What is IT( Information Technology)

Try this website for a condensed biography on the ENIAC computer..
http://inventorsmuseum.com/eniac.htm

the 'first' computer was Babbage's counting machine. There's a lot of info on the web about him and how he came to create his machine and how it influenced others. Just go to any search engine and type Babbage into the search field, you should get quite a few hits.

Do we all get an "A" for our assignments?

Col

Basicall Inormation Technology is the study of Information systems like Computer,and the technology behind it.ie.how this system works/what makes this system work the way it does.
The first computer was really big in the sense that it had many controls and wasn't fast was complex.
not sure when it was manufactured.
Regards,
Elsie

Hey - do I get the A+ in your homework assignment if my old article gets a good grade?

Come-on Do a Google - Bahha - you can't be that lazy not to do some basic research on your own -

Or are kids that lazy now a days - mom / dad do this for me ...

Sorry, should have ready "why the instructor assigned such a homework question".

A. The Premechanical Age: 3000 B.C. - 1450 A.D.
* Writing and Alphabets--communication.
First humans communicated only through speaking and picture drawings.
* 3000 B.C., the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (what is today southern Iraq) devised cuniform
Around 2000 B.C., Phoenicians created symbols
The Greeks later adopted the Phoenician alphabet and added vowels; the Romans gave the letters Latin names to create the alphabet we use today.
* Paper and Pens--input technologies.
Sumerians' input technology was a stylus that could scratch marks in wet clay.
* About 2600 B.C., the Egyptians write on the papyrus plant around 100 A.D., the Chinese made paper from rags, on which modern-day papermaking is based.
* Books and Libraries: Permanent Storage Devices.
Religious leaders in Mesopotamia kept the earliest "books" The Egyptians kept scrolls
Around 600 B.C., the Greeks began to fold sheets of papyrus vertically into leaves and bind them together.

* The First Numbering Systems.
Egyptian system:
The numbers 1-9 as vertical lines, the number 10 as a U or circle, the number 100 as a coiled rope, and the number 1,000 as a lotus blossom.
The first numbering systems similar to those in use today were invented between 100 and 200 A.D. by Hindus in India who created a nine-digit numbering system.
* Around 875 A.D., the concept of zero was developed.

* The First Calculators: The Abacus.

B. The Mechanical Age: 1450 - 1840
The First Information Explosion.
Johann Gutenberg (Mainz, Germany)
Invented the movable metal-type printing process in 1450.
The development of book indexes and the widespread use of page numbers.
The first general purpose "computers"
Actually people who held the job title "computer: one who works with numbers."
Slide Rules, the Pascaline and Leibniz's Machine.
Slide Rule. Early 1600s, William Oughtred, an English clergyman, invented the slide rule
Early example of an analog computer.
The Pascaline. Invented by Blaise Pascal (1623-62). One of the first mechanical computing machines, around 1642.
Leibniz's Machine.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716), German mathematician and philosopher.Babbage's Engines
Charles Babbage (1792-1871), eccentric English mathematician.
C. The Electromechanical Age: 1840 - 1940.
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.

The Beginnings of Telecommunication.

* Voltaic Battery.
* Late 18th century.
* Telegraph.
Early 1800s.
* Morse Code Developed in 1835 by Samuel Morse
* Dots and dashes.
* Telephone and Radio.

Followed by the discovery that electrical waves travel through space and can produce an effect far from the point at which they originated.

Guglielmo Marconi 1894 Electromechanical Computing, Herman Hollerith and IBM.
Herman Hollerith (1860-1929) in 1880.
D. The Electronic Age: 1940 - Present.
First Tries.
Early 1940s
Electronic vacuum tubes.
Eckert and Mauchly.
The First High-Speed, General-Purpose Computer Using Vacuum Tubes:
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)
The ENIAC team (Feb 14, 1946). J. Presper Eckert, Jr.; John Grist Brainerd; Sam Feltman; Herman H. Goldstine; John W. Mauchly; Harold Pender; Major General G. L. Barnes; Colonel Paul N. Gillon.

Used vacuum tubes (not mechanical devices) to do its calculations. Hence, first electronic computer. Developers John Mauchly, a physicist, and J. Prosper Eckert, an electrical engineer

The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania Funded by the U.S. Army.

But it could not store its programs, the First Stored-Program Computer(s) early 1940s, Mauchly and Eckert began to design the EDVAC - the Electronic Discreet Variable Computer.

John von Neumann's influential report in June 1945:
"The Report on the EDVAC"
British scientists used this report and outpaced the Americans. Max Newman headed up the effort at Manchester University where the Manchester Mark I went into operation in June 1948--becoming the first stored-program computer.

Maurice Wilkes, a British scientist at Cambridge University, completed the EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) in 1949--two years before EDVAC was finished.

Thus, EDSAC became the first stored-program computer in general use (i.e., not a prototype).

The First General-Purpose Computer for Commercial Use: Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC).
Late 1940s, Eckert and Mauchly began the development of a computer called UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer)
Remington Rand.

First UNIVAC delivered to Census Bureau in 1951.
But, a machine called LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) went into action a few months before UNIVAC and became the world's first commercial computer.

The Four Generations of Digital Computing
The First Generation (1951-1958).
Vacuum tubes as their main logic elements.
Punch cards to input and externally store data.
Rotating magnetic drums for internal storage of data and programs Programs written in Machine language Assembly language Requires a compiler.

The Second Generation (1959-1963).
Vacuum tubes replaced by transistors as main logic element. AT&T's Bell Laboratories, in the 1940s Crystalline mineral materials called semiconductors could be used in the design of a device called a transistor Magnetic tape and disks began to replace punched cards as external storage devices. Magnetic cores (very small donut-shaped magnets that could be polarized in one of two directions to represent data) strung on wire within the computer became the primary internal storage technology. High-level programming languages E.g., FORTRAN and COBOL

The Third Generation (1964-1979).

Individual transistors were replaced by ntegrated circuits. Magnetic tape and disks completely replace punch cards as external storage devices.
Magnetic core internal memories began to give way to a new form, metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) memory, which, like integrated circuits, used silicon-backed chips. Operating systems
Advanced programming languages like BASIC developed. Which is where Bill Gates and Microsoft got their start in 1975.

The Fourth Generation (1979- Present).
Large-scale and very large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs and VLSICs) Microprocessors that contained memory, logic, and control circuits (an entire CPU = Central Processing Unit) on a single chip. Which allowed for home-use personal computers or PCs, like the Apple (II and Mac) and IBM PC. Apple II released to public in 1977, by Stephen Wozniak and Steven Jobs. Initially sold for $1,195 (without a monitor); had 16k RAM.
First Apple Mac released in 1984. IBM PC introduced in 1981. Debuts with MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) Fourth generation language software products E.g., Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3, dBase, Microsoft Word, and many others.
Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) for PCs arrive in early 1980s MS Windows debuts in 1983, but is quite a clunker. Windows wouldn't take off until version 3 was released in 1990

Apple's GUI (on the first Mac) debuts in 1984.

OK GIVE ME THE A - LAZY KID

A. The Premechanical Age: 3000 B.C. - 1450 A.D.
* Writing and Alphabets--communication.
First humans communicated only through speaking and picture drawings.
* 3000 B.C., the Sumerians in Mesopotamia (what is today southern Iraq) devised cuniform
Around 2000 B.C., Phoenicians created symbols
The Greeks later adopted the Phoenician alphabet and added vowels; the Romans gave the letters Latin names to create the alphabet we use today.
* Paper and Pens--input technologies.
Sumerians' input technology was a stylus that could scratch marks in wet clay.
* About 2600 B.C., the Egyptians write on the papyrus plant around 100 A.D., the Chinese made paper from rags, on which modern-day papermaking is based.
* Books and Libraries: Permanent Storage Devices.
Religious leaders in Mesopotamia kept the earliest "books" The Egyptians kept scrolls
Around 600 B.C., the Greeks began to fold sheets of papyrus vertically into leaves and bind them together.

* The First Numbering Systems.
Egyptian system:
The numbers 1-9 as vertical lines, the number 10 as a U or circle, the number 100 as a coiled rope, and the number 1,000 as a lotus blossom.
The first numbering systems similar to those in use today were invented between 100 and 200 A.D. by Hindus in India who created a nine-digit numbering system.
* Around 875 A.D., the concept of zero was developed.

* The First Calculators: The Abacus.

B. The Mechanical Age: 1450 - 1840
The First Information Explosion.
Johann Gutenberg (Mainz, Germany)
Invented the movable metal-type printing process in 1450.
The development of book indexes and the widespread use of page numbers.
The first general purpose "computers"
Actually people who held the job title "computer: one who works with numbers."
Slide Rules, the Pascaline and Leibniz's Machine.
Slide Rule. Early 1600s, William Oughtred, an English clergyman, invented the slide rule
Early example of an analog computer.
The Pascaline. Invented by Blaise Pascal (1623-62). One of the first mechanical computing machines, around 1642.
Leibniz's Machine.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716), German mathematician and philosopher.Babbage's Engines
Charles Babbage (1792-1871), eccentric English mathematician.
C. The Electromechanical Age: 1840 - 1940.
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.

The Beginnings of Telecommunication.

* Voltaic Battery.
* Late 18th century.
* Telegraph.
Early 1800s.
* Morse Code Developed in 1835 by Samuel Morse
* Dots and dashes.
* Telephone and Radio.

Followed by the discovery that electrical waves travel through space and can produce an effect far from the point at which they originated.

Guglielmo Marconi 1894 Electromechanical Computing, Herman Hollerith and IBM.
Herman Hollerith (1860-1929) in 1880.
D. The Electronic Age: 1940 - Present.
First Tries.
Early 1940s
Electronic vacuum tubes.
Eckert and Mauchly.
The First High-Speed, General-Purpose Computer Using Vacuum Tubes:
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC)
The ENIAC team (Feb 14, 1946). J. Presper Eckert, Jr.; John Grist Brainerd; Sam Feltman; Herman H. Goldstine; John W. Mauchly; Harold Pender; Major General G. L. Barnes; Colonel Paul N. Gillon.

Used vacuum tubes (not mechanical devices) to do its calculations. Hence, first electronic computer. Developers John Mauchly, a physicist, and J. Prosper Eckert, an electrical engineer

The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania Funded by the U.S. Army.

But it could not store its programs, the First Stored-Program Computer(s) early 1940s, Mauchly and Eckert began to design the EDVAC - the Electronic Discreet Variable Computer.

John von Neumann's influential report in June 1945:
"The Report on the EDVAC"
British scientists used this report and outpaced the Americans. Max Newman headed up the effort at Manchester University where the Manchester Mark I went into operation in June 1948--becoming the first stored-program computer.

Maurice Wilkes, a British scientist at Cambridge University, completed the EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) in 1949--two years before EDVAC was finished.

Thus, EDSAC became the first stored-program computer in general use (i.e., not a prototype).

The First General-Purpose Computer for Commercial Use: Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC).
Late 1940s, Eckert and Mauchly began the development of a computer called UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer)
Remington Rand.

First UNIVAC delivered to Census Bureau in 1951.
But, a machine called LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) went into action a few months before UNIVAC and became the world's first commercial computer.

The Four Generations of Digital Computing
The First Generation (1951-1958).
Vacuum tubes as their main logic elements.
Punch cards to input and externally store data.
Rotating magnetic drums for internal storage of data and programs Programs written in Machine language Assembly language Requires a compiler.

The Second Generation (1959-1963).
Vacuum tubes replaced by transistors as main logic element. AT&T's Bell Laboratories, in the 1940s Crystalline mineral materials called semiconductors could be used in the design of a device called a transistor Magnetic tape and disks began to replace punched cards as external storage devices. Magnetic cores (very small donut-shaped magnets that could be polarized in one of two directions to represent data) strung on wire within the computer became the primary internal storage technology. High-level programming languages E.g., FORTRAN and COBOL

The Third Generation (1964-1979).

Individual transistors were replaced by ntegrated circuits. Magnetic tape and disks completely replace punch cards as external storage devices.
Magnetic core internal memories began to give way to a new form, metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) memory, which, like integrated circuits, used silicon-backed chips. Operating systems
Advanced programming languages like BASIC developed. Which is where Bill Gates and Microsoft got their start in 1975.

The Fourth Generation (1979- Present).
Large-scale and very large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs and VLSICs) Microprocessors that contained memory, logic, and control circuits (an entire CPU = Central Processing Unit) on a single chip. Which allowed for home-use personal computers or PCs, like the Apple (II and Mac) and IBM PC. Apple II released to public in 1977, by Stephen Wozniak and Steven Jobs. Initially sold for $1,195 (without a monitor); had 16k RAM.
First Apple Mac released in 1984. IBM PC introduced in 1981. Debuts with MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) Fourth generation language software products E.g., Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3, dBase, Microsoft Word, and many others.
Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) for PCs arrive in early 1980s MS Windows debuts in 1983, but is quite a clunker. Windows wouldn't take off until version 3 was released in 1990

Apple's GUI (on the first Mac) debuts in 1984.

OK GIVE ME THE A - LAZY KID

... you may have received, first off let me be the first to tell you , good for you on not just doing a google search and actually doing enough research to find a site to ask people who might know the answer. There's a lot of misinformation on the Internet and you may not get the answer you are looking for. This site is supposed to be for industry professionals and those seeking knowledge about the industry are always welcome.

On to the question.... which I don't really understand, maybe you can narrow it down? Here is what I can tell you from my own experience, it might not help, but maybe it will. When I started in the industry, there were "network administrators" or "computer managers". "Information Technology" was not really a term that I heard until around the mid-1990s, when the convergence of technology of telephone, faxes, into the network of information became the hot topic - then all of a sudden "Computer Manager" became too narrow a term (dealing only with computers) and many people became "Information Technology" professionals - those that deal with the techology to store or transmit the information that make businesses run. This includes but is not limited to phones and phone systems, PDAs, Fax machines, e-mail systems, gateways, computers, firewalls, IDSs, data storage systems, and anything else to come along that may be involved in the storage or transmission of information in electronic format.

Hope this helps

with that. Teaching them how to fish is ALWAYS a good idea. Giving them the information they need and then calling them lazy does not really make up a fishing pole, does it? You're missing my point. Also, calling em like you see em doesn't HAVE to include so much hum gee sarcasm and hateful name calling. You obscure what you are trying to say by invalidating your points with all the nastisness. For instance, I was very entertained by the information you posted previously. It was informative, clever, and probably helpful to the person who asked for help, then you end up calling the first poster lazy. Why? Obviously, the only way anyone will ever succeed in IT is to actually do the work themselves. So what if a kid gets help on a term paper. They have to get the information from SOMEWHERE. I applaud them for being resourceful enought to go right to the people in the industry instead of relying on text books. Who has the best information? We do.

All I am saying is lighten up. Try to see more than one side and be friendly. Friendly works.

"My mother once told me you can either be Oh so clever or oh so kind. I've been clever, I recommend kind." - Elwood P Dowd.

Have you ever met someone who touts themselves as an honest person, and proceeds to say really horrible things? All under the guise of being honest? There is a big fat line between honesty and cruelty. For instance, you could see a woman with a REALLY ugly baby. Telling her that her baby is ugly would be cruel, not honest. Saying that you are not PC, is not the same as being mean. I'm not PC either, I can't stand how vanilla everything can be. However, I don't use that as an excuse to belittle people. It just isn't the same thing.

...was full of ridicule, I wouldn't have gone any farther either. Perhaps it would have been more constructive to have put this "Is it that hard (your on the internet already) to go to Google, Askjeeves or other search engines - type in a couple of queeries - read a few articles. If you get confused - then ask - explain what you know - what you read - and where you are confused - we will help." in as your first response, which would have initiated some dialogue without offending - and still have gotten the point across... And if the question was never posted, we would have missed out on the whole weaving loom thread, which I found fascinating.

By the way, isn't the rest of the quote "The pot calling the kettle black -" and does that somehow infer that you (the pot) calling Bahh (the kettle) lazy means that you think of yourself as lazy? Or did you mean instead that those that are upset by "calling them as I see them", which is probably more the phrase you intended....

If the original poster had of asked the question and then provided some form of answer I would have been more than happy to put in my 2 cents worth to try to help him/her understand exactly if they where right or wrong and just how they had got it wrong.

But to me this type of thing smacks of "Cheating" and from any higher education establishment it would be considered that way.

Back when I was in Uni I had to do all the work myself and yes that was a long time before the internet as we know it today existed so I had to do all the research myself and then attempt to find someone to see if I had got things correct or had messed things up by not understanding the original question.

But this one smacks of not even attempting to even understand the question and seems to me that the person who posted it only wants the answer without ever understanding the idea behind the question which is pretty vague anyway. But if we where to provide the answer no doubt they would get high marks on their assignment or whatever it is but never really understand what they where talking about. Heaven only knows we already have enough College/Uni graduates out there who know almost nothing about what they where supposed to have studded but because they have a piece of paper they get a job and mess up because they just do not understand.

So while I might not call this person LAZY I would call them a CHEAT so I think your being a bit more circumspect that I would have been.

Col

It began with the abacus which was much smaller than the early electronic computers such as ENIAC. It appears that the earliest known Abacus was about 300 BC.

http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/abacus/history.html