washington, D.C., had perfected a ma-
chine that could automatically sort cen-
sus cards into a number of categories us-
ing electrical sensing devices to ”read”
the punched holes in each card and thus
count the millions of census cards and cate-
gorize the population into relevant groups. Figure:
The company that he founded to manufac-
ture and sell it eventually developed into Electric Tabulating
the International Business Machines System
Corporation (IBM).
Howard Aiken, a Ph.D. student at

Harvard University, decided to try to
combine Hollerith’s punched card technol-
ogy with Babbage’s dreams of a general-
purpose, ”programmable” computing ma-
chine. With funding from IBM, he built a
machine known as the Mark I, which used
paper tape to supply instructions (pro-
grams) to the machine for manipulating Figure:
data (input on paper punch cards), coun-
ters to store numbers, and electromechan- Mark I
ical relays to help register results.
ELECTRONIC AGE (1940 Present)
Figure:
The electronic age is what we currently live in. It can be defined

as the time between 1940 and right now.
The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer

(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.
There are 4 main sections of digital computing:

1 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.
2 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.
3 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.
4 The fourth and latest generation brought in CPUs which
contained memory, logic, and control circuits all on a single chip.
The PC and GUI was developed.
Evaluation and Assignments
1 REST
2 Feel your vacation
3 Be with your love ones
4 Eat healthy and diet foods everyday
Rubrics
No eyebags : 40%
Blooming : 40%
Happiness : 20%

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Lesson 03: Four Basic Computer Periods

Peter Jun T. Maspara, BS Math

Cebu Technological University - Main Campus

Information technology has been around for a long time.

There are 4 main ages that divide up the history of information

Is the age in which there were no kinds of computer systems.

The most important technological advances were:

First, humans communicated only through

Early alphabets were developed such as the Phoenician alphabet.

Abacus is a tool that consisted originally

Figure: First Book

Figure: First Personal Library & First Public Library

The mechanical age is when we first start to see connections between

A lot of new technologies are developed in this era as there is a large

Johann Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany, in-

In the early 1600s, William Oughtred, an

Movable metal-type printing process in 1450

An eccentric English mathematician

Lady Augusta Ada Byron helped

Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician,

Now we are finally getting close to some technologies that

The discovery of a reliable method of cre-

The Telegraph was created in the early

Morse code was created by Samuel

The Telephone (one of the most pop-

By 1890, Herman Hollerith, a young

Howard Aiken, a Ph.D. student at

The electronic age is what we currently live in. It can be defined

The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer

There are 4 main sections of digital computing:

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