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40,000 BCE
Writing and Alphabets
The earliest forms of human communication were limited to spoken language and drawings. -
Period: 3500 BCE to 1450
The Premechanical Age
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3200 BCE
Paper and Pen Input technologies.
Sumerian Input Technology: The Stylus and Clay Tablets -
3000 BCE
Cuniform
The Sumerians of Mesopotamia, in what is now southern Iraq, developed a standardized system. -
2600 BCE
Egyptian Writing: Using the Papyrus Plant
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2000 BCE
Phoenicians created symbols
The Phoenicians developed a set of symbols. -
1100 BCE
From Phoenician to Modern Latin Alphabet
The Greeks later took the Phoenician alphabet and introduced vowels, while the Romans assigned Latin names to the letters, forming the alphabet we use today. -
600 BCE
Books and Libraries Permanent Storage Devices
the Greeks began to fold sheets of papyrus vertically into leaves and bind them together. -
100
Chinese Innovation The Invention of Paper from Rags
The Chinese made paper from rags, on which modern-day papermaking is based. -
100
The First Numbering Systems
The first numbering systems similar to those in use today were invented by Hindus in India who created a nine-digit numbering system -
875
The First Calculators: The Abacus
One of the very first information processors. -
Period: 1450 to
The Mechanical Age
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Slide Rules
William Oughtred, an English clergyman, invented the slide rule -
The first general purpose computers
The Pascaline. Invented by Blaise Pascal. One of the first mechanical computing machines -
Joseph Marie Jacquard' loom.
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The Difference Engine
Working model created in 1822. -
Period: to
The Electromechanical Age
The key advances made during this period included discovering ways to harness electricity. Knowledge and information could now be converted into electrical impulses. -
The Census Machine
The census machine, also known as the tabulating machine, was invented by Herman Hollerith and used to process the 1890 U.S. Census -
Period: to
The Electronic Age
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Period: to
The Electronic Age
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The Mark 1
The Harvard Mark I, or IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, was one of the earliest general-purpose electromechanical computers used in the war effort during the last part of World War II. -
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer
The First High-Speed, General-Purpose Computer Using Vacuum Tubes -
Period: to
The Four Generations of Digital Computing
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The first generation of computer chips
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The Second Generation
Vacuum tubes were replaced by transistors as the main logic element. -
The Third Generation
Individual transistors were replaced by integrated circuits. -
The Fourth Generation
Large-scale and very large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs and VLSICs) -
Graphical User Interfaces (GUI)
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First Mac and Apple GUI
first Macintosh was introduced in 1984 by Steve Jobs and was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature two known, but still unpopular features: the mouse and the graphical user interface