known

as
theThird
Industrial
Revolution, is the change fromanalog
,mechanical,
andelectronic
technologytodigital technologywhich
began anywhere from the late 1950s to
the late 1970s with the adoption and
proliferation of digital computers and
digital record keeping that continues to
the present day.

1980
Cell phone subscribers: 11.2 million
Internet users: All Internet users at this
time were indexed in aphone book
sized directory.

1990
Cell phone subscribers: 12.5 million
(0.25% of world population in 1990)
Internet users: 2.8 million (0.05% of
world population in 1990)

2002
Cell phone subscribers: 1.2 billion (19%
of world population in 2002)
Internet users: 631 million (11% of world
population in 2002)

2010
Cell phone subscribers: 4 billion (67% of
world population in 2010)
Internet users: 1.8 billion (26.6% of world
population in 2010)

The
underlying
technology
was
invented in the later half of the 19th
century,
includingBabbage's
analytical engineand
thetelegraph.
Digital
communication
became
economical for widespread adoption
after
the
invention
of
the
personal computer.

Claude Shannon,
a
Bell
Labs
mathematician, is credited for having
laid
out
the
foundations
of
digitalization in his pioneering 1948
article,A Mathematical Theory of
Communication.[7]The
digital
revolution converted technology that
previously was analog into a digital
format. By doing this, it became
possible to make copies that were
identical to the original.

Computer
generally
meansa
programmable machine. The two
principal characteristics of a computer
are: it responds to a specific set of
instructionsin a well-defined manner
and it can executea prerecorded list of
instructions (aprogram).

Modern computers are electronic and

digital.
The
actual
machinerywires,transistors,
and
circuitsis
called
hardware;
the
instructions anddataare calledsoftware.

Babbages Analytical
Engine
Chapter 1 Computer Systems

ENIAC
112