EVOLUTION OF

TRADITIONAL TO
NEW MEDIA
Lesson 2
PRE-INDUSTRIAL AGE (Before 1700s)
■ People discovered fire, developed paper from
plants, and forged weapons and tools with stone,
bronze, copper and iron.
 ■Acta Diurna in Rome (130 BC)
1700 s)

The first proto-newspaper appeared as

PRE-INDUSTRIAL AGE (Before

early as 131 B.C. It was an ancient Roman

daily gazette called Acta Diurna (Daily Acts
sometimes translated as Daily Public
Records). Acta Diurna informed
citizens of political and social happenings in
ancient Rome.
News of events such as military
victories, gladiatorial bouts and other
games, births and deaths and even human-
interest stories were inscribed on metal or
stone and posted in areas with heavy foot
traffic, such as the Roman Forum where free
citizens met to discuss ideas, philosophy and
politics.
 ■Clay tablets in
Mesopotamia (2400
BC)
PR INDUSTRIAL AGE (Before

According to Mesopotamianbeliefs, writing is

considered to be a gift of the gods, and as such,
writing means both power and knowledge.
Mesopotamian cuneiform writing (means:
“wedge-shaped”) was made with the help of the
stylus to make wedge shaped marks in the clay.
Using this method over thousands of years,
Mesopotamian scribes recorded on clay tablets –
daily events, trade, the numbers of sheep, cattle,
E 1700s)

crops, laborers in the workforce, because trade and

economic necessities were likely the biggest
motivators for writing.
 ■Papyrus in Egypt (2500 BC)
PR -INDUSTRIAL AGE (Before

The papyrus of Egypt is most closely associated with writing - in fact, the English word 'paper' comes from
the word 'papyrus‘.
The discovery of an easily portable substance to write on is almost as old as writing itself. Around 3000
BC, in Egypt, people begin making a flexible smooth surface, which will accept and retain ink without
blur or smudge.
It is known by the name of the aquatic plant which provides the structure - papyrus. It will remain in
regular use longer than any other material in
the history of written documents.
The papyrus is a form of rush which
E 1700s)

grows by the Nile. To make a scroll, strips are

cut down the length of the plant. The broader
ones are laid side by side to form a rectangle,
and others are then laid across at right angles.
 ■Cave paintings (35,000 BC)
PR INDUSTRIAL AGE (Before

Cave paintings are also known as "parietal art".They are painted drawings on cave walls or ceilings,
mainly of prehistoric origin, dated to some 40,000 years ago
(around 38,000 BCE) in Eurasia. The exact purpose of the
Paleolithic cave paintings is not known. Evidence suggests that
they were not merely decorations of living areas since the caves
in which they have been found do not have signs of ongoing
habitation. They are also often located in areas of caves that are
not easily accessible. Some theories hold that cave paintings may
have been a way of communicating with others, while other
theories ascribe a religious or ceremonial purpose to them. The
paintings are remarkably similar around the world, with animals
being common subjects that give the most impressive images.
E 1700s)

Humans mainly appear as images of hands, mostly hand stencils

made by blowing pigment on a hand held to the wall.
 ■ Printing press using wood blocks (220 AD)
1700 s)

Woodblock printing is a technique for printing

PRE-INDUSTRIAL AGE (Before

text, images or patterns used widely

throughout EastAsia and originating in
China in antiquity as a method of printing on
textiles and later paper. As a method of printing
on cloth, the earliest surviving examples
from China date to before 220 AD, and
woodblock printing remained the most common
East Asian method of printing books and other
texts, as well as images, until the 19th century.
Ukiyo-e is the best known type of Japanese
woodblock art print. Most European uses
of the technique for printing images on
paper are covered by the art term woodcut, except
for the block-books produced mainly in the
15th century.
 ■Dibao in China (2nd Century)
1700 s)

The Chinese “Dibao” is the earliest and oldest

PRE-INDUSTRIAL AGE (Before

newspaper in the world.

Dibao (Chinese: 邸報; pinyin: dǐbào;
Wade–Giles: ti3-pao4), literally "reports from
the [official] residences", were a type of
publications issued by central and local
governments in imperial China.
They contained official announcements and
news,[2] and were intended to be seen only by
bureaucrats (and a given dibao might only be
intended for a certain subset of bureaucrats).
 ■MayanCodex in the region (5th Century)
Maya codices (singular codex) are folding books written by the preColumbian Maya
PR -INDUSTRIAL AGE (Before

civilization in Maya hieroglyphic script on Mesoamerican bark cloth. The folding books are
the products of professional scribes working under the patronage of deities such
as the Tonsured Maize God and the Howler Monkey Gods.
The cloth was made from the inner bark of certain trees, the main being the wild fig tree or
amate ( Ficus glabrata). Thissort of paper was generally known by the word āmatl
[ˈaːmat͡ɬ] in Nahuatl, and by the word huun in Mayan.
E 1700s)
Industrial Age (1700s-1930s)
■ People used the power of steam, developed
machine tools, established iron production, and
the manufacturing of various products (including
books through the printing press).
)

■ Printing press for mass

production (19th century)
( s 1930 s

A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium (such as paper or cloth),
thereby transferring the ink. Typically used for texts, the invention and spread of the printing press was one of the most
influential events in the second millennium. The printing press was invented in the Holy Roman Empire by the German
1700

Johannes Gutenberg around 1440, based on existing screw presses. Gutenberg, a goldsmith by profession, developed a
INDUSTRIAL AGE

printing system, by adapting existing technologies to printing purposes, as

well as making inventions of his own. His newly devised hand mould made
possible the precise and rapid creation of metal movable type in large
quantities. The printing press spread within several decades to over two
hundred cities in a dozen European countries.
The operation of a press became synonymous with the enterprise of
printing, and lent its name to a new branch of media, “the press”.
)

■Newspaper- The London Gazette (1640)

The London Gazette was first published as The Oxford Gazette on 7
November 1665. Charles II and the Royal Court had moved to Oxford to
1700 1930
s

escape the Great Plague of London, and courtiers were unwilling to

touch, let alone hold to read, London newspapers for fear of contagion.
The Gazette was “Published by Authority” by Henry Muddiman, and its
INDUSTRIAL AGE

first publication is noted by Samuel Pepys in his diary. The King

s

returned to London as the plague dissipated, and the Gazette moved

too, with the first issue of The London Gazette (labelled No. 24) being
published on 5 February 1666. The Gazette was not a newspaper in the
modern sense: it was sent by post to subscribers, not printed for sale to
the general public. Her Majesty’s Stationery Office took over the
publication of the Gazette in 1889. Publication of the Gazette was
transferred to the private sector, under government supervision, in the
1990s, when HMSO was sold and renamed The Stationery Office.
(
)

■Typewriter (1800), Telephone (1876)

A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for
writing characters similar to those produced by printer’s movable
type. A typewriter operates by means of keys that strike a ribbon
to transmit ink or carbon impressions onto paper. Typically, a
single character is printed on each key press. The machine prints
characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to
the sorts used in movable type letterpress printing.
The first commercial typewriters were introduced in 1874,[2] but
did not become common in offices until after the mid-1880s.[3]
The typewriter quickly became an indispensable tool for
practically all writing other than personal handwritten
correspondence. It was widely used by professional writers, in
offices, and for business correspondence in private homes.
 ■Telephone (1876 )
) ( s-1930 s

In the 1870s, Elisha Gray and Alexander

Graham Bell independently designed
devices that could transmit speech
electrically. Both men rushed their
respective designs for these prototype
1700

telephones to the patent office within hours

INDUSTRIAL AGE

of each other. Bell patente d his telephone

first and later emerged the victor in a legal
dispute with Gray.
)

■ Motion picture photography/projection (1890)

Damoizeau built what has been suggested as the first
1700 1930

panoramic camera, which is untrue. The Cyclographe (right)

s

took photographs encompassing a full 360º and was one of

the better panoramic cameras of the day. It was a collapsible
INDUSTRIAL AGE

bellows-camera and contained a pointed punch which would

s

strike and thereby identify each new exposure on the roll

prior to its passing before a slit at the shutter. The
dimension of the roll film was 80cm by 8.5cm and
operated via a mechanism driven by a key-wound
clockwork. The camera turned on the tripod as the film
was fed past the shutter in the opposite direction to the
camera’s turning. In 1894 Damoizeau developed a
panoramic stereoscopic camera with twin-lenses,
(
)

twinspools and twin -slits. Most panoramic cameras provided a view of at least 110º, with some, like this
one providing for a full circle.

■Commercial motion
pictures (1913)
1700 1930
s

industry, including its productiontechniques,its

-

distributionandexhibition ofitsproducts(seealso
USTRIAL AGE
s

Picture Cameras under camera).

 I
(
)

■Motion picture with sound (1926)

A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as
opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900,
1700 1930

but decades passed before sound motion pictures were made commercially practical. Reliable synchronization
s

was difficult to achieve with the early sound-on-disc systems, and amplification and recording quality were also
inadequate. Innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using the
technology, which took place in 1923. The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in
INDUSTRIAL AGE
s

the mid- to late 1920s. At first, the sound films which included synchronized dialogue, known as “talking
pictures”, or “talkies”, were exclusively shorts. The earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound included
only music and effects. The first feature film originally presented as a talkie was The Jazz Singer, released in
October 1927. A major hit, it was made with Vitaphone, which was at the time the leading brand of sound-on-
disc technology. Sound-on-film, however,
(
 would soon become the standard for talking pictures.
)

■Telegraph
( s 1930 s

Telegraphy (from Greek: τῆλε têle, “at a distance” and γράφειν

gráphein, “to write”) is the long-distance transmission of textual or
symbolic (as opposed to verbal or audio) messages without the
1700

physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus

INDUSTRIAL AGE

semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pigeon post is not. Telegraphy requires that the method used for
encoding the message be known to both sender and receiver. Many methods are designed according to the limits of the
signallingmedium used. The use of smoke signals, beacons, reflected light signals, and flag semaphore signals are early
examples. In the 19th century, the harnessing of electricity led to the invention of electrical telegraphy. The advent of
radio in the early 20th century brought about radiotelegraphy and other forms of wireless telegraphy. In the Internet
age, telegraphic means developed greatly in sophistication and ease of use, with natural language interfaces that hide
the underlying code, allowing such technologies as electronic mail and instant messaging.
 ( s 1930 s )

■Punch cards A
punched card or punch card is a piece of stiff paper that can
be used to contain digital information represented by the
1700

presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. The

INDUSTRIAL AGE

information might be data for data processing applications or, in earlier examples, used to
directly control automated machinery. Punched cards were widely used through much of
the 20th century in what became known as the data processing industry, where specialized and increasingly complex
unit record machines, organized into semiautomatic data processing systems, used punched cards for data input,
output, and storage. Many early digital computers used punched cards, often prepared using keypunch machines, as the
primary medium for input of both computer programs and data. While punched cards are now obsolete as a recording
medium, as of 2012, some voting machines still use punched cards to record votes.
Electronic Age (1930s-1980s)
■ The invention of the transistor ushered in the
electronic age. People harnessed the power of
transistors that led to the transistor radio,
electronic circuits, and the early computers. In
this age, long distance communication became
more efficient.
 ■Transistor Radio
A transistor is a semiconductor device with at least three terminals for
-1980s s

connection to an electric circuit. The vacuumtube triode, also called a

(1930s s1980

(thermionic) valve, was the transistor's precursor, introduced in 1907.

■Television (1941)
Television was not invented by a single inventor, instead of many people
Age(1930

working together and alone over the years, contributed to the evolution of
television.
ElectronicAge
Electronic
 ■ Large electronic computers- i.e. EDSAC (1949) and
UNIVAC 1 (1951)

Three machines have been promoted at various times as the first

-1980

electronic computers. These machines used electronic switches, in the form

Electronic Age (1930s s

of vacuum tubes, instead of electromechanical relays. In principle the

electronic switches would be more reliable, since they would have no
moving parts that would wear out, but the technology was still new at that
time and the tubes were comparable to relays in reliability. Electronic
components had one major benefit, however: they could` `open' 'and` `close''
about 1,000timesfasterthan mechanical switches.
Electronic Age (1930 s-1980 s
■ Large electronic computers
(ATANASOFT-BERRY
COMPUTER) The earliest attempt to build
an electronic computer was by J. V. Atanasoff, a
professor of physics and mathematics at Iowa
State, in 1937. Atanasoff set out to build a
machine that would help his graduate students
solve systems of partial differential equations. By
1941 he and graduate student Clifford Berry had
succeeded in building a machine that could solve
29 simultaneous equations with 29 unknowns.
However, the machine was not programmable,
and was more of an electronic calculator.
Electronic Age (1930 s-1980 s
■ Large electronic computers
( COLOSSUS COMPUTER )
A second early electronic machine was
Colossus, designed by Alan Turing for the
British military in 1943. This machine played
an important role in breaking codes used by
the German army in World War II. Turing's
main contribution to the field of computer
science was the idea of the Turing machine, a
mathematical formalism widely used in the
study of computable functions. The existence
of Colossus was kept secret until long after
the war ended, and the credit due to Turing
and his colleagues for designing one of the
first working electronic computers was slow
in coming.
 ■ Large electronic computers Electronic Numerical Integrator and
Computer (ENIAC)
The first generalpurpose
programmableelectronic computer was
-1980

the Electronic Numerical Integrator

Electronic Age (1930s s

andComputer ( ENIAC), built by J.

Presper Eckert and John V. Mauchly at
the University of
Pennsylvania.
ENIAC was a computer
built between 1943 and1946. The
machine was built out of nearly
17,500 vacuum tubes, 7,200 diodes and
 many miles of wire. It took up 1,800 square feet (170 m2) of space, which is the size
of a large room.
■ Large electronic computers
Electronic Discrete Variable
Automatic Computer
(EDVAC)
The EDVAC is the successor of the
ENIAC. Made by the same designers:
Mauchly and Eckert.
-1980
onic Age (1930s s

This machine should be abel to hold

any programme in memory that was fed
to it. This would be possible because
 Ele
EDVAC was going to have more internal memory than any other computing device to date. In
other words a multipurpose computer.
■ Large electronic computers
UNIVersal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC)
The UNIVAC I was the world's first commercially available computer.
The first UNIVAC I was delivered on June 14, 1951. From 1951 to 1958 a total of 46 UNIVAC I
-1980
s

computers were delivered, all of which have since been phased out.
Electronic Age (1930s

The UNIVAC handled both numbers and alphabetic characters equally well. The UNIVAC I was
unique in that it separated the complex problems of input and output from the actual computation facility.
Mercury delay lines were used to store the computer's program. The program circulated within the lines in
the form of acoustical pulses that could be read from the line and written into it.
■ Mainframe computers - i.e. IBM 704 (1960)
A mainframe (also known as "big iron") is a highperformance
80 s

computer used for large-scale computing purposes that require

greater availability and security than a smaller-scale machine can
Electronic Age (1930 s
offer. Historically, mainframes have been associated with centralized rather than distributed computing, although that
distinction is blurring as smaller computers become more powerful and mainframes become more multipurpose.

The IBM 704, introduced by IBM in 1954, is the first mass-produced computer with floating-point arithmetic hardware.
The 704 at that time was thus regarded as "pretty much the only computer that could handle complex math."[3] The
704 was a significant improvement over the earlier IBM 701 in terms of
architecture and implementation.

■ Personal computers - i.e.

Hewlett-Packard 9100A
(1968) , Apple 1 (1976)

The Hewlett-Packard 9100A (hp 9100A) is an early

computer
s
Electronic Age (1930 s-198
(or programmable calculator), first appearing in 1968. HP called it a desktop
calculator because, as Bill Hewlett said, "If we had called it a computer, it would
have been rejected byour customers' computer gurus because it didn't look like an
IBM. We therefore decided to call it a calculator, and all such nonsense
disappeared.”
■ Personal computers - i.e.
Hewlett-Packard 9100A
(1968), Apple 1 (1976)
Apple Computer 1, also known later as the Apple I, or Apple-1,
is a desktop computer released by the Apple Computer
-1980
s

Company (now Apple Inc.) in 1976. It was designed and hand-

Age (1930s

built by Steve Wozniak.[1][2] Wozniak's friend Steve Jobs had

the idea of selling the computer. The Apple I was Apple's
first product, and to finance its creation, Jobs sold his only
motorized means of transportation, a VW Microbus,[3] for a
few hundred dollars, and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator for
 Electro
$500; however, Wozniak said that Jobs planned to use his bicycle if necessary.[4] It was
demonstratedin July 1976 at the Homebrew Computer Club in PaloAlto,
California.

■OHP, LCD projectors

1980
lectronic Age (1930s s
Information Age (1900s-2000s)
■ The Internet paved the way for faster communication
and the creation of the social network. People
advanced the use of microelectronics with the
invention of personal computers, mobile devices, and
wearable technology. Moreover, voice, image, sound
and data are digitalized. We are now living in the
information age.
 ■ Web browsers: Mosaic (1993), Internet
Explorer (1995)
The first web browser was invented in 1990 by Sir Tim
Berners -Lee. Berners -Lee is the director of the World
Information Age (1900s-2000s)

Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the

Web's continued development, and is also the founder
of the World Wide Web Foundation. His browser was
called WorldWideWeb and later renamed Nexus, and
ran on NeXT Computers.

The first web browser was invented in 1990 by Sir Tim

Berners -Lee. Berners -Lee is the director of the World
Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the
Web's continued development, and is also the founder
of the World Wide Web Foundation. His browser was
called WorldWideWeb and later renamed Nexus, and
ran on NeXT Computers.
 ■ Web browsers: Mosaic (1993), Internet
o Blogs: Blogspot (1999), LiveJournal (1999),
(1900s-2000s)Age (1900s-2000s)

Wordpress (2003)

o Social networks: Friendster (2002), Multiply

(2003) , Facebook (2004 o Microblogs:
ge Information

Twitter (2006), Tumblr (2007) o Video:

YouTube (2005)
Informatio
■ Video chat: Skype (2003), Google Hangouts
(2013)
■ Search Engines: Google (1996), Yahoo (1995)
■Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality
■ Portable computers- laptops (1980), netbooks
(2008) , tablets (1993)
■ Smart phones, Wearable technology, Cloud
and Big Data
2000 s)
 -2000s) Age (1900
■ Portable computers- laptops (1980), netbooks
(2008) , tablets (1993)
Information

■ Smart phones, Wearable technology, Cloud and

Information Age (1900s

Big Data