Information Technology: Overview & History of Technology

The use of tools, power, and materials, generally for the purposes of production. Almost every human process for getting food and shelter depends on complex technological systems, which have been developed over a 3-million-year period.

From Reader's Guide to the History of Science
Since the 1950s, the term “computing” has been appropriated for all forms of information processing, from mathematical and control applications, to business data processing. Within the context of the history of science, the term computing is normally restricted to numerical algorithms, and practical computing in science and engineering.

From Encyclopedia of American Studies
Electrification and other technological innovations aided in the commodification of leisure and entertainment.

From Encyclopedia of World Trade: From Ancient Times to the Present
History has been divided into ages and eras defined by the new technology being used at the time.

The developmental stage of humans in prehistory before the use of metals, when tools and weapons were made chiefly of stone, especially flint.

Stage of prehistory and early history when copper and bronze (an alloy of tin and copper) became the first metals worked extensively and used for tools and weapons.

Developmental stage of human technology when weapons and tools were made from iron. Preceded by the Stone and Bronze ages, it is the last technological stage in the Three Age System framework for prehistory.

Tthe pace of technological and social change accelerated exponentially in the 18th and 19th centuries with the Industrial Revolution.

From Encyclopedia of Urban America: The Cities and Suburbs
The electrification of cities was a piecemeal affair that began with laying telegraph lines in the 1840s.

The wartime effort to design and build the first nuclear weapons (atomic bombs).

From Greenwood Encyclopedia of International Relations
An intense technological, military, nationalistic, and prestige- driven competition between the United States and the Soviet Union to achieve a sequence of “firsts” or “longests” in space.

From Encyclopedia of Computer Science
Mechanical aids to calculation and mechanical sequence-control devices were perhaps the earliest and most important achievements in the development of computer technology.

From Encyclopedia of Computer Science
The digital computer age began when the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Harvard Mark I) started working in August 1944.

From Encyclopedia of Computer Science
Colossus was the first large programmable electronic computer. It was developed at the British Post Office Research laboratories at Dollis Hill in North London at great speed and in complete secrecy during the Second World War to help break top-level German machine ciphers.

From Encyclopedia of Computer Science
The EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) was built in England during the late 1940s at the Mathematical Laboratory of the University of Cambridge.

From Encyclopedia of Computer Science
The EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer), the first stored program computer to be designed, was a direct outgrowth of work on the ENIAC.

From Encyclopedia of Computer Science
The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was developed at the Moore School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia between 1943 and 1946. It was the first electronic general-purpose automatic computer.

US computer and electronics company, manufacturer of the iPodMP3 music player, iPhone multimedia mobile telephone, Macintosh range of computers, and iPad tablet computer.

Google can be found in almost every domain of Internet computing and media provision.

Multinational company, one of the world's largest technology companies (as of 2011). The company is a descendant of the Tabulating Machine Company, formed in 1896 by US inventor Herman Hollerith to exploit his punched-card machines.

US corporation, one of the world's largest software suppliers, based in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975. Its first major product was a version of BASIC, written for the first personal computer, the MITS Altair, in 1975, and adopted by most of the desktop computer industry.

One of the most successful examples of internet-based organization, this ‘free encyclopedia anyone can edit’ has (at the time of writing) over 5 million articles in 200 languages.

English mathematician and inventor, who built a calculating machine that anticipated the modern electronic computer.

English mathematician and writer who created the first program for Charles Babbage's analytical engine – she is known as the first computer programmer.

From Encyclopedia of Computer Science
Herman Hollerith (b. Buffalo, NY, 1860; d. Washington, DC, 1929), see Figure 1, was the inventor of the punched-card data processing machine.

The mathematician John von Neumann made important contributions to many areas of mathematics and quantum physics before turning to computers and developing the theoretical foundations of digital electronic computers.

From Encyclopedia of Computer Science
An innovator and major contributor to the development of programming languages. . . . she developed the first compiler, A-0 (1952), and the first compiler to handle mathematical computations, A-2 (1953). This work, coupled with her view of what the world of programming languages ought to be like, led her to the development of the first English language data processing compiler.

From Encyclopedia of Computer Science
One of the major visionaries and pioneers of our current electronic digital computer era. The dedication of his brainchild, ENIAC, in 1946 totally changed the scientific and commercial information processing environment.

English mathematician who worked in numerical analysis and played a major part in the early development of British computers.

US electrical engineer and computer inventor. With Steven Jobs he formed Apple Computer in 1976 to make the Apple I. He played a major role in designing the later Apple models, Lisa and Macintosh.

Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, California on 24 February 1955.

US computer entrepreneur. He co-founded Microsoft Corporation in 1975, with school friend and fellow entrepreneur Paul Allen, and succeeded in converting a passion for computers into a globally dominant software business.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
US computer entrepreneur who founded the PC manufacturing company Dell Computers. He founded the company as a student with US$1,000 and the idea to sell custom-built computers directly to the consumer, cutting out the selling stages between.