Information Technology and Its Evolution (Part 6)

 

(Continued)

Electromechanical Era (the 1800s-1940s) (Remaining)

Machine-Readable Punched Card (around 1888)

    Punched cards are regarded as the first storage device. Punched cards were used for input, storage, and output. A punch card holds around 80 characters. Having witnessed the earlier use of punched cards in Jacquard looms in France, Herman Hollerith developed his standard version of these cards for use in his Tabulating machine. From there, storage devices have come a long way from magnetic tape disks to hard disks to optical disks to flash drives (and many intermediary devices) to where we are now, 'cloud-based' storage. The evolution of storage devices requires a separate article to cover all inventions.

Tabulating Machine (1888)

    The years-long counting process of the 1880 census of USA provoked American businessman, statistician and engineer Herman Hollerith to invent an electromechanical punched card the Tabulating machine, which helped calculate census results in 2 years. Herman Hollerith also invented 1st keypunch and automatic card-feeding tabulator. It was a key invention in the computing sector of information technology after a long time.

Radio (1894)

    Heinrich Rudolf Hertz discovered electromagnetic waves, including radio waves in the 1880s, and other physicists furthered research paving the way for Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi(Italian electrical engineer-inventor) to invent Radio in 1894, which brought a revolution in distant communication opening an all-new chapter of wireless communication.

Television (1925)

    John Logie Baird invented the first Television ever in 1925 which was mechanical in nature, based on an earlier invention "Nipkow disk", starting the new era of virtual visual communication. Later on, Philo Farnsworth demonstrated the first fully electronic television system at his lab in San Francisco on September 17, 1927, using a live camera.

Walkie-Talkie (1937)

    Also known as the two-way radio was invented in 1937 by the Canadian Donald Hings while working for CM&S. It is a portable half-duplex two-way radio signaling communication system.