A History of Computer and Information Technology

by Keegan Duffy Minnesota Multidiscipline While throughout human history we have been devising increasingly more clever ways to aid in computation and data storage and retrieval, none so have been as useful or powerful as the almighty computer. While computation has humble beginnings, one can argue that even the earliest technologies laid the groundwork for the super computers that we know today. One of the first known computing devices was called the Antikythera mechanism, which is believed to date all the way back to the first century in BC. It is considered by most historians to be the first ever analog computer, one that used a series of gears in order to do calculations. Another similar device was found in Europe, but not until much later, dating all the way to the 16th century. Even then it was not until 1645 that a successful gear-based calculating device could successfully perform basic mathematic operations.

Electronic computers would not appear on the scene for humanity until the 1940s. The earliest ones used things like valves and relays. The first programmable computer was the Zuse Z3, and was made in 1941. While quite a step forward, it was not very versatile, as it had little memory capacity and could only perform a single, predetermined task. It wasn’t until the development of transistors that computers would begin making huge leaps and strides into the powerhouses that we know today. They allowed for a closed circuit switch that required no mechanical interactions, allowing for much more processing power and memory space.

Keegan Duffy of Minnesota is an information technology project manager who is intrigued by the field’s history.

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Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.

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