Introduction to

Computer and
Information
Technology

What is a Computer?

Computer is an electronic device

designed to manipulate data so that
useful information can be generated.

Evolution of Computers

The Abacus

In

the year 5000 BC, ABACUS was invented by the

Chinese.
This was the first recognized counting device that can
perform simple addition and subtraction.

JOHN NAPIER (1617) a Scottish mathematician and inventor of the

Napiers Bone
He presented another means of multiplication using rods with
numbers marked on them. These rods were sometimes made of
ivory so they resembled bones, thus it was named Napiers bones.

WILLIAM OUGHTRED (1630) inventor of Oughtreds Slide Rule, a

slide rule that is consists of two movable rulers placed side by side.
The rulers are marked so that the actual distances from the beginning
of the ruler are proportional to the logarithms printed on them. When
the rulers are slide, you can quickly multiply and divide.

BLAISE PASCAL (1642) invented the PASCALINE that used a

wheel with cogs, considered as the first machine-driven calculator,
also known as the first digital calculating machine.
It only adds numbers and the invention was intended to help Pascals
father, a tax collector during that time. Pascal advertised the device as
being capable of performing "all the operations of arithmetic," but this
was a bit of advertising hyperbole.

In 1673, a German Baron, GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNIZ,

extended Pascal's design to produce a mechanical calculating
device that could multiply and divide as well as add and subtract.
The device contained an innovative component now known as the
"Leibniz Wheel" that performed the calculations. The design
principle of the Leibniz Wheel was used successfully in generations
of calculating machines.

The Jacquards Loom

JOSEPH-MARIE
JACQUARD (1801)
A Frenchman who
conceived and bring
into
form
the
Jacquards loom also
known as Jacquard
Weaves, which used
hole-punched card.
The loom is considered the first important
use of binary automation and was a
forerunner of the computer. When the age of
industrialization spread throughout Europe,
machines became fixtures in agricultural and
production sites.

CHARLES BABBAGE (1842) inventor

of Babbages Difference Engine and the
Analytical
Engine,
a
mechanical
predecessor of the digital computer.
This invention was designed to add,
subtract, multiply and divide, thus earning
him the title, the Father of the Modern
Computers. He foresaw a machine that
can
perform
all
mathematical
calculations, store values in its memory
and perform logical comparisons among
values.

AUGUSTA ADA BYRON, the daughter of the poet Lord

Byron, collaborated with Babbage on the conceptual
development of the Difference Engine and the Analytical
Engine during the early 1800s.
She has been called the first female programmer; and the
Ada programming language, adopted by the U.S.
Department of Defense, was named after Ada Lovelace in
recognition of her role in the development of the computer.

HERMAN HOLLERITH (1887) designed Holleriths Tabulating

machine, the first punched-card tabulating machine that stored data.
He is also the founder of Tabulating Machine Company (known now as
International Business Machine or IBM). 1890 U.S. census.
The 1880 census took 7 years to complete since all processing was
done by hand off of journal sheets.

This was won by a Census Department employee, Herman

Hollerith - who went on to found the Tabulating Machine Company,
later to become IBM

JOHN ATANASOFF AND THE ABC COMPUTER 1937. Between

1937 and 1942, an Iowa State University professor, John V.
Atanasoff, and a graduate student, Clifford E. Berry, developed the
prototype for an electronic computer.
The major innovation of the ABC computer was its use of vacuum
tubes instead of mechanical switches.

In 1943, a development team headed by John W. Mauchly and J.

Presper Eckert started work on ENIAC, a gigantic general purpose
electronic computer at the University of Pennsylvania.

Harvard MARK I 1939. Howard Aiken began work on the IBM

Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, also known as the Harvard
MARK I.
Some historians call this the first large scale automatic digital
computer produced in the U.S.

UNIVAC 1951. Eckert and Mauchly completed the UNIVAC I

computer for the Sperry Rand Corporation. UNIVAC was physically
much smaller than ENIAC at 14.5 feet long, 7.5 feed wide, and 9 feet
high, but it could read data at the rate of 7,200 characters per second
and complete 2.25 million instruction cycles per second.

In 1964, the first prototype computer mouse was made to use with a
graphical user interface (GUI), 'windows'. Engelbart received a patent
for the wooden shell with two metal wheels (computer mouse U.S.
Patent # 3,541,541) in 1970, describing it in the patent application as
an "X-Y position indicator for a display system."

MITS Altair: The First Microcomputer 1975. Ed Roberts and the MITS
(Micro Instrument and Telemetry Systems) company announced the
Altair, the first commercial microcomputer.
The Altair was based on the Intel 8080 processor and sold for $650
fully assembled or $395 for a kit.

THE INTERNET 1969. In the late 1960s, the U.S. Department of

Defense began research into computer networks.
In 1969, an
experimental 4-node network was completed; and by the mid 1980s, the
ARPANET (Advanced Research Project Agency Network) had expanded
to include almost 1,000 computers around the world.

Microsoft 1975. Bill Gates and Paul Allen developed the first version
of microcomputer BASIC for the Altair. Gates, who later became one
of the most influential people in the microcomputer industry, dropped
out of Harvard University to work on the project. The BASIC for the
Altair was quite successful, earning Gates and Allan $200,000 in
royalties.

Apple II 1978. In 1977, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple
Computer Corporation and released the Apple I, a kit containing a
motherboard with 4K of RAM that sold for $666.66. The Apple I later
became the basis for the extremely successful Apple II computer.

By 1995, the World Wide Web had entered the

mainstream of American culture. The Web quickly became
the most popular service on the Internet, with millions of
users and thousands of new home pages every month.

MICROSOFT WINDOWS 1987. In

1985, Microsoft announced Windows
1.0, a multi-tasking, graphical user
interface for the IBM PC and IBMcompatible computers.

Microsoft continued to refine Windows and was finally

successful with the release of Windows 3.0 in 1990.In
1993, Microsoft released Windows NT, an advanced
operating system capable of running programs designed
for Window 3.1, DOS, and special Windows NT programs

2001 - October 25 Microsoft released Windows XP Windows XP, the successor to Windows 2000 and
Windows ME, was the first consumer-orientated
operating system produced by Microsoft to be
built on the Windows NT kernel. Windows XP was
released worldwide for retail sale on October 25,
2001, and over 400 million copies were in use in
January 2006.

On January 30, 2007, it was released

worldwide[5] and was made available for
purchase and download from Microsoft's
website.[6] The release of Windows Vista
came more than five years after the
introduction of its predecessor, Windows XP,
the longest time span between successive
releases of Microsoft Windows desktop
operating systems. It was succeeded by
Windows 7, which was released to
manufacturing on July 22, 2009 and released
worldwide for retail on October 22, 2009.

Windows 8 is the current version of Microsoft Windows.

Windows 8 features a redesigned user interface, designed to
make it easier for touchscreen users to use Windows.
Windows 8 went on sale 26 October 2012.
Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 were released on
17 October 2013

Characteristics of Computers
1. It is a machine. It is non-functional unless operated or
given instructions.
2. It is electronic. It is dependent on electrical power
because of its electronic components.
3. It is automatic. Once started it performs continuously.

continued

4. It can manipulate data. Given instructions, it can come out with the
desired output.
5. It has memory. It has the ability to store and recoup information.
6. It has logic functions. It can produce logical results after
instructions were given it.

The Computers Strengths

1. Speed: Computers perform various activities by executing
instructions and these are measured in the following:
Millisecond = 0.001 second (one thousandth of a second)
Microsecond = 0.000001 (one millionth of a second)
Nanosecond = 0.000000001 (one billionth of a second)
Picosecond = 0.000000000001 (one trillionth of a second)

2. Accuracy: Zero Errors: Computers are amazingly

accurate and their accuracy reflects great precision.
Computations are accurate within a penny, micron, a
picoseconds or whatever level of precision is required.
Errors do occur in computer based information
systems, but precious few can be directly attributed to
the computer system itself. The vast majority can be
traced to a program logic error, a procedural error or
erroneous data. These are human errors.

3. Consistency: Human baseball pitchers try to

throw strikes but end up throwing balls. Computers
always do what they are programmed to do
nothing more nothing less. If we ask them to throw
strikes, they throw nothing but strikes.

4. Reliability: Computer systems are the most reliable

workers to any company especially when it comes to
repetitive tasks. They dont take sick leave, coffee
break and they seldom complain.

5. Memory Capabilities: Computers have total and

instant recall data and an almost unlimited capacity to
store these data. A typical mainframe computer system
will have trillions of characters and millions of images
stored and available for instant recall.

Computer Limitations
1. Computers are dependent on instructions.- Without the
intervention of a human being, computers cannot do things by
itself. It performs only what it is instructed to do.
2. Computers cannot draw meanings from objects. It has no
feelings and cannot recognized anything.
Meanings and
information that come out from the computer are only fed to it
by the programmer.
3. Computers are subject to mechanical failures. A computer is just
like any ordinary machine that breaks down from time to time.
4. Computers cannot correct wrong instructions. Because it is a
machine, it cannot distinguish correct instructions from wrong
instructions.

Categories of Computers
1. Microcomputers or PCs are used by one person at a time. The
PC like other computers, is very versatile and has been used for
everything from communicating with business colleagues to
controlling household appliances.
Examples of Personal Computers:

Pocket PC or palmtop
Laptop PC or notebook
Desktop PC
Pen based PC
Personal Digital Assistant

2.MINI COMPUTERS

They are like small mainframes, They consist of an

few separate units connected together. They can be
also maintained and operated by people who are
not computer experts. They can process information
at the rate of 4 million bytes per second.

3. Mainframe Computers with the expanded processing

capabilities, provide a computing resource that can be shared by
many people. Mainframes are usually associated with enterprise
wide systems that is computer- based systems that service
entities throughout an organization.

4. Super Computers are known as much as for their

applications as they are for their speed and computing
capacity, which may be 10 times that of a large
mainframe computers.

Elements of a Computer System

Input - used in entering data in the computer
(Examples: keyboard, mouse, scanner, microphone, digital
web cam)

camera,

Processing used in processing data

(Examples: Central Processing Unit, Arithmetic Logic Unit)
Output used in displaying the results of the output
(Examples: monitor, printer, speaker, LCD Projector)
Storage used in storing the data
(Examples: Random Access Memory, Hard Disk, Floppy Disk,
Compact Disk, DVD)

COMPUTER SOFTWARE
* the set of instructions a computer uses to
manipulate data, such as a word-processing
program or a video game.
*
these programs are usually stored and
transferred via the computers hardware to and
from the CPU. Software also governs how the
hardware is utilized; for example, how information
is retrieved from a storage device.

System Software performs tasks essential to the

efficient functioning of computer, such as displaying
information on the screen, storing data on disks,
sending data to the printer, interpreting command
typed by the users and communication with
peripheral devices.
- Operating system is a subcategory of System
Software
Operating System (OS) is the basic software that
controls a computer.
The OS has three major
functions:
- It coordinates and manipulates computer hardware,
such as computer memory, printers, disks, keyboard,
mouse and monitor
- It organizes files on a variety of storage media, such as
hard disk, CD, DVD, USB.
- it manages hardware errors and the loss of data.

APPLICATION SOFTWARE
- Is a computer program designed to help people
perform a certain type of work.
Word Processor is an application program for
manipulating text-based documents; the electronic
equivalent of paper, pen, typewriter, eraser, and most
likely, dictionary and thesaurus.
Spreadsheet programs use rows and columns of cells;
each cell can hold text or numeric data or a formula
that uses values in other cells to calculate a desired
result.
Data Management stores information in tables-rows
and columns of data-and conducts searches by using
data in specified columns of one table to find additional
data in another table.

 Presentation Software provides tools you need for

combining text, graphics, graphs, animations and sounds
into series of electronic slides
Entertainment Software includes games of all sorts,
simulations, software toys, and software designed to help
you enjoy hobbies and leisure activities. Game Software is
classified into subcategories such as action, adventure, roleplaying puzzles, simulations and strategy/war games.
Graphics Software helps you create, edit and manipulate
images. These images could be photographs to insert in a
brochure, portrait, etc.
Education and Training helps users to learn and practice
new skills.
Information and Reference provides users with a huge
selection of information in different formats such as text,
graphics, audio and video.

What is Information Technology?

refers to anything related to computing technology,

such as networking, hardware, software, Internet, or
people that work with these technologies. Many
companies now have IT departments for managing the
computers, networks, and other technical areas of their
businesses.

IT jobs include computer progg, network

administration, comp. engineering, Web development,
technical support, and many other related occupations.
Since we live in the "information age," information
technology has become a part of our everyday lives..

Information Technology is the integration of

computing
technology
and
information
processing.