Introduction

This section outlines the history of the computer and gives an introduction to the information age, where the effective use of information is a prerequisite for success in business, government and social life.

The roots of information technology

The first computers were people. There has always been a need to calculate, for example to work out balances in complex trading operations or to predict where stars will be in the sky at a certain point in the year. However, mental arithmetic can be both boring and prone to error, hence the invention of the first mechanical calculating devices many centuries ago. The earliest known tool for calculating is the abacus, and even today, a skilled abacus operator can work on addition and subtraction problems at the speed of a person equipped with a hand calculator. The oldest surviving abacus was used in 300 BC by the Babylonians.

Thinking Point

Computers are glorified counting devices, albeit extremely fast. Is this enough of a basis from which to develop intelligence? Is an intelligent computer possible?

In the early 19th century the British Empire straddled the world because of its control of the seas. Yet the British navy had to rely on a seven-volume set of navigation tables, which came with a companion volume of corrections for over 1000 numerical errors. The mathematician Charles Babbage proposed a steam-driven calculating machine, which he called the difference engine, which would be able to correctly compute tables of numbers such as navigation tables. His project foundered, despite being the most expensive government programme of its age – perhaps it was the earliest harbinger of current failures in large, government-funded IT projects.

Undaunted, Babbage proposed an even more grandiose idea, the analytical engine. This would be a general purpose calculation device. It would use punched cards, recently developed by the Frenchman Joseph Jacquard for controlling patterns output on looms. Babbage realized that punched cards could contain either the raw data or the instructions for the calculations to be performed on that data. Different punched patterns would equate to different data or instructions. Because of the connection to Jacquard's loom, Babbage called the two main parts of his analytical engine the ‘store’ and the ‘mill’, as both terms were used in the weaving industry.