Early beginnings
History of ICT originates from humble beginnings which
include the abacus. The abacus is thought to have been originally invented 3000
years before the birth of Christ. Revisions to its use/design continued for
many years e.g. 500 BC a bead and wire version is developed in Egypt.
Early versions of the calculator were gradually replacing
this primitive method of mathematics in 1624. Wilhelm shrickered built the
first four function calculator clock at the University of Heidelberg thus a new
era began.
Developmental timeline
1930s- Hewlett-Packard is founded. David Packard and Bill
Hewlett found Hewlett-Packard in a Palo Alto, California garage. Their first
product was the HP 200A Audio Oscillator, which rapidly becomes a popular piece
of test equipment for engineers. Walt Disney ordered eight of the 200B model to
use as sound effects generators for the 1940 movie "Fantasia".
1940s- Project Whirlwind begins. During World War II, the
U.S. Navy approached the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) about
building a flight simulator to train bomber crews. The team first built a large
analog computer, but found it inaccurate and inflexible. After designers saw a
demonstration of the ENIAC computer, they decided on building a digital
computer.
1950s- Engineering Research Associates of built the ERA 1101,
the first commercially produced computer; the company´s first customer was the
U.S. Navy. It held 1 million bits on its magnetic drum, the earliest magnetic
storage devices. Drums registered information as magnetic pulses in tracks
around a metal cylinder. Read/write heads both recorded and recovered the data.
Drums eventually stored as many as 4,000 words and retrieved any one of them in
as little as five-thousandths of a second.
1960s- MIT students Slug Russell, Shag Graetz, and Alan Kotok
wrote SpaceWar!, considered the first interactive computer game. First played
at MIT on DEC´s PDP-1, the large-scope display featured interactive,
shoot´em-up graphics that inspired future video games. Dueling players fired at
each other´s spaceships and used early versions of joysticks to manipulate away
from the central gravitational force of a sun as well as from the enemy ship.
1970s- The first e-mail is sent. Ray Tomlinson of the
research firm Bolt, Beranek and Newman sent the first e-mail when he was
supposed to be working on a different project. Tomlinson, who is credited with
being the one to decide on the "@" sign for use in e-mail, sent his
message over a military network called ARPANET. When asked to describe the
contents of the first email, Tomlinson said it was “something like
"QWERTYUIOP"”
1980s- Seagate Technology created the first hard disk drive
for microcomputers, the ST506. The disk held 5 megabytes of data, five times as
much as a standard floppy disk, and fit in the space of a floppy disk drive. The
hard disk drive itself is a rigid metallic platter coated on both sides with a
thin layer of magnetic material that stores digital data. Seagate quickly drew
such big-name customers as Apple Computer and IBM. Within a few years, it had
sold 4 million units.
1990s- The World Wide Web (www) was born when Tim
Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN, developed HyperText Markup Language. HTML,
as it is commonly known, allowed the Internet to expand into the World Wide
Web, using specifications he developed such as URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
and HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol). A browser, such as Netscape or
Microsoft Internet Explorer, follows links and sends a query to a server,
allowing a user to view a site.
2000s- Sony releases the Playstation 2. The PS2 is the
best-selling console of all time, having reached over 150 million units sold as
of January 31, 2011. This milestone was reached 10 years and 11 months after
the system was released in Japan on March 4, 2000. Further, Sony said it had
10,828 titles available for the system and that 1.52 billion PS2 titles had
been sold since launch.
An influential person in ICT
William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28,
1955) is an American business magnate, investor, programmer, inventor and
philanthropist. Gates is the former chief executive and current chairman of
Microsoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company, which he
co-founded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked in the Forbes list of the
world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to
2009—excluding 2008, when he was ranked third, in 2011 he was the wealthiest
American and the world's second wealthiest person. According to the Bloomberg
Billionaires List, Gates is the world's richest person in 2013, a position that
he last held on the list in 2007. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held
the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest
individual shareholder, with 6.4% of the common stock. He has also authored and co-authored several
books. Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer
revolution. Gates has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been
considered anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by
the courts. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of
philanthropic endeavours, donating large amounts of money to various charitable
organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation, established in 2000. Gates stepped down as chief executive
officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the
position of chief software architect for himself. In June 2006, Gates announced
that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time
work, and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He
gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, and
Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Gates' last full-time day at
Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He remains at Microsoft as chairman.
History of ict
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