FOUR BASIC COMPUTING PERIODS

Prepared by: Liza M. Hipolito

 4 Basic Computing Periods

Pre-Mechanical Period

Mechanical Period

The Electro-Mechanical Period

The Electronic Period

 Pre-Mechanical Period (3500 B.C. to 1450 A.D)

PETROGLYPHS
signs or simple figures
carved in rocks

In the Philippines, the oldest

known petroglyphs was found
in Angono, Rizal, dating to the
third millennium B.C.
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Pre-Mechanical Period (3500 B.C. to 1450 A.D)
Scholars believed that the first ideographs
was during the Shang dynasty
IDEOGRAPHS

Symbols to represent
ideas and concepts

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Shang dynasty was between 1600

to 1046 B.C.
Pre-Mechanical Period (3500 B.C. to 1450 A.D)

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SA-NC

CUNEIFORM
The first written form and the first real
information system
3500 B.C.
Pre-Mechanical Period (3500 B.C. to 1450 A.D)

PHOENICIAN SYMBOLS
at around 2000 B.C.

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 Pre-Mechanical Period (3500 B.C. to 1450 A.D)

At around 3300 B.C., Sumerian scribes would take a stylus (a stick made from a
reed) and press the lines and symbols into soft, moist clay

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 Pre-Mechanical Period (3500 B.C. to 1450 A.D)

Egyptians used the

P A P Y R U S

at around 2600 B.C.

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 Pre-Mechanical Period (3500 B.C. to 1450 A.D)

At around 100 A.D., paper was first

made in Lei-Yang, China by Ts'ai
Lun, a Chinese court official.
Pre-Mechanical Period (3500 B.C. to 1450 A.D)

Greeks
Egyptians
Mesopotamia
• 2700 B.C. • 1250 B.C. • 600 B.C.
• Administrative • Scrolls because of • Papyrus were
records the large folded vertically
• Earliest “books” amounts of into leaves and
were kept by papyrus plants bound them
scholars surrounding the together
• Royal library of Nile River
Nineveh
developed by
Ashurbanipal
where a diverse
assortment of
materials can be
found
 Pre-Mechanical Period (3500 B.C. to 1450 A.D)

Ancient Egyptian Numbering System Hindu

(3000 B.C.) (7 to 11 A.D.)
• The first recorded
zero appeared in
Mesopotamia at
around 3 B.C.
• Zero was also
independently
invented by the
Mayans at around
4 A.D.

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 Pre-Mechanical Period (3500 B.C. to 1450 A.D)

ABACUS
the first counting machine

❑ Said to be invented
from Ancient
❑ Greek word “abax” Babylon between
meaning “tabular 300 to 500 B.C
form” ❑ It was invented in
China during the
1100 B.C.

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 Mechanical Period (1450 to 1840)

In 1450, Johannes
Guttenberg
invented the
moving metal-type
printing process

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SA under CC BY-SA
 Mechanical Period (1450 to 1840)

1614 Invented logarithm

• Logarithm transforms
multiplication into addition and
division into subtraction

1617 Invented Napier’s bones

• Napier’s bones was one of several
This Photo by Unknown Author is
licensed under CC BY-NC JOHN NAPIER
methods to simplify calculating
large numbers
 Mechanical Period (1450 to 1840)

invented the first

1623 mechanical calculator
• Can work with six digits and can
carry digits across columns

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under CC BY-SA WILHELM SHIKARD
CC BY-SA
 Mechanical Period (1450 to 1840)

1600’s to
1800’s invented the slide rule
• manual device used for calculation that
consists in its simple form of a ruler and a
movable middle piece which are graduated
with similar logarithmic scales

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed WILLIAM OUGHTRED

under CC BY-SA
 Mechanical Period (1450 to 1840)

invented the Pascaline or

1642 Rotating Wheel Calculator
• Made up of clock gears and levers
• Can solve mathematical problems
like addition and subtraction
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SA
BLAISE PASCAL
 Mechanical Period (1450 to 1840)

invented the Stepped

1673 reckoner
• Can rapidly multiply 5 digit and
12 digit numbers yielding up to
16 numbers

GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ
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under CC BY-SA
 Mechanical Period (1450 to 1840)

developed the automatic

1801 loom (weaving loom)
• This was controlled by punched
cards

JOSEPH-MARIE JACQUARD

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NC
 Mechanical Period (1450 to 1840)

developed the
1820 arithmometer
• This was the first mass-
produced calculator

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NC-ND
CHARLES XAVIER THOMAS de COLMAR
 Mechanical Period (1450 to 1840)

1821 Invented the difference engine

• Designed to aid the calculation of mathematical, celestial and
navigational tables

1832 Invented the analytical engine

•

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under CC BY-SA-NC CHARLES BABBAGE licensed under CC BY

Father of Modern Computer

Mechanical Period (1450 to 1840)

LADY ADA AUGUSTA LOVELACE BYRON

First computer programmer (1842)
The Mechanical Period (1840 to 1940)

First electric
battery known
as voltaic pile
(1800)

Alessandro
Volta

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BY-SA CC BY-SA-NC
 The Mechanical Period (1450 to 1840)

Conceived his version of the Electromagnetic Telegraph(1837) Samuel F.B. Morse

A method of An alphabet or
sending and code in which
receiving letters are
messages by represented by
electrical or combinations of
radio signals long and short
signals of light
or sound.

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 4 Basic Computing Periods

Pre-Mechanical Period

Mechanical Period

The Electro-Mechanical Period

The Electronic Period

The Electro-Mechanical Period (1840 to 1940)

Alexander Graham
Bell developed the
first working
telephone (1879)

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The Electro-Mechanical Period (1840 to 1940)

Guglielmo Marconi discovered that electrical waves travel

through space and can produce and effect far from the
point at which it originated (1894) - RADIO
The Electro-Mechanical Period (1840 to 1940)

George Boole
developed the
binary algebra
BOOLEAN
ALGEBRA (1852)

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The Electro-Mechanical Period (1840 to 1940)

Pehr and Edward Scheutz completed a

tabulating machine (1853). This is capable of
processing fifteen digit numbers, printing out
result and rounding off to eight digits
The Electro-Mechanical Period (1840 to 1940)

Dorr Felt devises a comptometer and a

comptograph (1885). A comptometer is a key-
driven adding and subtracting calculator. A
comptograph has a built-in printer
 The Electro-Mechanical Period (1840 to 1940)

Punched card – provided

computer programmers with a
Herman new way to put information
Hollerith is the into their machines

father of He founded the Tabulating

information Machine Company which later
became the Computing Tabulating
technology Recording Company and
International Business Machines
Corporation (IBM)

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BY-SA
The Electro-Mechanical Period (1840 to 1940)

OTTO SWEIGER
Millionaire (1893) is the first
efficient four-function
calculator
The Electro-Mechanical Period (1840 to 1940)

Lee De Forest
invented
vacuum tubes
(1905) for
controlling
current flow
The Electronic Period (1941 to Present)

Konrad Zuse build the

first programmable
computer called Z3 in
1941.

In 1950, Zuse released

the world’s first
commercial digital
computer
The Electronic Period (1941 to Present)

Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC)

John Atanasoff First electronic-digital computer
Clifford Berry
1942
The Electronic Period (1941 to Present)

Howard Aiken invented Mark I - IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled

Calculator (1944) , the first to automate the execution of complex
calculations
The Electronic Period (1941 to Present)

John Presper Eckert and John W.

Mauchly came up with the idea for
1945 ENIAC

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical

Integrator and Computer) –the first
“automatic, general-purpose
electronic, digital computer”

First high-speed, digital

computer capable of being
reprogrammed to solve a
full range of computing
problems
The Electronic Period (1941 to Present)

1946
UNIVAC – first commercial computer
for business and government
applications
The Electronic Period (1941 to Present)

1947 1949 1949

William University of CSIRAC (Council
Shockley, John Cambridge for Scientific
Bardeen and developed the and Industrial
Walter Brattain EDSAC Research
invented the (Electronic Automatic
transistor Delay Storage Computer) was
Automatic built and it
Calculator) played music
The Electronic Period (1941 to Present)

1953 1954 1958

Grace Hopper John Backus Jack Kilby and
developed the first created FORTRAN Robert Noyce
computer (Formula unveiled the
language, COBOL Translation) integrated circuit
(Common, (computer chip)
Business Oriented
Language), she
was called the
“first lady of
software”
The Electronic Period (1941 to Present)

1970 1971 1972

Unveiled the Floppy disk was Magnavox
first Dynamin invented , Odyssey, the
Access Memory allowing data to first home game
(DRAM) chip be shared console was
among different released
computers, this
was also the
time that WIFI
was created
The Electronic Period (1941 to Present)

1973 1975 1976

Developed Highlights Altair Steven Jobs,
Ethernet used 8080 as the Steve Woznisk
to connect world’s first and Ron Wayne
multiple minicomputer, co-founded
computers and Bill Gates and Apple 1.
other hardware Paul Allen
formed
Microsoft
 The Electronic Period (1941 to Present)

1978 1983 2003

First First portable AMD
Computer computer released the
spreadsheet (laptop) was first 64-bit
was first released processor for
introduced and sold personal
computers.
1989 – HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), became the WWW
The Electronic Period (1941 to Present)

2004: Mozilla
•2005: Google buys Android
2006: MacBook Pro was released
• 2009: Microsoft released Windows 7
2010: IPAD
2011: Google Chromebook
2015: Apple Watch, Microsoft 10
 References:

History Of Information Technology — Introduction to Information and Communication Technology. (n.d.).

Openbookproject.net. https://openbookproject.net/courses/intro2ict/history/history.html

Unknown. (2016, February 27). ICT Languages Brenda Avila : Pre Mechanical Age. ICT Languages Brenda
Avila. http://ictlanguagesbrenda.blogspot.com/2016/02/pre-mechanical-age.html

What are Petroglyphs and who made them? - Petroglyph National Monument (U.S. National Park Service).
(2016). Nps.gov. https://www.nps.gov/petr/learn/historyculture/what.htm

Williamson, T. (2021, December 1). History of computers: A brief timeline. Live Science; Live Science.
https://www.livescience.com/20718-computer-history.html