The Evolution of ICT

• ICT means information and communication technology
• four main periods for the evolution of ICT

  • Pre Mechanical period
  • mechanical period
  • electromechanical period
  • electronic period
• pre-mechanical period - can be traced back thousands of years ago, around 3,000 BCE to 1,450 CE
• pre-mechanical period - humans started communicating with one another using words and pictograms carved in rock. They started to write symbols as substitute for pictures to depict ideas, objects, and animals.
• Pre-Mechanical Period - it started from stone tablets to papyrus to books to libraries to abacus
• Libraries are considered the first data centers in history
• abacus is a manually operated device like the modern calculator
• Mechanical Period - started around 1450 to 1840
• Mechanical Period - during this time the interest of automating and speeding up numerical calculations grew
• Mechanical Period - this period also concentrated primarily on development of machines that enhance calculation speed
• during the mechanical period Pasciline was invented by the famous mathematician inventor Blaise Pascal along with Wilhelm Schickard
• during the mechanical period the analytical engine by charles babbage was considered as the first programmable mechanical computer.
• Pasciline - this device inspired inventors to automate counting and calculations
• Electromechanical Period

  • started 1840 to 1940
• during the electromechanical period the use of electricity for information handling and transfer bloomed
• during the electromechanical period the need and the urgency to share information with one another in a faster yet reliable manner over long distances aroused
• during the electromechanical period the device telegraph was made. it is where the information is coded in sounds of dots, spaces, and dashes over wired media
• during the electromechanical period the device telephone was made enabling voice transmission over long distances
• electronic period is the last period of ict history
• the electronic period started in the 1940s and continues the present
• during the electronic period the highlight of this era is focused on the advent of solid-state devices or electronic devices.
• the four main events found in electronic period are:

  1. late vacuum tubes period
  2. transistors period
  3. integrated circuits period
  4. computer processor period